Cirkla Notes

Last night I went to a wonderful group called the Lodestone Networking Group. It is run by Michele Bergh and she does a fantastic job helping businesses to develop both as a community and as individual businesses. During this session, we spent some time getting to know each other and then Michele gave us an exercise to help us explore our service model. She has us close our eyes and visualize an experience of being a client and visiting a business. She asked to recall things such as how we were treated during the visit, what did the space look like, feel like, smell like, etc. She also had us consider how well the individual or business followed up with us.

Since most of the people in the group were small business owners who see clients on a regular basis, this exercise had some obvious outcomes. How do we treat our clients? Do we follow up with them in a timely manner? Is our space welcoming and what considerations do we take to make our clients feel special? All of these images spurred on some very healthy discussion in the group as we then went around the room and shared our thoughts. I thought that it was a great exercise and it made me want more. If you live in the Twin Cities area, I encourage you to check out the Lodestone Networking Group! If not, find a group in your area and see what is going on. This experience was a great reminder to me that I need to get out more to my local community and touch base. It is so important as a developing business to do that.

Do you participate in networking groups in your area? If so, what are some of the benefits to doing this that you have noticed? Please add a comment and share some of your ideas with us!