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There are two types of people, radiators and drains. Radiators give energy whilst drains sap energy. Radiators love other radiators and drains love radiators even more. Radiators give drains a boost and help to make people feel better about their situation or themselves.
A sincere complement costs nothing and yet is incredibly valuable to the recipient. It will also do wonders for your own self esteem and confidence as you see the pleasure you are spreading.
Business networking seems so easy. Yet so may accidental sales people fail to generate as many leads as they could from business networking. In this article I list the top 5 reasons I have found for people not generating more sales leads from business networking.
Reason 1 – Insufficient action
Would you do business with a total stranger? If someone came up to you in the middle of the street and started to promote their business to you, what would your reaction be? Well if it is like most people, they would be on their guard and no matter how compelling the offer was, they would be a bit suspicious.
The more the other person pushes an idea, the more we back away – even though the may the very thing we are looking for. When networking you need to remember it is all about people and that means to get success we need to go with human nature.
I spoke at a Speed Networking event last week on 5 Strategies for developing more leads and introductions from networking (face to face that is). These are the strategies we learn to apply on my Lead generation Master Class so that by the end of the day all attendees are starting to generate leads on the workshop! The strategies are simple but the challenge is applying them to your organisation such that they start working immediately.
Relationships and trust are two key variables in a sale and it takes a lot longer to build them up from a cold call than it does from an introduction from someone who already has a relationship and the trust of your prospect.
I was recently talking to someone about networking and he exclaimed he was ‘all networked out’. It was not working for him and that he resigned himself to endless cold calls. Whether cold calling was right for him or not is a different matter. I was curious as to how he could be ‘all networked out’. I can never get enough networking and have to limit my time!
Last night’s free online sales training for members of the Accidental Salesman Business Development Club featured Dave Clarke, CEO of NRG Networks, telling us how to get our network to sell for us. It was a well attended event and lots of questions posed by attendees – obviously a subject close to people’s hearts. The prospect of getting an ongoing stream of high quality referrals into your target market is a highly attractive one – but how do you go about it?
Sales trainers and regular sales people are normally big fans of elevator pitches. They assume that meeting people at random is no different to making a cold call. If you chuck enough mud against a brick wall, some of it might stick! Well I am totally opposed to pitching as a form of networking introduction. I do not believe it is that effective for cold calling either, but that’s another blog!
A great conversationalist is not born. He or she is made. I know that for a fact as I used to really struggle to join in a conversation except with people I knew very well. There are some easy steps to take to improve your conversation skills but it is something you need to work at. You just have to practice as often as so you can by walking up to people and at the same time enabling them to also talk to you.
If you were considering a weight loss course you may be forgiven for believing that the program lacked credibility if the person running it was significantly overweight. The same could be said for a voice coach that has a squeaky and irritating voice. It does not matter that this person has helped lots of people lose weight or have a wonderful resonating voice. You assume that unless it is working for them it will not work for you either.
