Sales networking is a very important part of a business as it is very effective for a business to find new clients and gain good referrals for your business. Furthermore, it plays a big part in the relationships between clients and your business. All of these factors have an impact on the growth and revenue of your business, so making sure you have a good sales network is important. This article will look into the different ways to improve your sales networking, and the benefits it will bring to your business.
Sales networking is the process by which sales representatives use networks to find prospects through referrals. These prospects will then try to be qualified by the sales team so they can then go on to complete the sale. Customers that are acquired through referrals are very valuable for businesses, with a statistic shared by Review 42 showing that customers are four times more likely to buy a product if they are referred to it by a friend.
There are many benefits to sales networking that are very important for a business. These benefits are:
Gain more exposure – By networking with people, it is likely that your business will gain a lot of exposure. This added exposure to your business can result in more customers and will lead to an increase in revenues.
Share and gain knowledge – A networking event can be a great place for businesses to go to gain more knowledge and tips from people who have run or are running similar businesses. This can mean you gain great knowledge of ways to improve performance, market your produce or service and more.
Increase your confidence – By putting yourself and your business out there, you will have an increase in your confidence when interacting with people. This can prove to be very handy as you will be able to communicate better and more confidently with future leads, which will increase the likelihood of your business winning more deals.
Gain opportunities – The biggest benefit of sales networking is that you will gain opportunities and meet prospects by doing it. This will help your business gain more customers, meaning your sales and revenue will increase.
For you to get the most out of your sales networking experience, you should consider these tips:
Focus on quality over quantity – Sometimes it can be tempting for you to network at every event you see, however, this is not the most effective method of networking. Instead, you should focus on picking the events and people to interact with that are the most likely to be interested in your product and service. This will help your business spend fewer resources while still reaching a large number of people that may be interested in your business.
Know whom to approach at events – You must observe things like people’s body language, how many people are in a conversation and more when deciding whom to approach to begin a conversation with. This will allow you to interact with people that are more likely to be interested in finding out about your business and product.
Use social media – Using social media for networking is a very effective method, for getting more exposure and increasing the likelihood of your sales. Interacting with social media posts by leaving comments and sharing knowledge and articles will increase the engagement between your potential buyers and people in your industry. This will increase the number of referrals your business gets, leading to an increase in the number of sales made.
Find opportunities – You should not wait for a networking opportunity to present itself to you. Although at times you may have an opportunity that comes to you, instead you should actively seek out networking opportunities for your business. Research events, looking at LinkedIn for people and events in your industry and embracing social media are all ways you can create opportunities for your business to improve its networking ability. This will help you grow your business at a more efficient rate.
Embrace the opportunities that present themselves – You must make sure you embrace networking with all channels, such as events and social media and take opportunities when they present themselves. If you become aware of an event that is on the horizon that will suit your business and be a good opportunity, you must make sure that you take it.
Maintain contact – If your business stops contacting a prospect, it will result in your business missing out on customers. Your prospect will likely purchase from a business that is contacting them consistently and creating a relationship with them. This means that if you do not maintain contact and a competitor does, your competitor will likely win the deal.
Offer help where you can – While networking, if you see an opportunity to offer help to a client, make sure that you do this. As a result, you will add value to your product by creating good relationships with people and helping potential customers see how your product can further help their problems.
When sales networking, a few different challenges can present themselves to your business. These challenges can make it difficult for you to get the most out of networking, slowing down your growth from referrals. This section will look at each challenge and how you are able to overcome them.
Deciding what channel to network in
It can be difficult deciding what communication channel to network on as everyone may get differing levels of success with each channel. For example, for very busy people that you would like to network with, an email may be unlikely to get responded to, whereas if you talked to them in person at an event, you would get much better results. On the other hand, some people may not go to events, so contacting them on LinkedIn or another social media network would be the best idea
Focusing too much on the “sales” aspect of networking
The most effective way to a sales network is to not take a sales approach to conversations. Rather, you should reach out and network with people by creating a good relationship with them with information about how their product can help people as opposed to trying to just sell the product.
Follow up too slowly
People are busy, meaning they may be interested in your product but have not had the time to get in contact with you, or it has gone out of their minds. This means that it is very important for your business to have quick follow-ups with your potential customers. Create value in the follow-ups by giving them useful information, and it is likely the customer will be re-engaged with your product or service.
TEB is a sales automation CRM software that can streamline your business’s entire sales funnel, while also helping your business get all the information, they need about its networking abilities. The way TEB does this is with key features such as:
To find out more about how TEB can help your networking, as well as all the other sales benefits it will bring you, get in contact with us here.
