Still looking for that perfect gift for your clients or business associates? Below I describe the ultimate gift for anyone in business.

What is the most powerful method of influencing those who influence many other affluent prospects? As a general rule, it is the dimension of networking called “revenue enhancement.”  Ask most successful business owners, professionals, and other self-employed prospects this simple question: “What is your number one need?” Most will answer, “Revenue enhancement, i.e. more sales, more customers, more clients.” Given a choice, would these prospects prefer to patronize a supplier who provides only a core product or service – that is, the basic or conventional offering – or one who provides more than the core?

Unenlightened accountants offer only accounting services; run-of-the-mill attorneys offer only legal advice; and so on. Truly gifted suppliers, however, offer more than the core. They go out of their way to find business and customers for their clients. Fred, a construction equipment dealer who lives by the networker’s creed, says: “You can’t sell construction equipment to contractors who have no contracts.”

Fred is a master of networking via the revenue enhancement mode. This strategy accounts for a major portion of his own revenue. Prospects have sought him out. Influential clients have gone out of their way to refer business to him. Why? Because he enhanced their revenue. He is in constant contact with major contractors who employ his customers. Most of his customers are subcontractors. On their behalf, he debriefs contractors about their needs for subcontractors. Thus Fred creates his own demand. He enhances the demand for his clients’ offerings. In turn, the enhanced demand for those offerings enhances the demand for his construction equipment.

Not far from the city where Fred operates, another revenue enhancing networker, a young financial consultant, recently landed a $15 million account. His client was the owner of a successful welding company. When this financial consultant first visited the owner, he promised that: “Two of my most important clients own hundreds of oil-drilling platforms. They are looking for a welding company to service their platforms. I would like to put you in touch with them.”

Both owners of oil-drilling platforms did, in fact, hire the welding company. And in turn via the revenue enhancement strategy, the owner of the welding company opened a major account with the financial consultant.

A top networker who employs this strategy once stated: “The most important thing you can do to convert a prospect into a client is to say: ‘give me a stack of your business cards. I have many clients who are likely to buy from you.'”

Revenue enhancement is simple, logical, and highly productive. It is the ideal gift any time of the year.

Warm holiday greetings to all.  My blog will resume in 2010!