Join Africa's fastest growing career community!

Featured

How to remotely network in B2B.

It’s easy to build meaningful and lifelong B2B relationships when the parties involved share a common passion.

Article Preview Image

It’s easy to build meaningful and lifelong B2B relationships when the parties involved share a common passion.

Photo credit: Cottonbro

Networking can offer a wide array of benefits to businesses. By nurturing strong lifelong relationships that are founded on trust and mutual respect, networking can offer a lifeline of support, long-lasting solutions to problems, and result in new business opportunities. But the COVID-19 pandemic and the increased adoption of a remote way of life have added an entirely new set of challenges to the already tough networking landscape. Here are practical ways to navigate these challenges and remotely network in B2B.

1. Take advantage of new platforms

While it’s important to focus on building new connections, it’s also wise to be open to where these connections are happening. For instance, Facebook or Twitter might be your favorite networking platforms, but the people you want to connect with might prefer Instagram, LinkedIn, or even torrent sites for marketing. If you concentrate on just your favorite networking platforms, there are high chances that you may lose lucrative opportunities that were waiting for you on other platforms. So it’s imperative to ensure you’re spending some time daily on each platform, networking with new people and building meaningful connections. Additionally, these platforms have a tendency to block certain users from a certain location to view the connections that prefer. In such cases buy a VPN, such as NordVPN, which will allow you to have access to any audience you prefer.

2. Build connections that are beyond the screen

Take the initiative of connecting with the person on the other end of the screen. Whether you’re communicating through email, direct message, or video, it’s important to get to know your contact. Find out what their interests are, their likes, and dislikes. Most importantly, come up with strategies to laugh together and engage in valuable conversations.

3. Leverage the power of virtual events and conferences

Virtual events and conferences are a fairly new concept. Getting attendee lists in advance may not be possible, but you easily obtain keynote speakers and panel members, together with their company names. Email these people after the event to either provide feedback or ask questions. Find out if they’ll be willing to talk to you briefly about their companies. Don’t fear reaching out to these individuals, the worst they can do is saying no. Think about ways to add value to a virtual event or an online conference. Participating in a session can be a great way to grow your networks by exploiting the many opportunities that virtual events have to offer.

4. Be passionate and share your story

It’s easy to build meaningful and lifelong B2B relationships when the parties involved share a common passion. The best way to learn about a person’s passion is in their voice. So, always share your story with your network and take a keen interest in theirs. This will create a human bond and strong bedrock for trust.

5. Build and maintain your relationships

Networking and speaking with your contacts for the first time isn’t that hard, but building and maintaining relationships that are based on trust is the biggest challenge. Squeeze in your work schedule a time (say three hours a week) for catching up with your contacts. Start by preparing a list of topics you discussed in your last catch-up, prepare new topics, and set a date for the next one. Always make use of your calendar app to ensure you don’t miss any of your catch up.

6. Offer opportunities for networking and collaboration

Don’t just rely on remote networking events organized by other people. Instead, take the initiative to create great opportunities for collaboration. For example, you can crowdsource content with individuals you want to connect with in a mutually beneficial manner. Co-creation fosters pride and inspires commitment to making the content successful, creating a win-win situation for every party involved. This strategy can help you expand your B2B connections and open new opportunities for your business.

7. Mine the gold in the social platforms

In today’s remote world, social platforms like LinkedIn and torrent sites for marketing have become goldmines. But you must know how to take advantage of them. For example, Fuzu Exclusive gives you an opportunity  to connect and learn from experts while LinkedIn's premium services opens more opportunities to search, network, and perform outreach. It also allows you to create valuable and resourceful content that resonates with your prospects. Torrent sites, on the other hand, allow you to contribute content to the torrent database and add value to other torrent peers.

Building and maintaining strong remote B2B relationships is now an important part of business success. Always be open to new networking sites, attend virtual events, be passionate, provide opportunities for collaboration, and find innovative ways to remain connected to your network.

Written by

Kelvin Mokaya


Give a like!

2 Comments

Sign in to read comments and engage with the Fuzu community.

Login or Create a Free Account