Have you noticed a major shift in your experience of networking, either at events, or in general? The heat seems to have been turned up, and everybody’s anxiously selling to one another, sometimes before getting each other’s names. I originally addressed this in Chapter 47 of "Kind Ambition," published back in 2005, but I'm seeing good reasons to re-visit with some updates.

Let’s start with a little Defining of terms. There's a distinct difference between Networking and Prospecting. They require different approaches, different mind-sets, and have very different time-frames. In Scholastic Aptitude Test speak: Prospecting is to Sales as Networking is to Marketing. Unfortunately there are plenty of folks who blur Sales and Marketing as well, so let’s clarify those terms a bit too.

In Marketing you're creating buzz—both an awareness of, and a desire for your products or services. In Sales, you're ascertaining your prospect’s needs, and facilitating their choice. Marketing facilitates Sales. Sales does not facilitate Marketing. (It can support Marketing with numbers and testimonials resulting from Sales, but can’t facilitate it.)

Networking is one part of your overall Marketing Strategy, which obviously includes many other facets. Prospecting is a part of your overall Sales Strategy, also including many other facets. They're not interchangeable in any way.

Now we get to the heart of the matter. Networking is more about matchmaking than selling. It enables us to expand our circle of interaction, enabling us to find a babysitter or a tennis partner - not just clients. Networking is an amazing alchemy that enables a group of 15 people who each know 500 people to share up to a 7,500 person database. When I learn what you do, I can run through my mental database and try to match you up with people I know who can help you (or people you can help.) When all of us do that, we increase the number of potential sales by many orders of magnitude.  If, however, I'm focused on the sales themselves within that group, I reduce my potential sales to the 14 other folks in the room. What’s really amazing is that most of us know this, yet somehow forget as soon as we walk into a mixer or networking event.

It wasn’t always this pronounced. I think people are feeling tons of pressure, and that tends to put us in a more stressed state of mind. Along with this impairing our critical thinking, it also increases our defenses coming up. We’re already being bombarded with thousands of sales messages daily from every direction, and we’re getting inured to it, the way we can get desensitized to constant violence. Before long, we’ve turned down our listening and seeing apparatus just to get through the day.

Now when we walk into a mixer and someone goes into prospecting mode, we shut down. We're not thinking about how to help each other, so much as how to avoid being sold to. The whole purpose of Networking is defeated.

In looking for possible causes of this behavior, a good first place to look is scarcity-thinking, which usually brings up clingy, grabby attitudes around money. With prices skyrocketing all around us, it puts people in a state of fear verging on panic. This is not a resourceful state in which to make decisions.

Fear narrows our vision and often drives us to make unwise choices.  Fear shortens our timelines and makes us desperate. We lose faith in Networking, with its fuzzy metrics and uncertain returns. Thus another side-effect rises at these mixers—the smell of fear. When you walk into a room where people are scared, desperate, and selling, how motivated are you to open up and think like a matchmaker? Once again the whole purpose of Networking gets defeated, as we toughen up our armor to go into battle.

Action Steps:

1. The very next networking event or mixer you attend, make a conscious decision to not make sales. You'll have plenty of opportunities to engage in the sales process later. You know that the first task is getting the appointment, not the sale, so why abandon your knowledge when networking?

2. Make a goal for yourself that's realistic and attainable; something along the lines of: meet five new people and really try to understand what they do and who they are. (Chapter 25 of "Kind Ambition" has some conversation starters.)

3. Try to connect them with people you already know.  Make appointments to get back together with them, after you’ve researched them and looked through your database (so you have something besides your products and services to offer them). This way it's not a sales call, and they won’t have their defenses up.

4. Follow-up within the week. This is probably the place most of us drop the ball. Don’t let a week go by, where your first meeting is no longer fresh in their minds.

Remember, Networking works, but only if you use it for what it is. Using Networking for Sales Prospecting is like using a screwdriver for a hammer. The results are dismal failure. “To everything, there is a season.” A time to be born, a time to die, a time to plant, a time to reap, a time to network, a time to prospect...

In the dictionary, a Network is “an interconnected or interrelated chain, group, or system.” This is what you want to build, so keep your eye on the ball. Don’t split your intentions, and derail your efforts by allowing fear to push you into sales mode.

 

Want to learn more about how to become the best you possible?  Come visit the web site, or better yet, contact me and see how we can design a program to fit your needs and desired outcomes.

     - Ian J. Blei


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