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Networking on a Beermat
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In the beginning of our book Sales on a Beermat we put a quote by Robert Louis Stevenson: “everyone makes a living by selling something”.
This is certainly true for small businesses where everyone in your company has to be selling all the time, but sadly very few of us have any formal sales training. Unfortunately, lead generation is vital for all small businesses; far too important to be just left to the marketing department or sales force.
While everyone should be a good evangelist for their company, most people are intimidated by the process of selling. Their worst nightmare is to be confronted by a room full of strangers at a network event or conference, knowing that they are there to collect business cards from people who are potentially new business for their company.
Fortunately, networking is a well-understood process and can be refined into a small number of easy steps. Like plunging into a cold swimming pool, the first step is the hardest: breaking into a group of strangers who seem to already be deep in conversation.
Your opening gambit should be “may I join you?” a simple but effective question recommended by networking guru Will Kintish. Then, the key is to ask questions in a specific order.
A great conversation opener is “where are you from?”, or to use the script favoured by royalty, “have you come far today?” This invites a simple, factual answer, typically a place name, which in itself can often spark off the conversation.
Then you should ask them what their company does and their own specific role. This again invites a simple, factual answer.
The next question is more probing, and is based on ‘how?’ You ask them to describe in more detail how they do their particular job, or to explain in more detail their company’s day-to-day activities.
Usually, they will respond and ask what you do, so you should offer an appropriate case-study of a happy customer, delivered in a narrative style: the customer problem, and how you solved it.
It is now time to take a mental pause and consider how the conversation is going. If it has been hard work even at this early stage, then it is time to swap business cards and disengage, using a polite script like: “Nice to chat to you; if you don’t mind I’m going to head off and get another drink.” You may be disappointed; you were hoping they were going to be a better prospect, but you must remember that there are plenty more people in the room.
But if you reckon the conversation is going well, you can make a big leap from factual questions, which have simple answers, to emotional ones, which invite the listener to share their feelings in a modest way. It is time to ask the crucial ‘why?’ question. You ask why they are at this networking event or conference; what are they looking for?
Usually they will open up a little and tell you about some challenge their company faces, such as winning new customers or finding new solutions to their technical problems. In sales language this is called a ‘buying signal’ and should be agreed with, to create some empathy: “Yes, I can see how that would be important to your company”.
You should then recommend some factual information, perhaps a web site, magazine article or book you have seen which might help them. More often than not, they will accept this offer. Then you can go for the big question: ‘who?’
Your perceived value in this early stage of the sales process is not so much what, but who you know. It could be a useful contact, a subject matter expert or even a member of your own technical staff, if appropriate. If they accept this offer of a network connection, then you are an important step forward in gaining their trust.
So, for effective networking, you should remember five simple questions, which should be asked in this order: ‘where?’, ‘what?’, ‘how?’, ‘why?’ and ‘who?’ You make a quick note on their business card to arrange for a follow-up.
This is a basic sales activity which everyone in your company can do; even your most introverted software engineer or accountant should enjoy chatting with other software engineers, and accountants. They should be enthusiastic about your products and services, and able to gather the business cards of people they enjoyed meeting.
You might call this being a good ambassador for your company. I call it good selling.
Sales on a Beermat by Mike Southon and Chris West is published by Random House Business Books. |
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