Educate, educate, educate

I attended an excellent marketing masterclass by Nigel Temple this evening. One of the points he made about differentiation was the importance of freely sharing useful information in your marketing. He said it was better to be seen as an expert than to just claim you are. His point is illustrated beautifully by the amount of free resources at his own website, nigeltemple.com.

It reminds me of a quote from an NRG member in some research into business networking that NRG conducted a couple of years ago:

"I do not do any cold calling - all my business comes from networking and referrals. Much of it is as a result of doing a presentation where I share my secrets so people know how to do what I do. Mostly, they prefer to ask me to do it for them, even though I've explained how they can do it for themselves! Networking is not about selling - it's about building relationships."

This demonstrates nicely how Nigel's good advice applies equally in the relationship building context in business networking.

Good Networking!
Dave Clarke