The real value of Networking

While every business development professional dreams of out of the blue phone calls from potential customers, they seldom happen.

It’s really important to remind ourselves that most new business opportunities come from following up on referrals and tips from your own network of friends, clients and contacts. We all know the old saw about it being 6 times more cost-effective to sell to existing clients- well then just how important is it to network well? According to research done by Communispond Inc in the USA-

• Fewer than 1 in 500 names from a purchased list or blanket mail campaign become warm leads-


• 1 in 100 people you cold call will turn into business, but one in 15 of those will refer you to someone else-


• More than 1 in 10 personal referrals turn into real business opportunities
  

So it’s worth asking yourself, your sales managers and their salespeople what steps they are taking to build regular networking opportunities and rigorous follow-up.

Try a really narrow campaign

In the last 3 months we've been trying something a bit different in our campaigning for new business- we decided to follow our own advice, which is rare for consulting firms, in that we decided to run a really narrow campaign, rather than the 'we can do everything in our space' marketing so common in our field. So we chose a single product to concentrate on, one that we're really proud of, and is different in form and content, to what a lot of our competitors do. We developed some simple and cost-effective (cheap but cheery) marketing materials to send out to interested clients, identified 100 or so international companies to target and began a one-person (Her name's Elvira and she's based in Barcelona) telephone driven approach to very senior people in those firms. Our call plan was simple. We wanted to explain-

• This is who we are,
• This is what we do,
• This is how we think it might help you and in the following ways,
• This is who we've done it for in your region.
• Are you interested in finding out some more?
• Can we send you some materials?
• Can we call you back in a couple of weeks?
  

Simple as that, always giving the client the chance to say 'no thanks'. Guess what? 15 out of 100 clients targeted agreed to meet us straight away. We are delighted. Why? Because though we're pretty good at this kind of thing, we've never had such a high hit rate so soon. I've been pondering why this might be and have decicded that it's probably because we were focused on such a small niche thing, and therefore 'clean' and clear in our approach. By contacting clients and saying, honestly, that's all we want to talk to you about, gave them a chance to say that they don't need it, and gave them the power in the conversation.

We got a far more positive response than we've ever had when we tried to say "we can do everything, give us a job." The meetings that we've attended in pursuit of these opportunities, have been some of the most satisfying in my career. We've had 5 meetings so far with people and organisations we've never met before, and the clients we've met have been open, warm, and genuinely interested in what we have to say.

Campaigning for professionals- why it's seldom done well

A war is made up of a number of campaigns with distinct aims, leading to your ultimate victory. Campaigns should be connected and shaped by the ultimate war aim. For Churchill in 1941, it was the unconditional surrender of Germany and her allies. Every campaign of the war, whether in the air, on the ground or on the oceans was tested against its usefulness in delivering the final victory.
In business, your campaigns should link to your overall aim as a business. If you want to have 25% market share delivering management development programme to FTSE 100 companies in UK by January 25th 2012, then your various campaigns should lead to that result for you.
Campaigning, at its simplest, is deciding where you want to be, what you want to be doing and for whom, deciding how best to let the target know that you exist, and doing it in a way that supports who you are, what you do and how you do it. Campaigning, for a small consultancy firm, is best done simply, repetitively and professionally, and it doesn't have to cost a lot of money if you set things up right from the start. A campaign is not a battle, fought over a relatively short time and then forgotten, it's a longer-term thing.

Once you’re focused, find a way to stand out from the crowd

So you've identified what it is that you do brilliantly, or at least well enough to offer you real specialist status in your potential customers' eyes. This is not as difficult as it seems. One of my specialist areas of work is presentation skills and nearly everyone who has ever got up to speak to anyone thinks they can run a presentation skills course. It's a really competitive and commoditised area unless you have something that sets you apart. What I did was to think for myself about the challenge of bringing something new to the field.

So, over time I developed my own approach, with my own materials and methods and tested them out with clients and colleagues and they liked what I'd done and "Fit, Focus and Flair" (http://www.allcow.com/) became my Unique Selling Point. Nobody does presentation skills like me. It doesn't mean that I'm better than everyone, because there are some great people out there doing what I do. I just do things differently. Clients may choose to work with someone else, but they'll remember me. That's what differentiation is. It gives you an edge so that when a client thinks "How is this person different to the 234 other people offering the same thing?" you have something interesting and persuasive to say.

Charisma for Consultants

I once saw charisma defined as- "the ability to transfer an emotion that the speaker has to his audience." I thought it was a pretty good definition too because it covers all of the angles that you might need, positive and negative. Let's think about Gordon Brown for a moment. Gordon must be charismatic by this definition as I think he's absolutely able to transfer his feelings and emotions to his audience. He's brilliant at it. Every time I've seen him speak he's done that to me. Whatever I've been feeling at the start of his oration, I've felt a mixture of frustration, resentment and barely controlled contempt by the end. Brilliant.

I don't use the UK Prime Minister (Until May 2010, probably) as an example to be cruel to him. There's a lot of his skills and intellect that I envy and admire, it's just that in presentation terms he's very charismatic in a negative way. Bet your life that at home he laughs, cries, takes the mickey out of himself, is thoughtful, kind and sincere. It's just that he's not well practisd in the art of doing that in public, of communicating his charisma in a positive way. I think I know the reason why. My guess is that GB doesn't like the job he's spent his whole political life woking for. So actually he's communicating truthfully all of his emotions about the state he, and we, are in.

Charisma starts with how you feel about you and the place you're in, and many consultants don't care too much for themselves and even less for their clients as human beings, that's the problem. They're going through the motions to earn money, they're not loving it and living for it and it's easy to fake for a day or two, but really hard to fake over te years.