Growing My Social Capital

1)         One person must be a domain expert in your industry. This would be someone who's engaged in the same type of business activity as you would like to be. They may own the same kind of company that you would like to own, or they may be a technical expert who knows a lot about the kind of product or service that you would like to produce.

Since my service is to offer students rides between short distances on campus and around college centralized towns, I decided to contact uber and inquire as to if they provided any services specific to college students. Their head of marketing in the southeast region detailed in a phone interview that they worked with multiple student government organizations, including the University of Florida to provide discounted rates to students during peak hours. However, none of these services were focused around my idea of cheap and easy to maintain motorized scooters.

2)         One person must be an expert on your market. This would be someone who is targeting your market with similar products services -- or knows a lot about conducting customer research in your area -- or represents a major piece of your market (this might be most applicable with B2B markets).

I could not think of anyone specifically who targeted my customer base and also provided a similar service. Instead, I analyzed uber rates and surge pricing, surveyed taxi companies around Gainesville, and also contacted shuttle and group services.

3)         One person must be an important supplier to your industry. This would be someone who is selling products and services to other organizations/firms in your industry. 

I contacted NS4L to see if they had any group or professional service discounts available for large quantity scooter orders. At the time of this post, I am still awaiting a response to these questions.

Reflection: I have participated in many networking events before and this one was n different. I really enjoyed the opportunity to brand myself as a different enterprise. I am generally used to contacting prospects at my work, as a leasing agent in an apartment community, and I really think that helped me in this exercise.