Networking Sucks! Do This Instead

Networking has been emphasized as a powerful, free, low-skill tool for growing a business. In fact, professionals such as lawyers, CPAs and financial advisors are taught that one-on-one connections are the only way to grow their practice. This is not only bad advice, it is a death sentence for anyone looking to build a real business. 

Networking offers no marketing leverage and while the professional or entrepreneur is busy doing the day-to-day work, their client attraction efforts remain stagnant. 

Dave Lorenzo, an author and sales expert, with more than 30 years of experience in relationship-based sales, teaches his clients that a more strategic approach is essential to create powerful and profitable business relationships.

Lorenzo believes there is a better way to grow a business while maximizing your time, talent and expertise. He bases his networking approach on a leadership model known as, “thought leadership.” Thought leadership is the ability to share your expertise across multiple forms of media and it has become the foundation of Lorenzo’s approach to business development. 

“If you want to dominate in your industry you must view yourself as a media outlet,” Lorenzo said.

Lorenzo currently utilizes several forms of media  in his business plan. He posts multiple videos each day on YouTube, hosts a daily podcast called The Inside BS Show with Dave Lorenzo. Lorenzo also uploads unique videos using the IGTV feature on Instagram to regularly engage with his target audience.

Lorenzo is also the award-winning author of three business books – because, as he says, “The best business leaders read more than everyone else. If you want to stay top-of-mind with them, you need to be a published author.” 

Lorenzo’s greatest fear is something many professionals can relate to; he doesn’t want to be “the best expert nobody’s ever heard of.” Networking can make you famous to dozens of people. Lorenzo believes a thought leadership strategy will make you famous to thousands – quickly. 

As an industry sales consultant, coach and expert, Lorenzo encourages his wide variety of clients to utilize his thought leadership-based methods as a way to market themselves. According to Lorenzo, the thought leadership process begins by researching and finding a target audience. Individuals can start to research their target audience by checking analytical tools such as Google or social media analytics, and by analyzing their current market as well as their competitors.

Lorenzo also suggests identifying where a desired target audience may congregate in groups, and what they read to stay up on industry information. For instance, if an individual or business wishes to target members of Generation Z, they will often begin by creating visual and interactive social media platforms such as TikTok or Instagram. Because the COVID-19pandemic heavily limited social interaction, younger generations turned to social media to stay connected and informed.

Lorenzo’s next step would be to create content that then solves problems for the target audience.

Content creation may sound simple in the current digital age, however it is the part of the process that requires the most amount of research and obsessive attention to detail. After all, this content will serve as an individual’s message or mission that they are trying to sell to the target audience. Once the content has been created, the final step would be to distribute that content in all three forms of media, mentioned above.

An intellectual property attorney, for example, would write an article about the value of a trademark, as well as a video about licensing a trademark as an ongoing revenue stream. Additionally, the attorney could conduct a podcast episode dedicated to interviewing a client who sold his business, and made a tremendous profit due to that client’s ownership of valuable trademarks.

Therefore, the target audience is exposed to the attorney’s call to action, ‘Call me when you want an additional revenue stream from your intellectual property portfolio.’ Ultimately, the attorney’s call to action has been delivered across three different media platforms.

Although it is a frequently overused term, thought leadership has been the key to properly establishing an individual as an expert within their field during the digital-age of society. Dave Lorenzo has spent the past three decades in his industry using thought-leadership strategy as a more successful and improved approach to networking.

For more information on Dave Lorenzo, his coaching services, educational videos, his podcast and more, visit his website https://davelorenzo.com.