Networking- not working?

Networking or is that “Not-working”?

Good selling in 2012! Now you would expect a whole lot on goal setting and planning. The Presidents’ Club had plenty of that over the last few weeks. But right now, to be practical at the start of 2012 prospecting for new business is probably a major priority.

How many times have you been to an event or a meeting that could be in some way described as “networking”? More than a handful? If not, why not?

Even in these days of social media, that one-to-one, whites-of their-eyes contact is invaluable. A successful contact of mine gets almost all his new clients from Google leads. He told me so; at a networking event.

So why do we go these occasions and come back feeling it was a complete waste of time, not to be repeated in a hurry?  All sorts of factors. “Not the right sort of people there”, “Nobody needed my services” “You cannot sell first meet, you’ve got to build relationships”, “Didn’t like having to talk to a bunch of strangers”.

How many of these are actually excuses? After all, when you set  your objective what did that look like? And when you did not achieve those objectives did you review them? In other words, you did not just turn up and hope for the best, did you? You had a plan, a strategy to fulfill that plan, you had practised the skills needed to implement that strategy. You do for all other business processes, don’t you?

If you are concerned that you might be wasting a lot of time and money when you go networking inefficiently or send one of your team, or alternatively you are worried that you are missing opportunities that your competitors are picking up simply because you were not there in person, don’t suppose a FREE workshop would be any good to you? This is the first of a series of four. So try before you buy. And you never know, you might find yourself doing some good networking at the workshop itself.