• Increase the number of quality prospects and your closing rate significantly.
• Transform leads into solid qualified referrals effortlessly.
• Generate a constant stream of referrals into your pipeline radically.
• Establish high levels of trust and integrity with new and existing clients.
• Gain more confidence when meeting new people.
• Enhance overall communication skills and abilities dramatically.

Sounds pretty good? Most people are not born networkers; they develop the skills through education, training, practice, and a positive attitude. Whether you attend a meeting, make a sales call, or interact at a business event, it’s not who you know but who you want to know.

According to The Wall Street Journal, over 90% of new business comes from networking. Yet many sales professionals including insurance agents, financial planners, and realtors spend their time purchasing leads lists to cold call or licking stamps for direct mailings. Statistics show that the return on these approaches range from as low as 1% to 5%. Networking is the most effective way to significantly increase the number of prospects and clients.

What is networking?

• "Word-of-mouth" marketing or a referral-based marketing campaign.
• A proactive approach to meeting quality people with the prospect of learning from them and helping them.
• Giving, not taking. This means learning about and helping others.
• Prospecting. After building a level of comfort and trust, business may take place – not necessarily right then, but later.

Networking is not about selling your product or service. Remember, sales takes place at sales meetings. As you become more comfortable meeting new people, you create a gateway for those looking to buy – so sales may ultimately result. It’s always easier to make a sale when your prospects are looking to buy. What are you doing in your business that creates the need for your prospects to buy or refer business to you?

Bear in mind that people have to like you and trust you before they even consider doing business with you. If there’s no genuine rapport, the game is over. Effective networkers have a system. Here is mine.

Preparation
If you fail to plan, you plan to fail. This is the research piece so you want to answer a number of questions before attending a meeting, trade show, cocktail party, or whatever. Who will be in attendance? What is the nature of the meeting? Who is my prospect? Who is in the best position to refer me? Where do these folks hang out – conference, professional association, chamber of commerce? What do I need to do to hang out with them? What outcome am I looking for? What is the appropriate attire? Is there a fee? Other than business cards and a couple of throw away pens, should I have something else with me? How can I learn from them and help them? In answering these questions, you can determine whether attending the meeting, conference, or event is a good use of your time – and theirs.

Presentation
OK, you’ve made it to the event. Now what? Approaching complete strangers is a daunting task for many. Who should I talk to? How do I start the conversation? How can I talk about my product or service without sounding like I’m selling? How do I react if I’m on the receiving end of a sales pitch? How many business cards should I collect? What if those I meet don’t like me? How do I end the conversation gracefully? There’s no sure thing when meeting new people because everyone is so different and we all tend to have our own agendas.

When in doubt, always refer back to the definition of networking – learning about and helping others. When your objective is to learn something about your target market (culture, trends, upcoming conferences, product information, related articles and publications, further contacts) you can’t lose. Helping someone in your target market is even better. Givers always gain and favors get returned, especially when the appropriate time comes to ask for them. Remember, you’re looking to start a relationship. Choose your attitude before arriving at the meeting. Be genuine and have fun!

The best way to start a conversation is to introduce yourself, extend a firm handshake, and ask questions. Repeat after me – it’s all about them. So, what brings you here today? Have you been here before? How did you find out about this meeting? What type of work do you do? Why do you do what you do? How are you different from the competition? Who are your customers? Have you worked in other industries? What do you for fun? How can we help one another? This should shift the conversation to your business and initiatives. Briefly give an overview of what you do and how you help others. I’m a seminar leader, speaker, and educator focused on helping financial professionals create more business through networking. Hopefully they’ll ask questions that are as good as yours.

If there is a good connection and you think you can help one another, exchange cards, commit to following up, put some follow up notes on the back of the business card you collected, shake hands, and say your good byes. If you’re really brave, ask for an introduction to someone they know at the event that you want to know. Believe it or not, all this should take place in no more than 7-10 minutes (without looking at your watch).

Follow-up
Not following up with those good connections you made is the same thing as not showing up to the event at all. You’ll get home or back to the office and neatly arrange all the business cards you collected on your desk. Hmmm…what now? I don’t remember most of these folks. You may find yourself throwing the business cards away and muttering about what a waste of time the event was. And you would be right.

As a general rule, most people won’t follow up. Most connections we make have a shelf life so it’s a good practice to get back in touch within 24 hours if possible. When you do this with those you may have bonded with it always makes a great second impression.

Review the business cards you’ve collected at the meeting. Remember the follow up notes you made on the back? Refer to those and make a call or send an email with a call to action. It was great meeting you at the trade show yesterday. I really enjoyed our chat and thought we could continue our conversation either by phone or over coffee. What does your schedule look like over the next couple of weeks?

Make good on promises or commitments you may have made. The other cards you have collected may not reflect strong business or personal connections. You may want to discard these. My rule? If someone gives me their business card because they’re looking to sell me something (and I’m not interested in buying) it’s not worth following up. If there are notes on the back of the card it either means I made a promise to someone, they made a promise to me, or there’s a good connection – I like them, I can help them, they can help me, or both.

Maintenance
This is simply developing a system to keep all of the contacts in your database up to date and refreshed. You may have a database set up in a software program like Outlook, Act., or Rolodex. It doesn’t really matter how you keep your contacts current and updated. What does matter is that you do.

Once a month I review the contacts in my database, adding names, contact information, and other details from the stack of business cards I’ve accumulated over the month. As I’m doing this, I’m making a list of the people I need to touch base with over the course of the next month. I find this to be a nice way to keep in touch with people and keep my connections up to date. There may be contact information that needs to be updated or names that need to be deleted – a natural byproduct of networking. All in all, your network becomes a valuable resource that you can always access for information, advice, and potentially business.

Be diligent in your preparation, presentation, follow-up, and maintenance and watch your database and revenues grow!

Michael Goldberg is a speaker, trainer, and the President of Building Blocks Consulting. He helps organizations achieve measurable growth in sales, service, and leadership. Michael delivers seminars, runs sales meetings, and conducts training programs on networking, leadership, public speaking, customer service, and job search. He can be reached at 732-446-2233 or via e-mail at megoldberg@building-blocks.net.