Growing your business is about building relationships with people.  The wider your networks, the more successful your business will be, as the people you know and in turn the people they know are sources of ideas, knowledge and potential new business. But many of us find networking very hard work and struggle to find something to talk about.  Plus, nothing is more off-putting than someone shoving their business card under your nose and trying to sell you something within 5 minutes of meeting! So here are our Top Ten Tips for  successful networking: 

1. Be prepared to invest time to network with new people
2. Believe in what you are doing and be enthusiastic
3. Listen and ask questions
4. Look at your business from their perspective, not yours
5. Mirror body language of the person you are talking to
6. See the opportunities and mentally make a note.  Make a written note later and keep their contact details
7. Get them to talk about themselves, show you are interested
8. Make use of all the different media for networking – meetings, phone email
9. Follow up – it’s fine to email the next day to say you enjoyed  meeting them
10. Find ways you can build the relationship (without pestering them), for example, send them an interesting article or details of one of your contacts which they would find useful, or ask their advice about a business issue.