So I went to a networking event this evening, which was the March meetup of the Chicago Business Development Forum http://www.meetup.com/ChicagoBusinessDevelopmentForum/ .  This event was hosted by longtime friend and tangential mentor Jason Rosado of http://www.distinctivecoaching.com/.

The topic for the evening was about blunders of networking.  Two things stuck out to me, one was not following up.  This is an issue for me, considering I don’t have a secretary.   Expanding on this, I have two things that I plan on doing in order to resolve the follow up issue.

  1. Hire a PA.  I realize that at this point, my only choice is to bring someone else in.  His or her cost will be justified if I have a few more sales.
  2. Using sendoutcards.com + cardscanner.  Buisness card scanning + OCR is the GREATEST timesaver for me, and those people that I wish to get in contact with immediately I can add a few notes from the evening on their contact page in Outlook and I remember what my conversation was about.

(btw, I’d love to hear strategies from other small business networking guru’s, send an email to will [at] dlwconsultants.com)

The second thing that stuck out was something that I mentioned, and it’s something that I will expand on in a later article “Networking Mindsets”

Trying to close a sale at a networking event, instead of making a connection.

What do I mean by this?  When I go to a networking event, I have to let go the notion that I’m going to make a sale.  I don’t have my equipment with me, and I’ve made an executive decision that either I’m going to network and develop connections, or I’m going to be working and making money.  (So obviously if you see me at a networking event, it means I can devote my time to it).  I have no other objective or motive.   It also takes the performance pressure off me, to let my personality come through, focus on connecting with a prospect on a personal level, make him or her my friend and then do business together.

At some point during the open networking, someone pitched me.  Now keep in mind, I wanted to connect with that person, not for his product or service, but for another thing of value he offered.  Said person immediately pitched me another service, and drilled down.  What made it even worse to me was that I felt it was a bit canned and impersonal, and while I was smiling and nodding, I decided to disengage myself and run as quickly as possible in the other direction.

His product or service might have been the best in the world (ironically, it’s part of my next move in marketing) but it represents to me what everyone hates about selling.  Being seen as a prospect instead of a person. This is analogous to the ‘pick up’ line in dating.  When seen in action, very little value is attached to the person executing the line.  That person doesn’t seem real, because infact he or she isn’t being real.

This is not to say don’t rehearse what you’re going to say in your pitch.  We did do an exercise on determining what to say during the ’60 second commercial’ or whatever amount of time we have to initially interest someone.  I had trouble with the exercise because my ‘pitch’ is dynamic.  I usually open with helping ‘small businesses’ because that is my target market.  The trick is to make it personal to you, and let that intrigue your prospect.  Ask them questions and get them involved in the process.  To me, the distinction between a canned pitch and a real one is how does the other person feel leaving the interaction?  I know that for the particular interaction I was in, I was being talked at, and my values were assumed.  That doesn’t bode well for me, and it’s something I try to avoid in my travels.

Image courtesy of Flickr and JustinTravels