Why Mentor Power?

Over the last ten years or so, Business Networking has been prolific, originally with dozens of weekly breakfast, lunch and evening meetings that all small business owners were encouraged to attend. You went along, paid a small fee, chatted to people you knew - and some you didn’t - swapped business cards and perhaps also got the opportunity to share what you do for 30 or 60 seconds before the next person jumped to their feet.

This was all well and good but after a while the costs mount in both your cash and your time, and the amount of business that you were getting was probably not very much.

More recently the online networks such as LinkedIn, Ecademy, Xing, Plaxo, Viadeo, Skillpages and of course Twitter and Facebook to mention just a few. They are taking our time although not so much of our cash.

With all these networking events and sites the simple question we have to ask ourselves is:-

“Are these events and sites generating me any profitable business?”

Sadly it appears that in most cases the answer tends to be a big NO!

If you think about it, simply sharing your business card and 30 or 60 seconds worth of information with other is not exactly going to earn their trust or desire to do business with you.

Let’s look at a different scenario. You have worked closely with someone who we will call John. He is a person who you respect, who has produced quality IT work for you, who’s business you know well and who is both reliable and trustworthy. Someone else asks you if you can recommend someone to help them with an IT problem. You would not hesitate to recommend John. Likewise John would not hesitate to recommend you to someone who asked him for help with something that you provide.

This is how you get good business on a regular basis. The difficulty is building relationships with others to a level where they will go out of their way to recommend you to a third party. This is where Mentor Power really works well ... it builds that trust and respect that is needed before people will recommend you to others!