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.

The TSE roundtables kick off at 6pm GMT today, with our very first roundtable event “The Future of Professional Selling”

So what are the TSE Roundtables? Well every month, a new TSE roundtable will address the issues being faced by sales professionals everywhere. As we face up to the severest economic downturn ever, we plan to run one Roundtable every month. (Your colleagues may join us for a cost of $99.50 per roundtable, yet as a member, you will receive that 25% discount on every single session. Click here to become a member of TSE.

This is 90 minutes of live discussion, live debate and live Q&A with some of the foremost authorities on sales excellence in the world. It’s an opportunity to listen, learn and partake in an on-line interactive sales event and to have your critical questions about selling and sales leadership answered.

Simply put, each roundtable is an event not to be missed.

As a member of the Top Sales Experts team, it gives me great pleasure to introduce to the Irish Business Community.

TSE Roundtables

The TSE Roundtable Program will deliver the best sales practices of some of the most successful and globally recognized sales gurus in the world.

Each roundtable is just $99.50 for non-members. Members attend for $74.50. You can join here

Kick Off Event: The Future of Professional Selling Tuesday April 14th 2009 1.00 PM EASTERN (6pm GMT) THE Most Significant Interactive Online Sales Event Of The Year Join the debate, as five of the world’s leading sales gurus, discuss what professional selling will involve in five, ten, and even twenty year’s time Does professional selling as we know it have a future? What impact will Sales 2.0 have on the way we sell? How will organisations train and develop their sales teams? Today, what is the relative value derived from sales training courses versus coaching? Will “one-size fits all” classroom training, be consigned to the annals of history? Which industries are more likely to witness the death of selling as we know it today? What can front-line salespeople do to protect themselves from possible extinction? After this current financial meltdown, will lost jobs be re-created? Will the rapid growth of online sales training and coaching continue? Ongoing research shows that sales performance has been declining year after year. Why is that? Quite simply, will selling ever be the same again? Join us now ……..  hurry, places are limited!
Speaker		Jonathan Farrington Chairman of The Sales Corporation and CEO of Top Sales Associates based in London and Paris. He is also the author of the upcoming “So You Really Want To Be A Top 5% Player In The Game Of Sales?”
Speaker		Jill Konrath A leading-edge sales strategist … author of the instant sales classic, Selling to Big Companies … an in-demand sales speaker who provides a much needed wake-up call to sales organizations.
Speaker		Linda Richardson Linda is the Founder and Chairman of Richardson, a global sales training business. As a recognized leader in the industry, she has won the coveted Stevie Award for Lifetime Achievement in Sales Excellence for 2006. Linda’s “Perfect Selling” was this year’s Sales Book Awards “Best Sales Book Of The Year”.
Speaker		Dave Stein Dave Stein is the founder and CEO of ES Research, an organization that provides on-line, membership-based analyses of, and recommendations about, the sales training and sales performance and consulting marketplace and the companies that serve it.
Chairman		Nigel Edelshain Nigel is CEO of Sales 2.0 Companies use Sales 2.0’s telesales and consulting services to take their sales to the next level, typically boosting results 3 - 10 times.
Host		Paul Simon Paul is communications director for Top Sales Experts. Through TSE, and as contributing sales editor for AllBusiness and content manager for CanDoGo, he works closely with sales experts throughout the United States and in other countries.