Practical Help to Grow Your Business  

WHY BOTHER GOING TO NETWORKING MEETINGS?

Why do you bother going to networking meetings?  Why do you

• Get up before dawn?
• Have a shower before the central heating's come on?
• Drive several miles in the cold, dark and rain?
• Consume rather more caffeine and cholesterol than you ought to?

So what's your answer?  While you're thinking about it, let me tell you mine.  I go to networking meetings for four key reasons:

• To meet strangers
• To recruit and train my surrogate sales team
• To be recruited and trained by other people into their surrogate sales teams
• To enjoy myself, and help others do the same

I hope your reasons and objectives are along approximately similar lines.  How can you best go about achieving them?

1. Meet Strangers

If you meet exactly the same people every time, what are you gaining by going?  You could claim that every time you meet, you get to know each other a little better, and I should jolly well hope this is true!  But do you need to go to a networking meeting in order to do this?  You now know each other and have one another's contact details.  Couldn't you arrange to meet for a (several?) more in-depth chats without needing to do so at a networking meeting?  If it was the case that strangers were there to be met at the networking event, wouldn't it rob you both of 'stranger-meeting time' if you were to talk to each other?

And one other thought.  Any one-to-many networking that you do - such as going round the table, each introducing yourself for 30 or 60 seconds - has only one purpose.  To stimulate a request for a one-to-one conversation!  It would actually be most unusual for anyone to get business as a result of their elevator pitch without any other contact whatever!

Are all strangers likely to be equally nice to chat to, in need of your contacts, or helpful to you?  Of course not!  We can all work on our rapport building if we need to, and become nice people to chat to.  But who might be most in need of your contacts?  And who might be the most helpful type of stranger for you?

The answers to these two questions are really the two sides of the same coin.  Both of you want to be meeting people who are naturally 'rubbing shoulders' with your ideal customers.  And you need to make sure this happens regularly.  But this does not always have to be a one-to-one process.  Several people can form such a 'loop' and it will work as long as the loop is closed.

2. Recruit and Train Your Sales Team

How many of you have gone to a networking meeting with this as a specific objective rather than as vague wishful thinking?  OK then, how many of you have either been employed in a sales team and never had any team building, product training or motivational meetings, or could imagine such a scenario if you haven't?  Of course it sounds ridiculous, so why think you can avoid it when it comes to your network?

There are three crucial ideas you must keep in mind about what is, after all, your 'surrogate' sales team.

• You don't employ them so they don't have to do as you ask
• You don't employ them so there's no financial incentive to do as you ask
• You don't employ them so they don't have a job to lose if they don't

Now you have to get them to sell for you!

Do also bear in mind, you're not requiring them to actually sell your product or service!  You can do that yourself when you get face-to-face with the prospect.  What you want them to do is to spot and qualify opportunities for you.  But you don't just want them to say, "I noticed this .... as I was driving past.  Why don't you contact them?"

You want them to have had conversations with people which conclude with something like, "You really need to speak to my friend .....  They should be able to help you.  I'll get them to contact you."

To do this your 'salesperson' must know, because you have trained them, how to spot one of your ideal customers and how to identify that they have the sort of problems you can fix.  Most importantly they must be able to build up sufficient empathy that the person will agree that they would like to find out more about getting rid of the pain the problem is causing.

To do this you must have trained your team to recognise the symptoms or pains of such problems, and the key to this is giving them a very simple tool that will help in this identification.  For example, if your forté is helping companies whose Marketing function is not fully effective, you need to give me a tool for recognising ineffective marketing.

This also covers point 3. and I'm sure you don't need my help with number 4.!

If you are going through just these sorts of anxieties and would value a one-off sounding-board, in confidence and without obligation or charge, e-mail me david@davidwinch.co.uk  Many business owners appreciate and value support in times like these.

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