Btb Guest Author

Miriam Ahern

Face-to-face business networking is a much cheaper way to promote your business than advertising or PR. It is a low-cost activity where the pressure is on your time rather than on your pocket. It’s more effective than on-line networking as you build important personal relationships more quickly.

Nevertheless, meeting someone just once is unlikely to bring you new business. The key lies in repeat-encounters. However, the old maxim still holds – time is money. Here’s how to spend that time wisely:

Step # 1 - Determine why you need to network and set clear networking objectives for yourself

Action - List the main (important and urgent) objectives for your networking activities for the next twelve months. These objectives might be aligned to a personal or business plan that you have developed. Be very specific in terms of what you need to

do and why and when you need to do it. Use the SMART principle so that your networking objectives are specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and time-bound.

Step # 2 - Audit your existing networks

Action - Make a ‘master list’ of your existing networks on one sheet of paper. Then, for each of those networks, take a blank sheet of paper and brain-storm that network. What you want to end up with is a set of individual lists of all of your active contacts within in each of your current networks. An active contact is someone with whom you have interacted during the last three months or so. If you are used to ‘mind-mapping’, that method makes this step really easy.

Step # 3 – Align your ‘master list’ to your new networking objectives

Action – Ask yourself this question. Are there other relevant groups of people that I need to network with to achieve my current networking objectives? If the answer is yes, your immediate mission is to identify, locate and engage with these new groups or individuals. Different networking objectives may require you to interact within different networking groups.

Step # 4 – Galvanise your existing networks into action

Action – In the context of your new networking objectives, review the names on each of the sheets that you have prepared for each of your networks. Are there other people available to you through those existing networks that you have not included in your list? For example, are there wider family members, ex-colleagues, or co-professionals with whom it would benefit you to acquaint yourself? Plan to connect with these additional people at your earliest opportunity.

Step # 5 –Re-educate your existing contacts

Action – Make sure that your introduction, or ‘elevator pitch’, is up to date. For many of us, the way in which we introduce ourselves may depend on which network we are interacting within. Make sure that if you have a ‘set’ of introductions that they are all freshly aligned to your networking goals. Do this in advance of any networking activities. Don’t get caught on the spot at events or meetings where you might get tangled in a long explanation about how or why you have changed your slant.

Step # 6 – Encourage your contacts to be your ambassadors and your sales reps!

Action – Make yourself memorable. One extremely good networker that I know carries a stunningly beautiful pair of diamond earrings in his pocket. Not so strange, really. He’s a master jeweller and a diamond grader. You should see people flocking around him when he’s in action. No-one ever forgets having met him either!

Use every available opportunity when you are networking to become involved in the event itself. Here are some suggestions:

Get to know your network organisers or facilitators

Volunteer to ‘buddy-up’ with newcomers at formal networking events

Become a connector, introduce your acquaintances to each-other

Offer to present a short talk on your subject(s) of expertise

Extend a special discount to fellow-networkers

Offer to be a table facilitator or host during round-table networking activities or exercises

Follow up a promising chance encounter with a one-to-one meeting over coffee or lunch

Relationships + Reputation = Referrals

Miriam Ahern is the founder and managing partner of Align Management Solutions – a consultancy specialising in organisational change and development. She also manages LINK! - Dublin City Enterprise Board’s Network for Start-up Businesses. Miriam is a regular contributor in the national media on issues relating to business management and human resources. She is a Certified Management Consultant and a Fellow of the Institute of Management Consultants and Advisers.

Mobile: + 353 86 234 2789

Office:  + 353 1 412 5890

www.twitter.com/MiriamAhern

www.linkedIn.com/in/miriamahern

Over at TSE

I am really looking forward to tomorrow’s roundtable “Harness the Power of Referrals”

Do you know what it takes to build a referral business?

Join five Top Sales Experts share their techniques that turn up the heat in prospecting by harnessing the power of referrals.

Joanne Black, Jonathan Farrington, Paul McCord, Steve Martinez and Nancy D. Solomon present this 60-minute roundtable on Tuesday May 26th.

Your current clients are your most under-leveraged referral source. It doesn’t have to be that way.

Learn where traditional referral training falls short, why it is so essential to understand your ideal client profile and recognize your ideal referral source, how to overcome referral roadblocks and how to develop a process that does “what it takes” to build a referral business.

The investment? $25.00  or $99.50.

HUH? You can become a VIP member of Top Sales Experts (at $25.00 for the entire year) and the Roundtables are FREE. If you’re not ready to become a VIP member then they are $99.50.

I was working with one of my favourite B2C retail clients over the last two weeks. This is an Irish owned business that in many respects defies the odds. The business depends indirectly upon the Irish construction sector, which as we know has effectively come to a stop - yet they have continued to succeed in 09. This includes plans to expand the operation later in the year.

When you consider, that their competitors are really struggling at the moment, you begin to understand how well this business is run and how solidly the sales team have performed.

This particular company’s referral business is quite simply amazing. It was clear from my conversations with the sales team, that the significant reason for this - is the quality of their sales/customer service experience they provide.

They all agreed that this is the edge that has allowed them to capture an increased market share. These salespeople have quickly realised that the post Celtic Tiger’s customer expectation has risen considerably. Simply put, the customer knows that his/her business is now more important than ever - and expects one trade-off to be more/better service.

Fortunately for this company and its salespeople, very few of their competitors have copped on to this same conclusion. They know this because many of their customers are telling them so, saying that the competitor’s sales team appear to be “not interested” “not bothered” “pretending to be busy” - or are simply choosing “to ignore” potential customers.

This may strike you as crazy behaviour but I ask is it in fact that unusual?. I can recall many stories that would back this same conclusion. The car industry is going through a very rough time, yet I know someone who was virtually ignored when they went to buy a car.

Has the Celtic Tiger economy acted to condition some salespeople to expect “easy business” - and have these same sales people just continued in lazy mode?

Increased customer service expectation should be welcomed by real salespeople because it creates more opportunities for real salespeople.

I say, long live the recession if it rids our profession of these order takers (salespeople?).

Published by Niall Devitt, Btb Business Training

Published by Niall Devitt, Btb Business Training

My very first sales position was with an insurance industry and I now can look back fondly at that experience knowing that some of the early sales skills that I learnt from my time selling life polices and critical illness cover have remained valuable and relevant to the other products that I later sold and sales roles that I worked.

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