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This is the final networking tip in my series of 5 counter intuitive networking tips. You will be be pleased to know I have saved the most counter intuitive until last!
I can hear you thinking ‘But hang on Richard, the whole point of me networking is to talk about my products and services….have you lost your mind?’
Maybe I have lost my mind but this tip works and that is why I am sharing it with you! Most people we meet at networking meetings do not care a jot about us, let alone what we are selling until they get to know us.
Smaller businesses often struggle to differentiate themselves from their competitors, especially those in the business of providing consulting services. When I am helping clients to find a point of difference, the one method I find most fruitful is to examine the story of their journey as to how they came to be in business in the first place.
I recently attended and excellent Super Conference for coaches, trainers, and consultants. I was particularly interested in product creation and list building and was not disappointed. A lot of people there were struggling to get their businesses to work and as I got chatting to some of them I could not help myself from asking questions to help them gain clarity about their niche.
There is a saying that people do business with people they know, like, and trust. The same goes for making referrals.
People worry about the impact of a referral going wrong on the relationship, especially if it is their best client! When we introduce people to our contacts it will either strengthen the relationship or weaken it. We have a lot to gain if it goes right and a lot to lose if it goes wrong.
Some people think that great sales people and marketeers just open their mouth and golden words just come tumbling out followed swiftly by people throwing money at their feet! The reality is different. A lot of work goes on behind the scenes in creating compelling sales messaging that get results.
I was reading through some group discussions on a Linkedin this morning and there was a certain post which caught my eye. It had been started as a leading question which might as well have been a sales pitch. The thing that piqued my curiosity was that the photo of the person asking the question was actually a logo. That was the first time I had seen such a thing on Linkedin.
I clicked through to the profile to find it was all written in the third person. Strangely there was no link to the company website on the profile so I looked it up on Google and found it quite quickly.
Telemarketing can be an effective form of lead generation and it is often an activity that is outsourced to a specialist company. All too often it ends up being a costly exercise with no extra business to show from it. Here are 5 things to do before outsourcing your telemarketing to a third-party supplier.
When I first started using Twitter, like many, I did not know what I was doing. My networking mentor Thomas Power told me I should be using Twitter and so I gave it a go! I then did the normal search to find out how to get more followers and found there were plenty of people happy to give advice. There were more Twitter ‘experts’ than you can shake a pointed stick at!
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You have just returned from your summer holiday. You are in the queue for passport control and you have been having a nice conversation about holidays with a silver haired man who is ahead of you in the queue. Suddenly it’s his turn to get his passport checked. He turns to you to say goodbye and then says “Oh by the way, what do you do?”
What do you say? You only know him as a nice guy who has just come back from a family holiday. For all you know he could be the chairman of your ideal client.
Are you making the most of your contacts? Do people you know help you win more business and make selling easier for you?
We all have more than enough contacts to generate enough business. The trick is to work out how best to leverage your contacts to help you win more business. Easier said than done!
