Funny that some organisations give you the hard sell when you attend their events and No is not a word they want to hear. I say funny but in some instances it can be down right intimidating.
About three months ago I went to a well known organisations breakfast event. To be fair I went with a friend, who being new in business therefore new to B2B networking asked me to go with her.
The meeting was cordial, well run just what you would expect and everything went smoothly till the chapter director (there the cat is out of the bag) asked the visitors to go with the visitor host to be taken through the membership process. So far nothing out of the ordinary, everything was normal and polite.
We were escorted by two people to what could only be called an anti room. Poorly lit cramped with furniture that made you feel like your bum was scraping on the floor and the two people with us sat in dining chairs. The effect was for them to be dominating us. Fine if you are into that sort of thing, but not if you are outside your comfort zone already.
My friends face showed she was not happy, but never let a salesman be deterred from his task. He battered us with the fear factor and pushed just rude hard sell. His tactic was to pick and I mean pick on the woman who was sitting below him and belittled her for not seizing this glorious opportunity. I have come across better behaved time share sales people.
This went on for about 4 minutes before I had to intervene. Pointing out to the salesman he was a) rude, b) had not established any need c) had not done ant fact finding d) was probably beyond getting his money back from the charm school.
His gob smacking final words to us were “If you can’t see beyond those points you don’t deserve to be in business”
OK he was probably an anomaly (and desperate) but he had not grasped the simple point of networking -
Networking is about informing and not selling. Remember tell don’t sell. If you want to sell get a stall in the market or shopping centre, or better still a car boot sale. I hope someone from the organisation makes contact if only to apologise to my friend who is now only dipping her toe in the networking pool. This is a shame as she is a natural but has been put off by short term-ism of an insensitive salesman.
Network intelligently and it brings great rewards and you build wonderful trust based relationships. Do it wrong and you get nowhere
Paul
and remember put the work into network
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