Looking for a Game Changing Activity to Grow Your Business?

We all like building our network, and the advantages that come with that. The process comes in many shapes and forms. Whether you’re attending a conference (which, hopefully, you know how to leverage by now), meeting for lunch, or participating in an industry organization—you’ve got the same goal in mind: to grow your business. Although all those methods are great, and often quite effective, here at Wayne O’Neill and Associates we like to speed up the process with a little something we call a Blitz Meeting.

What on earth is a Blitz Meeting?

First off, let me tell you what it’s not. It’s not a sales meeting. It’s not a mixer where you get to know each other and end up talking about grandkids and bonding. It’s not an integrated meeting where each firm is showing off a PowerPoint about what they do for their clients and how their firm is different. This is better. And it’s more effective.

It is about speeding up the process. We call it a Blitz Meeting because we want to contract what is usually 24-36 months of networking and getting to know each other and lunching into a contracted meeting. It’s a sudden, energetic and concentrated effort to create a mutually beneficial relationship between two firms that has a tendency to reverse the way that you spend time. It’s an in depth conversation about how you can help each other. That’s blitzing, and we do it for all of our clients.

But…how?

You get together and you cut to the chase. It doesn’t start easy.  If it’s a 3 hour meeting, the first two hours can be painful. But in the last hour, they’ll start to get some momentum, “Oh, I just thought of something. What about these guys?” You’ll need coaching and guiding to keep you on track and asking the right questions.

Questions like:

• What kind of clients do you have now and why do you have them?
• What kind of clients do you lust for?
• Why do you lust for them?
• How can we help each other without being on the same team to grow our businesses effectively?
• Why do they have their clients?
• How do they go after work?

The agenda is really that simple.

What’s next?

The next thing is project managing the execution of this solution. Everyone takes their own notes, and they’re advised to listen for business and political issues that differentiates them as a firm. They should consider if the way the other firm seeks work is counterintuitive or if they are doing the same dumb things over and over again.

Often, the people who a firm thinks are helping them, aren’t. Often all the people that can help aren’t the people you would usually consider. Like vendors. Sometimes a vendor is well informed and is EQ saavy. They go into environments, listen, observe and collect it all.

You have got to listen to people that are EQ saavy. What I try to get clients to understand is that you can’t be dazzled by title or dark clothes. Be dazzled by the people who listen and pay attention. It’s easy to get fooled. What our mind gravitates is the physical description of what we think success looks like-: they’re tall, they look like they’re in charge.

Here’s the bottom line…

Who is helping you isn’t who you would think is helping you. In reality, it’s the people that have EQ that know stuff. Because they’re the ones really paying attention and noticing underlying things that others aren’t.

What you usually do may work, but it’s not efficient. You’re thinking, “let’s get to know each other and network”, and all the sudden you know all about their kids. But you aren’t growing your business.

Every time you think you know a client, that’s when you should be scared. Because they’re changing all of the time.