Marketing Channel

One really important thing that we need to lay down for business students is this: NETWORKING!

Networking is the essential thing when doing business, any kind of businesses, without it there will be no success. When you have a wonderful product idea that you want to sell, you have the money to hire smart people for your company but do not have the networks, then everything will not be realized. Network here may include the suppliers where you will purchase the materials to create your product, customer who will buy them, workers who will be directly involved in the production operation and any other people who have potential interest to the business. Networking can be classified into two categories, the first one is self networking (the people in our personal lives like family, friends and other relatives) and the second one is bizz networking (people related to our business activities like employees, customers and suppliers).

The result of knowing more and more people and introducing our business to them may mean more advantageous business opportunity, in a way where we may work together with these people to create a new project or other business activities. The forms of collaboration possible are ownership, joint venture, strategic alliances, partnership and outsourcing. Getting involved in one of these collaboration forms will help the business to grow, however the hardest part is to maintain the connection between you and the other parties. To extract the best elixir out of this potion is by applying trust, power, social norms and commitment and interdependence.

Next to networking is the distribution channel of the products that we sell. The difference between networking and a channel is that the latter has a formal written relationship, agreed by law. Basically, there are direct, semi-indirect and indirect distribution channels. Direct channel means the manufacturer directly sells the product to the end user, the consumer. Semi-indirect and direct method use intermediaries to transport the product to the consumer, the intermediaries can be wholesaler and retailer. These channels can all be adopted by all business forms, whether business to business or business to consumer.

In conclusion, we must not stop making friends and knowing new people because it will benefit both our personal and professional lives. Remember that hundreds of friends are too little but one enemy is too much! This principle should really be applied for everyone who concern about the future of their career since those friends that we have will somehow help us in the success of our businesses.