August 2012
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| Learn the purpose behind the chart and the Blackberry. |
Ah-Ha! Moment – As I shared last month, one of my major business goals for 2012 has been to significantly expand the size and quality of my referral network. How's that been working for me? Great! Not only is it nice to meet other client-facing professionals and discuss each other's business, it's always gratifying to be able to give the other person an idea which could help one of their clients.
Of course, words like "nice" and "gratifying" are qualitative, not quantitative. To me, one quantitative measure demonstrates not only the expansion of my network, but also why I'm finding it easier and easier to meet people and learn about area businesses. This measure – the number of our monthly e-Newsletters sent – has increased dramatically over the last 2 years. Two years ago, this had achieved slightly more than 2% annual growth. This year, the year-over-year increase was a solid 8.5%.
And once you take the reach of these additional individuals – many of whom are, like me, client-facing and focused on business development – into account, the effect is multiplied because a number of these new people have (just as I do) 500+ connections on LinkedIn.
Lesson learned? While harvesting is fun and looks easy, it takes consistency and organization to plant this many seeds.
