Enjoy the Holidays

3 HOT Networking Tips for the Holiday Season

#1 - Keep a look out for good communicators

Be friendly. Say hello and introduce your self. Ask questions. Find out more about them than they find out about you. Ask about their family, how they got invited to the party, do they like their occupation, what they do for recreation. hobbies. Remember, it's not an interrogation, but a conversation. Ultimately, you are looking to make a new friend and perhaps even a new business partner for sometime down the road.

You may even find out when asking these questions, what would compel them to look at your business or product in the future. In other words, they may or may not qualify for what you are doing. If they don't see a perceived problem, then don't waste your time offering your "solution".

Remember it's always better to go too slow than too fast, so at first, it is better to befriend someone than to give a full sales pitch and scare them away.

#2 - Give a sincere compliment.

After having some conversation and learning more about your new contact, before the interaction ends, always give a sincere compliment if they have the kind of people skills of someone you'd be interested in showing your business and/or product to at some point.

You may or may not even bring up your business right away, unless they ask. Either way, this is ok. Remember, the relationship is more important than anything and people will do business with those that they believe in, like and trust. And this takes some time to develop unless when you first meet, sparks start flying!

Tell them that you find their people skills excellent and that you are always on the lookout for competent ambitious people who may want to keep in contact for the future.

#3 - Exchange Contact Information.

Never give any information without getting information. Don’t just hand out your card like confetti. The key is to create a new friend and relationship where both of you want to keep in touch. In this case, the fortune is absolutely in the follow up.

Just keep in mind that you must first find out what is important to them, and then, make it important to you. This is how you can turn these new contacts into new friends and business partners.

Remember you can and should have friends out side your business if nothing else just to give you a balanced perspective.

Bottom line enjoy the journey and your holidays.

Sales to soar

Specialty supplement sales to soar.

Mintel’s Global New Products Database placing superfruits among the top 10 trends

combined with the Business Insights study predicting specialty supplements offer the most sales growth potential over the next five years puts a smile on the face of our industry.

Finding the next obscure fruit with high nutrient content is big business in the

functional fruit business as originality , combined with taste and mystic scores high with consumers.

Supplement consumption has reportedly increased in the younger generations by as much as 30 percent.

A report released by Packaged Facts last year, entitled Nutritional Supplements in the US, predicted that dietary supplement sales would grow upwards of $6bn by 2011, with products geared towards specific ailments accounting for a large share of the growth.
The International Food Information Council (IFIC) commissioned a web-based national survey of US adults last month and found consumers overwhelmingly believe food and nutrition play the greatest role in maintaining or improving health.

Based on the findings that consumers understand the link between food and health

the challenge is to increase consumer awareness so as to further tap into this market potential