Networking

Do your employees and staff really know and understand your core marketing message? How effective are they at sharing that message?

If you really want your business to grow the people in your organization need to be taught the most effective way to network.

You’re pretty good at representing your company. You believe that networking is a powerful business building tool. You understand the value of creating new business relationships. You attend business networking events. You are personable, professional, and you know your stuff.

What happens if you can’t make it to a networking event? What if you want to expand your networking activities but don’t have the time or the energy to do it all yourself?

How effective would your people be if they had to show up in your place and represent your organization? Do they know the right thing to say and the right questions to ask?

Networking is the most powerful form of face to face marketing. What you say can make or break your networking effectiveness. Your ability to get your story across in twenty seconds or less is a vital key to your networking success… and may be just as big a factor in your overall business success.

Banks, credit unions, real estate organizations, financial services and insurance companies, accounting firms, law firms, doctors, dentists, and other professional offices are all made up of people who, at one time or another, are on the frontline in the battle for business success. This networking army includes your employees and associates.

Do you know what your people are saying when asked about your company? Are they trained to deliver a brief and understandable version of your core marketing message? Are they capable of telling others what really sets your business apart from your competition?

In addition, networking is not always confined to a specific meeting or event. When asked about your company when they’re out enjoying an evening of, let’s say, bowling, or the theatre what do members of your organization say?

Do their words portray your company in the most memorable and flattering way, or are they just kind of winging it and saying whatever comes to mind (positive or not)? Saying the wrong thing can leave people cold or, even worse, actually drive business away.

Learning the right thing to say and the right questions to ask is an overlooked area of business preparation. Lack of training in this area can prove costly.

The flip side to the equation is that with a relatively small amount of guidance you can increase your profitability and distinguish yourself clearly from your competition. This is accomplished by a simple shift in the words you use and the words you teach your people to use.

Do you have the time to teach your people the “right thing” to say? For most business owners, sales organizations and professionals the answer is no.

I’ve been providing this most important training for over 20 years.

I’ve developed the Language of Success

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I urge my clients to be authentic, be a good listener, ask powerful open-ended questions, be truly interested, and find out what’s important to the other person.

This also sounds like a pretty good system for effective dating.

After all, if you dominate the dating conversation, talk only about yourself, or focus on why it’s a good idea for the other person to respond to your “offer”, your results will be, at best, hit and miss.

Jenny, my wife of 33 years, tells me that she would hate to be in the “dating pool” again. She’s a great communicator, but would be less than overjoyed at the possibility of facing rejection. Plus… she fears that saying the wrong thing might maker her come off looking stupid. (This, for her, is impossible.)

Many in the dating pool share these concerns.

Selling is a lot like dating. Each is dramatically important to our survival. One brings us the opportunity for approval and love; the other brings us the opportunity for approval and money.

The fear, and it is fear, that we won’t “cut the mustard”, or live up to the expectations of the prospect, is an emotion that’s present in both activities.

What are we afraid of?

We’re afraid that despite our best efforts, our “prospect” will reject us or our offer. Even worse, they might tell us, “Don’t call me. I’ll call you.”

Jenny tells me that from their early teens women are taught a system for dating.

They have been trained to “listen to a guy” in order to “catch” him. If you don’t believe me, check some old issues of Seventeen or Teen. It’s a time-honored tradition, rightly or wrongly.

Most salespeople and most daters attempt to “close the deal” without using a well defined communications system.

Being authentic and speaking from the heart in your dating or sales communications doesn’t mean that it’s in your best interest to “wing it.”

Whether it’s for selling or dating, I suggest that you use a system to help you build up your skill muscle for authentic and effective communication.

For years, my clients have been telling me that my selling system has made a big difference in their personal lives as well. This is gratifying, but not surprising.

Effective communication is effective communication, no matter what it’s designed for.

When I developed my communications system I had a goal.

Over the years my clients have been telling me that they wanted to learn a way to say the right thing, at the right time all the time. Being able to do that would seem to be a sure way to attract more clients, more referrals, more sales, and more dates.

So, my system is designed to produce those results 100% of the time and it doesn’t.

Let me explain why that’s okay.

My favorite metaphors relate to the world of sports. In most competitive sports the participants follow a game plan that focuses on winning 100% of the time.

For instance, each play in a football playbook is based on a system designed to score a touchdown every time. We know that doesn’t happen, but that’s the focus. The team has a system and they follow it.

Here’s the tip - Adopt a focus and a communications system for your business that you’re comfortable with and follow it.

What should you look for in a communications system?

You want a system that’s designed to help you make more quality contacts and then turn those contacts in to contracts, or clients, 100% of the time, and we know that’s doesn’t happen.

In light of that reality you want a system that will help you quickly uncover a “no” that’s going to happen anyway. You want a system that will allow you to watch an increase in the number of prospects who say “yes.”

You want a system that will help you produce results more easily and more often, and at the same time, help you experience a decrease in “sales related” stress.

How you market and sell yourself determines how effectively you market and sell your product or expertise. It’s all about the effective and authentic use of language.

No one taught us how to say the “right thing” or ask the right questions in sales, or in dating. We certainly weren’t taught in our schools.

It’s time for just such a system and I’m proud to say it’s available right now.

Ike Krieger is a business mentor, author and speaker. Ike has develped a system that will help you get more clients, more referrals and more sales, and do it with dignity. His “Yes Formula”

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