Ever thought about hosting your own networking event and promoting your business at the same time? Ah ha, what a wonderful idea - you could invite non-competing business associates, other entrepreneurs, etc., and tell them to bring a friend.
I’m an introvert. Is it really that simple? It could be, but if you are too bashful to take the lead, ask an outgoing, non-competing business acquaintance to joint sponsor the event. Share the work and share the reward.
Action Items:
Preliminary Planning
*Set a date.
*Select and reserve a facility. It could be a local restaurant, club, meeting room, library, community room, etc.
*Ensure the area has adequate parking.
* Develop a preliminary guest list. Tell your guests to bring a friend.
* Determine your budget based on estimated costs of food, mailings (if applicable), etc.
* Determine if the event will be “free” or if you will charge a “minimal” fee to cover expenses.
* Finalize menu.
* Decide if you will have a speaker, or allow brief presentations by participants. Naturally, plan to take a few moments to introduce yourself and your business.
* Make a site visit and meet with your sales representative about room setup, A/V needs, etc. (if applicable).
* Plan a “datesaver” letter, postcard or appropriate email communiqué.
* Invite your guests.
1 Week Before the Event
* Print appropriate quantities of your company materials. Remember, the purpose is to promote your business.
* Stuff registration packets (if any).
* Print name tags and double-check spelling of all names.
* Notify caterer of counts and if they are significantly lower or higher than initially expected (if applicable).
Event Day
* Arrive early, making sure all arrangements are in place and station yourself at the front door.
* Meet and greet your guests.
* Provide a sign-in sheet or method to capture contact information, i.e., prize drawings, raffle, etc. Don’t forget to request that all-important email address, so you can have an inexpensive means to communicate later.
* Relax and smile.
* Never tell “war stories” to your guests or intimate that things might be less than perfect. Chances are no one but you will notice any mistakes.
* Mingle and enjoy the event.
After the Event
* Close the books — pay all bills.
* Send thank-you notes to all the attendees. Great time to implement a “Keep Clients Program”.
* Compile and review evaluation results, if applicable.
This event is your opportunity to make new business acquaintances and influence people. Now that it’s all planned, enjoy the networking and meet your ideal client.
Part 2 of Getting the Most Bang from a Networking Event describes how to network with your ideal client and become her “go to person” resource.
Sharon Williams is president and CEO of The 24 Hour Secretary, an administrative, secretarial, marketing and internet-based business support services firm open 24/7. Sharon helps busy and often overwhelmed executives and entrepreneurs, achieve their goals by giving the gift of time. Learn about the “Keep Clients Program” by visiting http://www.the24hoursecretary.com/keep-clients.htm Subscribe to her ezine Smart Business = Success, stocked with tips for busy professionals and visit her blog for up-to-date marketing strategies and other business tips, located at http://www.the24hoursecretary.com
Some of the most successful businesses in existence today started in a box room, bedroom or garage. It isn’t how you start out to make money at home that is important. What really matters is that you had the courage to begin.
With a home based business, you are your own boss, or your own worst enemy. It is now your responsibility to do things that will build your business, instead of someone elses. To make money online, you must be online. Basic but true information…
You now have what millions of others do not have, the flexibility to work your own hours. Although you may think life will become so much better, you will need to put in more hours than normal to start things rolling. Then to keep it rolling…
Sure, making money on the Internet may seem easy but if you do not focus, or do things correctly, you will soon be looking for another job. Make sure there is a market for the product or service you are promoting. Be cautious before you invest any money, because things on the Internet are not always as true as they seem.
When you are working at home, you can arrange your work schedule around your family, without worrying about sacrificing either. Just think about the benefits of working and making money online from home and the freedom of setting your own schedule. No commuting back and forth in traffic. No dressing up for the workplace.
Another incentive is that if you become successful and you worked with a large group of people who still have a job they hate, your own success would certainly get them interested as well.
He makes money on the Internet - Works at home - Does not have to bother getting up early - Takes time off when he pleases… Is that jealousy or an accolade to achievement?
The actions you perform today, will determine your tomorrow.
How is your tomorrow looking?
Michael A Fowler, M.B.A. is the editor of the Internet’s premier work at home resource: Work from Home Journal.
An Online Trainer, Mentor and Coach, Michael has been helping people to succeed online since 1998.
http://www.the-mba-way.com | Goldcard43@aol.com
My neighbor - a lovely man I’ve known, and have had social contact with for years - is the COO of one of the world’s largest companies. He’s read my books, is familiar with my concepts, and is a fan. But we’ve not talked shop due to our social connection.
One day he called me and told me he wanted me to speak with his new national VP of sales - that he wanted my ideas and methods to be used in his company. Wonderful. Especially since it all came from him.
The VP called me days later at my friend’s request, and we had a great phone contact: he said he was familiar with my concepts and was interested in a conversation, and he invited me to his office to spend some time. It was one of the only times in my life I flew to a client site for a face-to-face prospecting visit. In my mind, this was a very hot lead indeed.
When I got there, it became apparent he was setting me up to show the COO that he didn’t need me, didn’t need my material, and was fine, thank you very much. He was curt, rude, and, frankly between us, rather stupid in his remarks.
When I spoke with my friend, he grumbled and hung up. Next week, he called me back with the name of the VP of training. The man called me, had a lively, exciting conversation with me, sent me a check for the next public training so that he could attend himself, and I never heard from him again.
IT’S NOT ABOUT WHO YOU KNOW
I knew the right guy. It doesn’t get any better - COO of a Fortune 50 company, close friend. But in the end, it had nothing to do with what I was selling, or who I knew - it had to do with how the buyers were buying.
There is a whole burgeoning field of software that will help sellers find people who they know in a company. Then you can call that person, or have one of your friends call that person - all in hopes that this connection will give you a leg up. Let’s take a look at the presuppositions inherent in the concept of social networking:
1. that the person you know within a company has the clout to have some say within the company;
2. that the person you know is on a decision team (or knows someone on a decision team) that is ready to make a decision to bring in a new product or service;
3. that the person you know will know how to say what you need him/her to say to get you the exposure you seek;
4. that bringing you into the company - even if the person has the clout to get you into the company - will influence a decision;
5. that the company is ready to make a change;
6. that the person bringing you in can help the company understand they need to change;
7. that the company will know how to line up it’s decision criteria just because you know the right person, and you can show up with your great product and presentation material.
Let’s take a look again at what’s happening at this point in history. Sales people are not needed to offer information: buyers can get more information about a seller’s product than they have to offer, more about their product andthe competition, the good points and bad, the industry successes and failures, the price points - sellers are just not needed to push product any more.
Because this historic sales function has been superseded by a computer, sellers don’t know what their jobs are anymore. Sellers are attempting to add new functions to their role so they can offer some value: they are making themselves ‘trusted advisors’; becoming ‘true consultants’; demonstrating some sort of ‘value add’- either through product or service or technology.
IMPEDITMENTS TO SALES
But the problems with sales continue: the same problems that have existed within the sales function since its inception continue to be impediments to sales. There remains a void in the sales process in that space between how sellers sell and how buyers buy.
Since its inception, the dichotomy between the product/seller/sale and the buyer’s environment/buyer/buying process has been met with fallacious assumptions, including:
* if you get in the door and have a face-to-face meeting, the buyer will know how to buy.
* if you pitch/present/promote/advertise your product effectively, the buyer will know how to buy.
* if you give clients great prices, they will choose your product;
* if you give clients great service, they will know how to choose you;
* if you are the brand leader…
* if you have the best product…
* if the buyer needs your product…
* if you have the best software…
* if you know someone…
A few years ago - about 5, I’m guessing - we came to the realization that ’sales’ wasn’t working. What did we do? Point our resources to the new-new thing - technology. Since then, we’ve attempted to try to use technology to overcome all of the inherent problems sales creates. We’ve tried SFA, CRM, and now Social Network Software. And all they do is continue to operate on the same beliefs that sales has always worked from: people will buy if they like/understand/need/recognize the product, or like the sales person. And that’s patently untrue. We’ve just not known what else to do. And the gulf between the sales end and the buyer’s end keeps widening.
In the December 2003 issue of Inc. Magazine, Michael Fitzgeral says in ‘Internet Icebreakers’, an article on Social Network Software:
‘It’s not a slam dunk–the contact might not care that your brother’s partner’s wife just happens to be a member of his homeowners’ association.’
THE SOLUTION
For those of you who have been reading my newsletters for years, you are going to have to hear me rant about this just one more time.
-Buyers live in an idiosyncratic buying environment.
-The buyer’s network of decision factors includes an interesting network of people, rules, collaborations, initiatives, budget issues, and human fallacies.
-The buyer’s environment is a complete system that they are comfortable with.
-Systems face chaos when something new gets added.
-Buyer’s systems won’t add anything new until they understand how to manage any chaos to return to some form of stasis.
In other words, no matter how good your product is, how well you pitch/present/promote/propose it, or who you know, the buyer won’t make a purchasing decision until they line up all of their decision variables so they can manage the disruption a new purchase will create within their system.
If you are eager to use Social Network Software, at least use Buying Facilitation® as the front end: help this person navigate their internal variables so they can learn with you how to bring you in the most effective way.
Remember that Buying Facilitation® uses the buyer’s decisioning sequence to: lead them through a good look at where they are at (all of their company’s norms, rules, values, initiatives, and subjective criteria); notice if anything is missing; understand how to fix it with familiar resources; address all of the internal systems they need to manage prior to bringing in a solution that will possibly create chaos.
The above is the sequence buyers go through anyway, and that the time it takes them to do the above is the length of the sales cycle: they are going to do it with you, or without you. If you can use your new-found relationship to get you into a close range with the prospect, make sure you take the opportunity to lead them through this process and become a true Trusted Advisor.
Once you are ‘in’ and getting a chance to have your time in the sun, use Buying Facilitation® again to help them line up their decision factors. That will not only make you their true Trusted Advisor, it will also make the person you know look good. It will increase your sales over 200% (that’s right - there is not an extra zero there), reduce your sales cycle by 75%, and get you on the decision team.
Getting into the prospect’s space, knowing someone who can bring you in, or having a great product remain the outer edge - the selling edge - of sales. It’s time in our history to use the job of ’sales’ to help buyers make their best buying decisions. Social Network Software can play a part: it’s just the front end, however. There’s still plenty of work to be done to help buyers buy.
My tag line remains: do you want to sell? Or have someone buy?
Sharon Drew Morgen is the author of NYTimes Best Seller Selling with Integrity. She speaks, teaches and consults globally around her visionary sales method, Buying Facilitation.
http://www.newsalesparadigm.com http://www.sharondrewmorgen.com 512-457-0246 Morgen Facilitations, Inc. Austin, TX
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