NETWORKING HAS BECOME an important aspect in today’s marketing environment.  Pushy and dishonest salespeople, along with the use of ‘bait-and-switch’ tactics, has driven customers to develop some defensive responses.   

Overconfident salespeople often fail to take into account that current customers are well informed.  Actually, with the invention of the Internet, customers don’t even need salespeople anymore. They do their own research and even, in most cases, do their own shopping without even setting foot into a store. This is an important factor the marketer should know and consider while approaching today’s customer. The traditional approach may not work since it was pegged on striving to inform the customer.

Success in marketing essentially means duplicating the successful organizations or people within your range. It is prudent to replicate the same and, in due course, you are also likely to find success. Despite the success in using a mastermind group, or affinity network, in your business, the risk of failure remains high as there are recorded failure rates of 95% for new entrants in the first couple of months.  This is because the process of perfect replication or near perfect replication of others’ success is not explained or demonstrated candidly.  Simply stated, what may work for one business, considering the prevailing internal and external environment, may not work for another similar entity.

A mastermind group is a group made up of individuals who are like-minded with similar desires and objectives or goals. By forming a business mastermind group, the members are able to share ideas, skills, knowledge etc.

Through mastermind marketing, some companies have delved into this as their own problem and primarily focused on it.  Companies have ended up spending millions of dollars to invest in and fully develop marketing systems that are similar to the success stories of other companies. This, augured with training on audio & visual components, has made this concept replicable with acceptable degrees of success.

The dangers of flying solo are obvious since there is complete reliance on your knowledge alone.  With a group composed of like-minded individuals, help is provided with constant sharing among the members by way of advice, support and feedback.  Thus, business mastermind groups will not let you miss details that are important or be absorbed by unimportant distractions since members will always be present to remind you of the set goals and in turn the favor is returned to other group members.

When starting a project, a mastermind group is important for feedback. You may think you know your market well, but this may or may not be as there are many turns and twists which are unforeseen. Such eventualities are well-catered for within a mastermind group at the pre-launch stage of a business’ development.  

There is shared knowledge since no one has ever been an expert in everything. Therefore, being part of a group, you end up sharing your expertise within the group and, at the same time, enjoying the knowledge and expertise of others.