Networking Your Way to the perfect Corporate clients

Paul Johnstone
At a recent Refer-On meeting I was asked why people from large companies don’t attend local networking events. Is it because they don't have the time to spend with others who they believe are irrelevant to their career? Is it because they believe all the support networks they need are ‘in house’?

Often the only place you meet these people are at Chamber of Commerce events or they invest in intra-company networking with their peers.

So if corporate decision makers never turn up at the events you attend, does that mean it's a waste of time for you to go to these functions?

It does if you spend all your time talking to people you already know. On the other hand, if you go to these events with a plan and you work you plan, anything is possible.

Here are five tips to help you crack into corporate accounts:

1. Be absolutely clear on your perfect contact: If you know who you are looking for, it’s easier to spot them. What industry are they from, what position do they hold? These are two basic questions to ask yourself before you go.

2. Talk to strangers: Talking to strangers at networking events is one of the best activities you can do. Remember people go you networking events because they want to talk to people. This gives you the opportunity to open 6 or 7 new contact doors in an hour or so. It’s a no brainer.

3. Work your existing contacts: The phrase “It’s not what you know it’s who you know that counts” should be familiar to you. So find out where else they network, who the do business with and where there is common ground and explore ways of working cooperatively.

4. Be really specific: Children the world over know something the adults have forgotten about. “If you don’t ask, you don’t get.” So ask it’s a simple thing. If your ideal client is Richard Branson of Virgin, ask if anyone knows him, or someone who works for him. Better still do some desk research and find the persons name, then ask for them by name.

5. Go where your decision makers go: The Train Robbers robbed a train – Because that’s where the money was! The same thing is true for effective networking. If buyers from a large company aren't in attendance, it's hard to meet them. So go where they go -Trade shows, Chamber events, exhibitions - Simple

In summary, to be successful at networking your way into big companies, you should think about working smarter not harder. Don't just keep going to those local networking events hoping to bump into your Plum client. Instead, get your act together and do your networking thoughtfully. That's when you'll really start to see results.

Helping Real People do Real Business Through Real Networking

TOP TIPS FOR TWITTER

Is Twitter was any good or is it just a waste of time?

As You know I am an advokate of Face to Face networking, but all networking has advantages and Twitter is up there with the best

Lets start with a simple fact or Twitter. By having people follow you, the chance is if you promote a blog or a web site of ask for feedback 2% of your followers will take that action. So it is a route to market, just like face to face networking

The simple fact that any method that helps you identify emerging trends and engage with huge numbers of people has to have potential as a business tool. Here are a few ways it helps business people get ahead.

Track your reputation It is fast becoming a good indication of how your business is viewed by its customers. Twitter allows you to get an open view of what people actually think. While Twitter is still not a complete representation of the whole of your customer base, it provides a good vehicle for viewing feedback on your brand in real time – good or bad.

Twitter also allows you to communicate with your customers in a way that they want to be communicated with – i.e. on an individual level, so they feel like more than just a statistic.

Recruiting people How do you find good people? Word of mouth and recommendations are always key methods. With this is mind, Twitter can be a useful recruitment channel. Not only can you ‘tweet’ your vacancies, but people will also 're-tweet' (forward around your message to their 'followers') your requirements amongst their friends and contacts - spreading your message to different sets of followers who may have remained previously untapped.

Advertise your promotions Some companies have been able to demonstrate that their use of Twitter is positively impacting their bottom line. For example, Dell uses its Twitter feed to advertise promotion codes and special offers on its products; it recently estimated that doing so had brought in $3m in extra revenue.

Identify customer issues and solve them Twitter is an open forum, handy - where customers and businesses happily talk with each other. It has been used to raise and resolve service issues since its very early days. Their search tools can help your business to identify who is talking about you. Also provides a way to engage with them, helping your business to resolve issues directly. This is FREE market research on your company and can often turn a complainant into a advocate when you respond to their problem.

Talk to don’t preach at sales prospects Monitoring sales needs to be handled very cautiously. You can use Twitter's search functions to find people who have openly expressed an interest in buying a product you offer, and suggest that you help them through the process.

A word of warning here: Twitter etiquette: observe and succeed ignore and fail! Think of it like being stood at a hotel bar. You can say hello to someone and attempt to start a conversation - if they start talking to you, great; if they don’t want to talk, then it’s best to move onto someone who does. So absolutely never use pushy sales techniques or be a foot in the door operator.

Network in a relaxed environment Twitter is a relaxed form of networking as most people are quite happy to say who they are and what they do on their Twitter profiles and as such you can amass a rather powerful network quite quickly. However, personality is important – it’s what social networks are all about, after all. If you want to build up a productive network, it’s important that you sprinkle your tweets with normal day-to-day conversations rather than view it as an ongoing sales platform. Those businesses who are using Twitter to the best effect appreciate this balance. But as a route to market if is not as good as face to face networking

Be on top of emerging trends Twitter is a place to watch trends emerge - where news breaks and where 'grassroots' action happens. Twitter provides a 'trending topics' list - which gauges in real time what's being discussed. Through the use of 'hash tags' (words preceded by # usually at the end of a message) such trend tracking is easier. You can use a combination of automatic trend tracking tools and human intelligence to discern what your followers are talking about.

Drive more traffic to your website You can tweet your news, press releases, and other stories of interest with a link to the relevant page on your website. Due to the 140 characters or less, nature of messages, software like Tweetdeck will help you automatically 'shrink' your URL into only a few characters. Whilst this removes your website address from your 'tweet', Users are used to clicking on links through these URL shrinking services (like tinyURL, bit.ly, etc). These same services will also provide measurement for your response with full click-through tracking.

Improve your internal communications Although Twitter is traditionally seen as a public communication method, there is private direct message ('DM') functionality, and you can form ‘closed networks’. While it isn’t recommended to DM your colleagues or team any sensitive information, it can come in useful to send short messages back and forth – especially for individuals who favour the medium of social networks. This acceptance of social networking within a business can also engender a sense of collaboration among co-workers who prefer that format of communication - particularly those who work remotely and don’t have the benefit of face-to-face time with colleagues in the office.

Promote yourself Whilst I’m not suggesting you'll become the Stephen Fry or Jonathan Ross of insurance or finance, you can very quickly become an expert in your own marketplace. Sorry about this has to be repeated as so many people have got this very wrong in the past - don't be pushy, and don't use Twitter as a constant stream of advertisements for your brand. Engage with people, start or jump into conversations with great insight, and become someone who people want to read updates from.

If you’re looking for something that will be a magic bullet to increase your sales, Twitter isn’t it. What it is, however, is somewhere you can find out what people are talking about right now. And if that happens to be your product, your competitor’s product or a problem that you could help solve, that’s well worth knowing.

Paul


Helping Real People do Real Business through Real Networking