Rick Roberge, a Sales Consultant with Dave Kurlan & Associates, spoke at this week’s New England Expo and invited me to join the audience. His topic was about “…how effective networking can begin the sales process with a warm prospect and avoid cold sales calls.” A very engaging speaker, Rick spoke for about an hour about networking, how to do it and why to do it. He provided numerous examples on the power of networking by encouraging the audience to network amongst themselves.
The most important idea that I brought away from his talk is the theory of the Giver’s Gain – you network to introduce new services to your customer so that your customer will remember and value you. You don’t network to help the person you just met!
By providing new and valuable services to your customer, you move from a transaction-based sales rep to consultant to trusted advisor and finally to the go-to resource. As Rick joked, you network to become the second speed-dial on your customer’s phone after their spouse.
Rick then walked-the-talk as he and I strolled the exhibit floor together for an hour while he introduced me to his customers and colleagues. And when I left, I had 20 business cards in my pocket of people he introduced me to that wanted follow up.
And so I’ll close with the second most important idea from Rick’s talk – follow up with those introductions you just made! So I’m getting on the phone….
All About Referral Selling 
Mike, I was pleasantly surprised at the number of people that showed up to hear me talk, yesterday. I hope everyone walked away with something that they could use. The interesting thing is that I’ve been doing what I do for a long time. When Rod Lee asked to interview me, I thought he was kidding, but I went along to see what would happen. I’m gonna continue doing what I do, because it’s easy, it’s fun and it works. Thank you for keeping me company for a while yesterday and for this mention today.
Rick
Mike, with your permission, I’d like to point your readers to Pete’s comments. http://www.pc4media.net/pc4media/2007/10/networking-isnt.html
Mike: I subscribe 100% to the GIVERS GAIN mentality in regards to networking and have been for nearly 7 years… The trick is to monitor the results and truly only do business with other salepeople with similar conviction. It is easy to give referrals, and if you have trained others how to listen when engaged in everyday conversation it is just as easy to receive referrals/introductions as my team prefers… I find it very interesting other have not caught on. The follow up tidbit from us to you would be “Yes is great, No is ok, but maybe is unacceptable.” We set the stage, use an agenda and let the prospect know we will be making some type of decision today! No smoking “Hopium” Gregg
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