How to Close More Sales by Leveraging Your Network

Sales can be a challenging task but is absolutely necessary for any company’s success.  Some individuals are natural born sales people while others need to work on this skill. Regardless, sales professionals can always refine their strategies to help them sell even better.

Networking is a must for sales success. Sales professionals understand this but must go about it the right way to maximize its effectiveness. Traditional methods such as cold calling, purchasing leads, tradeshows, and advertising all are important as well.  With this post, I will explore how you can better leverage your network to make the sales process more fun, seamless, and more successful. I also explored this topic in the prior post - How to Grow Your Network and Increase Sales.

Get to Know the Influencers

With any industry, it important that you seek out and get to know the influencers.  Who are the influencers?  These are the industry experts and the people who are extremely connected in your market. By getting to know these people, you will have more access to channel partners and potential clients.

If you can leverage your existing network to get introductions to these people, then try this route first.  If not, then find out what events they will be attending and make it a point to meet them.

Another tactic is to send them a letter via traditional mail or email with some content of value such as an article, industry publication, book, etc.  Whatever you send, make sure that is of high quality and beneficial to this person.  Next, follow up with a phone call to make sure that this person received your information and then proceed to tell this person about yourself.  If you have something to offer, then let this person know as well.

The key point is to find a way to connect with this person so your phone call or email will be returned.  Once you build trust and credibility with an influencer, you will have added a valuable person to your network.

Don’t take these relationships for granted. Spend the appropriate amount of time to get to know these people and include them in some of your meetings and events. Find ways to continuously connect. Having these people in your network will add a tremendous amount of credibility.

Nurture Your Existing Relationships

It is so important that you maintain a good rapport with your network so that when you need them they will be willing to help.  As I have said before, you should continuously be thinking of ways to help people especially if unprompted.  Show that you are thinking of others by sending articles, making referrals, and taking them out to lunch.

Of course, if someone within your network needs help, then do what you can to offer your assistance.  By being a giver, you will develop a positive demeanor with your network.

So, when the time comes that you need help with your sales process, your network should have no problem helping you by making referrals or even buying from you.

Keep in mind that you should not be trying to sell to people once you meet them.  You need to get to know each other so you can build trust, credibility, and friendship.  It is worth the extra time upfront.  Over time, sales leads and sales will start coming in at a faster rate from various people within your network.

Also, if people provide you leads, then make sure to keep these individuals in the loop on the outcome and always thank them.  By maintaining this good gesture, people are prone to provide more leads because they feel appreciated and helpful.

Set Up Peer Groups

One interesting strategy is to set up a regular and informal meeting with several people in your network.  The goal with these groups is to help each other achieve business success.  At these meetings, you should give everyone the opportunity to discuss business challenges and needs and then let the group talk about how they can help.

The group could be run by a facilitator or just keep it free flowing and see what happens. Regardless of the format, you are furthering your bond with each other with a mission of helping one another.

In addition, at this meeting, it is a good idea to discuss some business news or educational topic so the entire meeting is not all about helping each other.  By adding this element to the mix, it will spark additional conversations.

Don’t confuse this idea with a leads group, which most of the time require you to give leads and attend every meeting.

By forming a tight knit group, you will have several people to contact whenever you need to talk.  Peer advisors are very important for business success at any level.  As this group grows, people will start to invite other influencers to group. It is a good idea to keep this group fairly small (say 5-8 people), otherwise, it can be a challenge for all to participate.

At the same time, you could open this up to more people and have less structure. Just provide a forum for people to meet and help each other.

What ways have you leveraged your network to achieve sales success?

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Comments

[Bruce]

Nicely written article and good info. Have you read Love is the Killer App?

It deals with this subject. Keep up the good work

[Jason Jacobsohn]

Thanks Bruce. Yes, I have read that book. Easy to read and well written. I recommend it to anyone who wants to learn more about networking.