Business Networking is an extremely valuable way to expand your knowledge, study from the success of others, attain new clients and tell others about your business.

I highly recommend business networking in an effort to gain new customers and to build a sustainable business. Listed below are the most notable 9 benefits for business owners of getting involved in networking:

1.   Generation of referrals/Increased business
This is essentially the most clear benefit and the reason why most companies decide to participate in networking activities and join networking group.

The fantastic news is that the referrals that you will get through networking are normally high quality and almost all of the time are even pre-qualified for you. After that you can follow-up on these referrals/leads and turn them into clients. So you are getting higher quality leads from networking than other varieties of marketing.

The increase in business from networking is the major advantage, but there are numerous others as well.

2.   Opportunities
Which has a motivated group of business owners comes an abundance of opportunities! There are always lots of opportunities which come from networking and in fact that's where the great things about business networking are huge!

Opportunities like joint ventures, client leads, partnerships, speaking and writing opportunities, business or asset sales… the list goes on, and the opportunities within networking are really endless.

Just be sure you are jumping up to speed with the right opportunities and don’t go jumping into every opportunity that comes the right path. The opportunities that you will get involved in should align with your business goals/vision, otherwise you will probably find that you will be spinning your wheels running after opportunity after opportunity and getting nowhere.

3.   Connections
“It’s not WHAT you know, but WHO you understand”. That is so true in business. If you need a really successful business, then you must have a great source of relevant connections in your network that you can ask if you want them.

Networking offers you a great way to obtain connections, and really opens the entranceway to speak to highly influential individuals who you wouldn’t otherwise have the ability to easily speak to or find.

It’s not only about who you are networking with directly either - see your face will curently have a network you can utilize as well. So ask the right questions to determine if the individual you are networking with knows who you wish to know!

4.   Advice
Having like-minded business owners to speak to also gives you the opportunity to get advice from them on all kinds of things related to your business or even your individual life and obtaining that important work-life balance.

Networking is a superb way to tap into advice and expertise that you wouldn’t otherwise be capable of geting your hands on. Just make sure you are receiving solid advice from the right person - someone that actually knows about what you ought to know and it is not just providing you their view on something they have no or very little experience in.

5.   Raising your profile
Being obvious and getting noticed is a big benefit for networking. Be sure you regularly attend business and social events that will assist to really get your face known. After that you can help build your reputation as a knowledgeable, reliable and supportive person by offering useful information or tips to the people who require it. You are also much more likely to obtain additional leads and referrals as you'll be the the one that pops to their head when they need what you offer.

6.   Positive Influence
The people that you loaf around with and talk to do influence who you are and what you do, so that it is important to be surrounding yourself with positive, uplifting people that enable you to grow and thrive as a business proprietor. Networking is great for this, as business owners that are employing networking are usually people who are really going for it, positive and uplifting.

7.   Increased confidence
By regularly networking, and pushing you to ultimately speak to people you don’t know, you'll get increased confidence the more you do this. This is absolutely important as a business proprietor, because your business growth is very dependant on talking to people and making connections.

Networking is fantastic for people that aren’t confident as it certainly pushes these to grow and understand how to make conversations and lasting connections with people they don’t know.

8.   Satisfaction from helping others
Networking is full of business owners that contain problems or issues of their business that require solving, and there is fantastic satisfaction from helping you to definitely solve problems they have got and get an excellent derive from it.

9.   Friendship
Lastly, that one is more personal related rather than business related, but is a major benefit none-the-less. Many friendships form because of this of networking because (mostly) you are like-minded companies that are looking to grow your businesses, so you meet and help each other regularly, so naturally strong friendships have a tendency to form. A few of my strongest friendships have been star