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Whether you are a brick-and-mortar store or work solely on the wonderful world wide web, if you’re not networking then your business is slowly dying. Networking helps keep the blood flowing through your business. Here are a few networking tips for on and off the Internet to generate leads and improve sales—put them into action today!
Who do you already know?
Whether it’s personal or business, those you already know always form your best resource. Talk to your friends, family members, and business associates about your business. Those are the people who truly want you to do well and will surely have the most open ears.
Even if they’re not interested in your offer, if you deliver your pitch well enough there’s a good chance that they may know someone else who could benefit from your offer. And don’t hesitate to straight up ask them if they would tell others about your business. The simple act of asking them for a referral dramatically improves your chances of successful word-of-mouth marketing.
It’s understandable that many people don’t like to talk about their business with friends and family because they feel as though they’re pressuring them, guilting them into the purchase. But you can easily prevent any discomfort by delivering your business message in the softest of selling voices. Maintain a genuine excitement (excitement is contagious) and discuss specific examples of how your product or service has helped others. People want to hear about how they can be helped with their needs, not the features of your business.
This is also an excellent opportunity to use testimonials from your customers. Bring a printout along that features both written testimonials and pictures of you and your customers. You can top this by bringing your laptop and showing them video testimonials.
Offer Something for Free to Get Everything You Need
One of the best ways to initiate a new networking contact is to offer them something for free. Doors will swing freely open if you initiate contact by offering something instead of asking for something. You automatically build a degree of trust, introduce them to your business, and get them to try your product or service; all at the same time.
The presentation is key here. First, you must fully believe yourself when you say that you want to help others. Come at this from the angle that you don’t even care if you get the sale—just as long as you made the effort to help someone today. This will help you avoid too hard of a sell in your networking efforts. What will probably take you less than 30 minutes could earn you 30 years of loyal clientele.
Two Ways to Play
You can take a super soft, yet highly effective sales approach: Help them for free and then simply walk away—they’ll come to you.
You can take a slightly harder, still highly effective sales approach and offer something for free in the same message.
Here are a few examples you can incorporate in your business today:
Consulting:
I took a look at your website and I love what you have to offer. However, I think your approach is a bit scattered. I’m sorry to be a bit brutal there, but I’ve seen all too many businesses fail because they lacked focus in their approach. So I’d like to offer you a free 30-minute consultation to see how we can help you make more money.
Copywriting:
I took a look at your website and I love what you have to offer. However, I’d like you to take a look at some of the errors in your copy that I highlighted in the attached document. I also added some copy that will help you convert more readers to active buyers.
Web Design:
I took a look at your website and I love what you have to offer. However, when I tried to click through to your virtual shopping cart your site navigation got a bit confusing. You could be losing dozens of customers every day just because they’re getting lost within your site.
You can significantly improve your sales by improving your website’s navigation and ease-of-use. I can also give you a free crash course on how Web analytics can help you catch these leaks and plug them before you lose any more potential customers.
Online Social Networking
And one of the other most popular ways to network today is done online, using highly effective tools such as LinkedIn, Facebook, Google Profiles, Twitter, and Google Buzz. First, these social networking tools will help you establish more touch points for the search engines. Second, you can use social media tools to remind people of what you can do for them. Third, by getting your profile, name or business on someone else’s social media account or linked to their profile, you automatically multiply your exposure. Think of it this way: Connect with just one person on LinkedIn and you will then be connected with all the people they are connected to. Potentially 100 more contacts through just one extra networking contact—now that’s using the power of leverage.
Fortune Is in the Follow-up
Every lead you generate for your business should be considered a gold nugget. Generating leads can easily be considered one of the most challenging tasks for any business. But the potential return far out ways the difficulty of the challenge. Follow up with every single person that has ever had anything to do with your business.
Maintain Meaning with Your Marketing Messages
And with all of the networking you do, it should all lead back to your website or main point of sale. Sad but true, many people go through all the motions of networking without having a purposeful message behind it all. Always make it very clear as to what your prospect’s next action step should be.
To your success,
Andrew Rossillo
Andrew Rossillo is Content Crooner’s Marketing Blogger and Staff Writer. He’s ready to put his years of copywriting and online marketing experience to work for your business—he’ll help you get noticed!
