Knowing what to say is a big part of being successful at a networking event. Opening lines are important conversation starters. But that’s just one way to start an interesting conversation with a stranger. Here’s everything that you need to know that leads to a business connection.

Why Conversation Starters are so Important

An effective conversation starter establishes common ground with that other person. This is small talk that can lead to more B2B networking for you. If done right, a conversation can generate genuine interest in what you’ve got to sell.

The right conversation starters are sales techniques.

Tips for Starting a Conversation at Networking Events

But you need to know how to start a conversation at one of these events. Following are 7 things that will lead to a good first impression.

The Right Body Language Leads to a Conversation

Non verbal cues foster an engaging conversation. Research suggests stance is essential. Don't slouch. You’ll look tentative. Body language compliments your conversation.

Proximity is important for good conversations. You need to be close enough to talk but not crowd.

Finding Common Ground

Getting over that first awkward silence is easier with some small talk. Talk shop with the other person to get started in your conversation.

Maintain Eye Contact For Great Conversations

An important part of any engaging conversation. If you maintain eye contact, it shows genuine interest. An important physical conversation starter.

Asking Follow Up Questions

Establish meaningful connections with great conversation starters. Then a further conversation includes follow up questions. Ask the other person about their experience and background.

An excellent conversation begins with mutual interest in each other.

Steering Clear of Conversations on Conversational Topics

Avoid a bad conversation starter. Like these topics that foster social anxiety.

• current events.
• politics
• complaints about work

Generally don’t talk about things you don’t like. Not a good way to jump into a conversation. Don’t jump in with deep topics right away. Leave those peer reviewed studies alone at first.

Ways to Start a Conversation at Face to Face Networking Events

It makes sense to focus on the best conversation starters instead. Following are 8 ways to start a great conversation when you’re face to face.

1. Introduce Yourself

This is a great conversation opener. The easiest way to get another person talking is to have a quick description ready. This is the beginning of a normal conversation.

Hi, I’m so and so. I’m from Chicago and my company is ACNE widgets.

2. Go For A Walk

Deep conversations start when people walk together. Especially on the way to the next panel or discussion. This is a great way to get to know the other person.

I’m on my way to the noon panel. Care to join me?

Comment on the decor on the way. It’s another way to start a conversation.

3. Mention A Favorite Food

You’ll have one thing in common with every other party at an event. The food. It can make for excellent conversation.

Have you tried these sandwiches? They’re delicious.

Start a conversation on your other favorites.

4. Share a Light Headline

A few tips for using this one. News about a sports team can work. Great conversation starters leave politics out.

Did you read about that game last night?

A positive current event is another great conversation starter.

5. Compliment the Other Person.

These are great conversation openers. A sincere compliment works when it’s specific.

That coat looks really great on you.

6. Mention a Detail

A positive remark and/or positive comment about the event works. A new conversational partner might be a stranger. Except for the fact you belong to an entire group. Here’s how to get a conversation going.

That last speaker made some good points. What do you think?

7. Keep Your Right Hand Free

Any conversation needs to include a handshake. Keep your right hand free when landing a new conversation partner.

Hello. It’s nice to meet you

Most people will admit they paid attention to someone starting conversations this way.

8. Begin With the Weather

Pay attention to what’s going on outside. Real life situations like the weather are a great way to get a conversation started.

This rain is really something, isn’t it?

You can even reference a previous conversation.

I was just talking with someone about how cold it is.

How to Start a Conversation at Online Networking Events

A conversation flow naturally happens when two people are face to face with some help. But more and more people need good conversation starters as well as small talk and business networking tips for internet meetings. Here’s eight ways to start a conversation at an online event. These are digital small talk tips to engage a conversation partner.

9. Do Some Research

A little research will help you start a conversation. Get a list of attendees to the virtual event before hand. Below is one of the best conversation starters.

“Hello—. I read your profile before the event and wondered if we could have a conversation. You did a great job on your recent project."

Flattery leads to a conversation.

10. Make Sure To Engage

Online events have discussions and even quizzes. Start a conversation by asking open ended questions like:

“What do others think of that last speaker? I’m interested to know.”

Starting a conversation can focus on what attendees do in their free time too. Remember, don't get them talking about controversial topics. Get the other person to talk about their hobbies.

What is everyone’s favorite TV show?

11. Ask A Day to Day Life Question

There’s room for talking and conversation with a person before a meeting starts. Ask a question to get a conversation started around personal information.

What family members do you respect the most?

A person’s family is a good conversation starter that works. Most people like to talk about the person closest to them.

12. Ask About Social Events

A decent conversation can start around a favorite movie. Or get attendees talking about music.

What’s the best concert you’ve ever been too?

The arts are excellent conversation starters. Especially if a person has a business that focuses in that area.

13. Ask Them To Describe Their Mood.

Digging into their expert knowledge comes later in the event. Asking new friends about their mood breaks the ice. A conversation starter works with them talking about their social life. Or sharing their own writing about how they feel on a Zoom whiteboard. Not really a conversation but an effective ice breaker.

“Who is in a good mood today? Take a deep breath and describe it.”

This conversation works wonders. It gets the other person to talk about themselves.

14. Register on the Community Board

Find a new conversational partner to talk with before the event starts. A community board can lead to a personal text conversation. People also love “talking” through messaging on the boards too.

“I’m looking for some more tips on how to get the most from this event. Contact me at ….”

15. Post on Your Website Pre Event

Put a notice up that you’ve registered for the event and are looking for a conversation partner. Look for someone to talk to on Twitter , LinkedIn and Facebook too.

16. Take Advantage of Real Time Messaging

Use real time messaging as topics are presented to get more details from another person. This way of starting a conversation builds trust. You show the other person you value their opinions. Mutual respect is a great conversation starter.

Use these Conversation Starters to Have a Great Networking Event

Now you have an overview on how to start a conversation. Talking with another person at an online or brick and mortar event can make a difference. Maybe you’re looking for a new job. Or have a person talk about their needs so you can make a sale.

Either way a conversation helps to further your goals. The more people at events talk, the more the conversations benefit your business. And if you have a hard time doing so, look into ways to help you, such as networking for introverts.




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Source: https://smallbiztrends.com/
Image Credit: Depositphotos

As a new entrepreneur, getting your product out into the market is hard enough, but when there is a lot of competition in your market, it can make things even tougher. When trying to differentiate their products in a situation like this, entrepreneurs are bound to make mistakes along the way.
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Many members of Young Entrepreneur Council have gone through this themselves and have learned some valuable lessons from the experience. Below, eight of them explained the most common mistakes entrepreneurs tend to make when trying to differentiate their products in an over saturated market and offered advice for how to remedy this situation. 

1. Forgetting About Post-Sale Services

Many marketers focus only on selling their products, but when it comes to offering post-sale services, they fail to meet their customers’ expectations. This upsets your customers, promotes a bad reputation for your brand and drives your users away. If you don't want that to happen, stop making this mistake. Make high-quality customer service your top priority and train your support team to treat your customers with respect, compassion and patience. This will help you stand apart from your competitors in a much stronger way and drive more conversions too. - Josh Kohlbach, Wholesale Suite

 2. Overcomplicating Your Product 

The biggest failure when differentiating your product is in over complicating it. Customers want to feel confident in the solution while also being able to understand it. The more complex something is, the harder it is for consumers to process the information in order to make a positive purchasing decision since their lack of understanding may be a reason that drives doubt or delay. While it might seem appropriate to use scientific jargon or technical wording when explaining your products and services, it makes the most sense to speak to your audience's needs and use the terms they are most familiar with. In instances where unique vocabulary is required, add videos and graphics to help better communicate those points. - Firas Kittaneh, Amerisleep Mattress
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3. Not Conducting Market Research

Many entrepreneurs go to extremes to help their product stand out, which is not generally a bad idea. The problem is when the extreme angle they take for their products isn’t well thought out or researched for compatibility with the target market. If you are going to push the envelope in terms of naming, copy, imagery or anything customer-facing, you want to do so in a way your prospective customers will enjoy and appreciate; otherwise, you risk simply offending or pushing them away. Do market research and focus groups before choosing your method of standing out in a market. - Salvador Ordorica, The Spanish Group LLC

4. Failing To Choose A Niche

Many entrepreneurs want to help everyone, and this waters down their messaging. Entrepreneurs who market well are clear, specific and differentiated. Those who are convinced they can save the world instead of focusing on one segment of the market struggle with branding. Entrepreneurs who learn how to differentiate via choosing a clear niche market have an easier time creating content and attracting a specific segment of the market. - Libby Rothschild, Dietitian Boss

5. Not Actively Building A Reputation

The problem that many young business leaders run into is they don't actively build their reputation as they are building a product. If you want to secure sales, build trust and see engagement on your site, you need to prove that you're an expert in your industry. There are quite a few ways you can accomplish this task. I recommend publishing detailed blog posts that include plenty of relevant statistics from trusted sources. I also suggest breaking into the social sphere and engaging with established experts before, during and after your product launch to continue building your reputation. - John Brackett, Smash Balloon LLC

6. Not Explaining Why You're Unique

Many entrepreneurs make the mistake of stating that they are unique without explaining how. You can make yourself distinct by creating a series of blog posts that compare your offerings to your competitors’ and making sure that you create meaningful and fair comparisons. As you build content and bring more people to your website, you'll stand out by offering useful blog posts. - Syed Balkhi, WPBeginner

7. Relying Too Much On Branding

One common mistake is relying too much on branding tactics such as a logo, catchphrase or brand mascot without having a solid product that really sets you apart. High-profile brands can get away with this because everyone already knows who they are. When you're smaller and newer, however, clever marketing gimmicks don't really work unless you can back it with solid products or services. You should aim to have a quality and eye-catching logo and graphics. The point is that these alone won't differentiate you in a competitive market. You need to identify what you actually offer that's different from the competition and get that across to your market. - Kalin Kassabov, ProTexting

8. Not Going The Extra Mile

When setting your products and services apart from the competition, it's important to consider how you can go the extra mile where other companies don't. How can you be there for your customers more than other businesses are? What do they overlook that you can pay more attention to? Providing for your customers in ways that other businesses don't will easily set your business apart in a positive way. Figure out how you can make them feel heard and apply their feedback to improve your strategy. - Stephanie Wells, Formidable Forms




Source: forbes.com
Image Credit: Photo by fauxels from Pexels

Most business owners want to invest in their business to help it grow. In the early days, you might experience exponential growth; people are finding out about your business for the first time, they’re having great initial experiences, and the novelty of your brand is still fresh enough to help it spread.

This is both exciting and reassuring, opening up new streams of revenue while justifying the existence of your business model.

But what happens when this growth hits a plateau?

Fortunately, there are plenty of small business growth strategies you can use to jumpstart your business back to life – and restore the momentum of your growth.

Is Your Business Stagnated?

First, assess whether your business has actually stagnated in growth. Most businesses go through cycles of activity, including busy periods and slow periods. They also tend to fluctuate in line with economic conditions; if the broader economy is going through a recession, it’s only natural that you’d see a slight decrease in sales or eliminate growth.

You can tell that your business has hit a plateau if you have experienced a flattening in sales for longer than six months, or if you’re seeing halted momentum in a number of different areas. This isn’t a hard rule, since different industries have different growth rates and different paths to expansion, but it’s still important to have a long-term mentality when considering your business’s growth.

Tactics to Try

So what tactics can you try if your business growth has totally stagnated?

1. Set the right goals (and expectations). Take a look at your current goals and expectations, and be willing to reset them. There’s a chance that your perceived stagnation is only the result of poor expectations, supported by a goal that never made sense for your business in the first place. How fast should you be growing, exactly? And keep in mind that if your business grows too fast, that can also be a problem. With better goals and expectations in place, your plateau may no longer look as intimidating.
2. Get outside perspective. Try to get some outside perspective on your business. Depending on your access to resources and how long you’ve been in business, that could mean talking to a mentor, hiring a consultant, or just getting some fresh people into the team. Outside observers will be able to provide a more unbiased take on how your business works and what it could be missing.
3. Change up the leadership. Businesses are strongly dependent on leadership to drive growth and support operations. If things aren’t going your way, consider changing that leadership up. That could mean hiring new people to serve as managers and directors, or it could simply mean changing the perspectives and attitudes of the leaders you already have in place. In any case, change is a practical requirement if you want your business to get back on its feet.
4. Focus on innovation. Even a single prominent innovation could be enough to spark new life and new growth into your business. Make sure you make innovation a focal point for your business; encourage your staff members to come up with new ideas on a regular basis, and direct plenty of funding for the research and development of new products and services.
5. Analyze your competitors. If you’re suffering from slow growth, take a look at your competition. If you notice that all of your competitors are struggling in the same way, this could be an industry wide problem. If there’s one competitor who seems to be thriving in this environment, try to figure out what it is they’re doing differently. Copying your competitors may not be the correct approach, but at the very least, you can learn something from them.
6. Ask your customers for advice. Your customers are the lifeblood of your business, so ask them what they think about it. Are they happy with the services and products they’ve received? Is there more that your business could be doing for them?
7. Get to a new market. You can also try to kickstart your business’s growth by getting to a new market. For example, you could try to reach a new demographic with a new line of products, or you could physically expand to a new geographic area.
8. Periodically reassess. Take the time to reassess your goals and your progress toward those goals. Things change quickly in the business world, so you have to remain adaptable.

These tactics may not be able to pull your business out of stagnation immediately, and some of them may not be a good fit for your brand in particular. But as long as you keep experimenting and pushing your business forward, you should be able to restore and reinvigorate the momentum that led you here.



Source: smallbiztrends.com
Image: Depositphotos

There has never been a better time to create a software solution. There are many tools out there that can create websites and smartphone apps by dragging and dropping elements on a screen.

But when building a tech startup, it’s much more involved than having a pretty website or smartphone app.

Now I know many readers potentially have some incredible ideas stored in the back of their minds that are lying dormant.

This article is aimed at people who have an idea and want to turn it into a reality.

My intention is to give you the five most important lessons I’ve learned when building a tech startup to help you take the path of least resistance, make fewer mistakes and most importantly, save money.

People said I would fail, but I ignored them all and here are my lessons.

Are you ready?

Lesson #1: Make sure you solve a problem

This lesson is mission-critical. If you are not solving a problem that is painful enough for people to pay you to solve, then you’re wasting your time.

In my experience, we had a solid product and concept, but I felt it was a bit weak on the problem-solving side. When we fixed this issue and pivoted to solve a bigger problem, our growth trajectory changed.

This is lesson number one for a reason. Why? Because if you solve a big enough problem for a large market, there will come a time when you’ll need to raise capital.

When you pitch to investors, you will be judged on the problem you solve. Trust me when I say that if you pitch a minor problem that doesn’t make the investor lean in, you will not close them.

But, if you pitch something that’s solving a big problem, investors will lean in and you’ll have their full attention. Because if your solution solves a problem for a big market and you can wrap a revenue model around it, you are well on the way to receiving investor capital.

Solutions to big problems are usually born from personal experience. Investors love this, because it shows a pain point that you’ve experienced and that you decided to do something about it.

Just remember, investors invest in people first and product second.

Lesson #2: Find a great developer

Ideas need to be turned into products and the pathway to a product is via programmers or developers.

Having a good developer early in your journey is very important. They breathe life into your concept.
Don’t stress if you don’t know any developers, there are plenty of platforms where you can post a job or requirement to connect with them.

I found that the best developers to find for early-stage concepts are full-stack developers. Full-stack developers can build the front end (client-side), what the customer sees and the back end (server-side), the stuff that no one sees but makes everything work.

Full-stack developers can help keep costs down and it’s always a good thing to consider giving your first main developer (once you are comfortable, of course) some equity in the business.

Lesson #3: Validate your hypothesis

Your hypothesis is an assumption (your solution). It needs to be tested to see if it’s true or validated and prove that it solves the problem you’ve identified.

The beautiful thing about the validation stage is that you can dip your toe in the water to check if you are on to something big. Or at the very least, something that will make money.

The best way to do this is by building an MVP or minimum viable product. Remember in lesson #2 where I said you need to find a full-stack developer? This is where the power of this type of developer comes in.

An MVP is a version of your product that has just enough features to prove your assumption (hypothesis) is correct. Focus on the words just enough, as this indicates that you should not build everything in your roadmap.

An MVP is designed to prove your hypothesis without the need to spend up on development costs. So, the full-stack developer can build out your front end and back end to allow you to prove your solution.

With our MVP, we built a small part of the solution and tested our hypothesis. The result was that we had 30,000 people engage with our product in one night. This allowed us to build out the product because the response validated our concept.

This lesson is crucial to ensure you don't spend too much money without proving your concept will work.

Do not skip this step.

Lesson #4: Team

You’ve got your full-stack developer, you’ve built your MVP and it’s showing promise, now what? Well, it’s time to start focusing on building out your team.

There are several reasons to build a team and I suggest starting out with one key advisor. This advisor must be influential in the space you’re playing in. For example, if you have a media-tech startup, your target advisor may be a TV station board member.

The reason you pick this type of advisor is to leverage their networks and contacts. The key thing here is that their contacts can help you with distribution or customer growth.

Also, having this type of advisor will help you when raising capital. If an investor sees this person on your team and they are well known in the space, it will get the investor excited.  

On top of this, good advisors attract other team members so think long and hard about which advisors in your space can help you out the most.

Lesson #5: Partnerships

The growth of your startup is so crucial. Every time you pitch your startup to investors, you need to clearly show your distribution channels. You cannot sell a secret and investors are hyper-focused on how you’re going to get customers.

There are the traditional methods of distribution such as paid marketing, but one distribution channel we found to be incredible was the power of partnerships.

I have a question I ask myself all the time, how can I do more with less effort? In other words, how can I connect with as many customers as possible with the least amount of effort or spend?

Welcome to partnerships. Partnerships are a powerful way of getting distribution quickly to then turn on revenue or show massive growth.

You think about it, if a particular company already has thousands of your potential customers, doesn’t it make sense to partner with them to get access to thousands of customers in one hit?

If you were to organically grow to this level, it could take years and substantial money to achieve.

When formulating a partnership, it’s ideal if your solution complements the company’s product that you want to partner with as this will benefit both parties.

In closing, the startup grind is real and it’s hard. But my hope is that the above lessons can get you thinking in new ways to ensure your startup has the best possible chance for success.

Just remember, there are people out there who need their problems solved, so ignore the people that think you’re crazy and go for it. 



Source: entrepreneur.com 
Image Credit: Photo by mentatdgt from Pexels