THE COLD, HARD TRUTH: Prospecting 101, Part 3

The Cold Hard Truth with Gabriel Siegel

When cold calling, you must be able to follow two simple rules. (I discussed rule number one in last month's article.)

RULE 2: AVOID THE USE OF JARGON, BUSINESS LANGUAGE AND TRENDY PHRASES.

My neighbor owns a local hardware store. All his processes are automated. He was looking for a way to manage his retail operation from his home computer. He spoke to several “network integrators” and computer consultants. As he told me, all he got was a lot of technical BS. He finally met someone who spoke in simple, non-technical English. The consultant asked a few questions and offered a simple solution based on the client’s concerns. He left with a check and in one month the system was up and running.

Remember: IF YOU CAN’T DESCRIBE YOUR BUSINESS OR PURPOSE FOR CALLING SUCCINCTLY, DON’T EXPECT A PROSPECT TO DO IT FOR YOU!

CASE STUDY: A client, who is an accountant, has established himself as a financial planner selling a range of products from common stocks to annuities. His clientele includes long term investors as well as active traders. He has another group of clients who have trusted him to structure conservative investment programs geared to their retirement. For this group, he charges a fee and often works with the client’s attorney. His target market is the small business owner. He is on several social networking sites, but questions the value because he feels it “cheapens his service” and, as he points out, everyone is selling a similar service and more often than not, most people are looking for free advice. He’s an active member of several local Chambers of Commerce and conducts Financial Planning seminars several times a year from which he gets a few leads. His objective is to broaden his customer base using cold-call prospecting. He has used the local yellow pages, with moderate success. He bought leads, also moderate success. His goal is to increase the number of appointments through cold call efforts.

At this point, a reader may ask why not use his client base for referrals, or, try to upgrade current client’s investment programs. There are, I found through experience (sometimes painful), two good reasons for not relying on existing clients. First, given today’s difficult investment environment, fewer people are willing to recommend the services of an advisor. Second, there’s a decided limit on how often one can expect to “churn” an existing client, especially when a program has been designed to their specifications.

Please don’t assume that our financial planner doesn’t solicit referrals or upgrades. During annual reviews with clients, he always asks for referrals, and when appropriate, he does recommend portfolio upgrades and/or changes.

After a meeting with the client and several of his agents, we set up a “prospecting roundtable”. This is simply a group which gets together for the express purpose of helping to establish cold calling strategies, each tailored to his or her specific industry. Through role playing, each attendee gets to refine his opening, learns how to handle objections and make an appointment. This is an effective and powerful tool.

In this situation, our “roundtable” consisted of the client, his partner, and the three agents who work for him. We also included one of the secretaries because she is often the first person with whom clients and/or prospects have contact. We also conducted our session off-site to avoid any interference from office routines.

We enumerated three objectives for our sessions. Everyone had to come away with a method for:

1. Introducing yourself to a prospect


2. Overcoming objections


3. Getting a firm appointment

To date we’ve had three sessions with a fourth planned for mid-June. In my next article, I will share with our readers several of the openings we developed, a mechanism for overcoming objections, and a strategy for setting firm appointments.

For anyone wishing to share thoughts or comments, the writer can be reached at guitarman1811@aol.com. I respond to E mails more quickly and thoughtfully than I do when contacted on social networking sites.


For more information, please visit Gabriel's TNNWC Bio.

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THE COLD, HARD TRUTH: Prospecting 101, Part 3

NETWORKING SUCCESS: Why Getting Published Can Help You Network

Networking Success with Dr. Ivan Misner

Focus on branding your company and yourself in the marketplace to enhance your networking efforts.

Recently, an associate of mine who read one of my books and attended some of my training sessions called me and said, “I really love your material, but why don’t you put more emphasis on your ideas about ‘creating your identity as a brand’ and how it affects your networking efforts? These ideas have made a huge impact on my business, but I don’t hear you talking about it very often.”

I admitted that this associate of mine was right. I haven’t talked a lot about identity in my material, and I agree that I should say more.

When I started my first business decades ago, I had no idea how important it was to focus on branding my company and myself in the marketplace as a way of enhancing my networking efforts. I understood the concept from an advertising and marketing perspective, but with a small business I didn’t have the advertising budget to mold myself or my company into any kind of brand—at least, that’s what I thought at the time. So I ignored it. I realized later that I’d made a big mistake in not pursuing any strategies to brand my identity. It wasn’t until the early ’90s that I started to think about branding and how it would help in my networking efforts.

Networking is all about relationships. Relationships are about establishing credibility. Credibility takes time. What I needed to do was expedite that process as much as possible while still creating genuine credibility in the marketplace at large. Not having much of a budget, I had to get creative about how I would make this happen.

I saw that if I wanted to increase my visibility and enhance my credibility in the community, I needed to be viewed as the local expert. The way I decided to start creating that brand was to begin writing articles. Now, you may say, “What’s so special about that idea? I’ve heard people suggest it before.” Well, here’s the bottom line: hearing it and doing it tend to be very different things.

You can derive the same identity-building, brand-boosting benefit from writing articles as I did. It may surprise you, but editors and reporters need good story ideas and will use them wherever they can find them. Think about the things you know and understand best. What elements of that knowledge might be of interest to the general public, a specific industry, or some targeted demographic? Review the types of media outlets that write for your chosen audience. Consider newspapers, magazines, and industry journals, but also take a good look at online opportunities such as e-zines, online newsletters, and information sites.

Either by phone or letter, tell the editor why readers will be interested in the feature idea you have or why it is newsworthy. What are you doing in your business that strikes a chord in the community? What can you share that will educate the editor’s readers? A word of caution, though: too many people who seek to be featured in newspapers or magazines send the equivalent of a company brochure. They fail to realize that editors and reporters need hooks, angles, ways to relate to a distracted, overworked, frenzied readership.

Guided by the Certified Networker training I developed for the Referral Institute, the associate of mine that I mentioned earlier chose a topic he knew about and worked with it for some time. He is in the travel industry, so he wrote a series of articles about travel and sent them to various outlets each month for several months. He received some responses—all “No, thank you”—until, finally, one local newspaper called him and said they’d like to use his piece in the next day’s edition. After it came out, they contacted him again and asked if he’d like to do a monthly piece. Before long, another media outlet saw his work and asked him if he’d like to write for them.

Today he writes regular articles for several media outlets. More importantly, it has totally changed his business. Although many travel companies are going out of business due to vast changes in the industry, he is actually growing and thriving, because his articles have created an identity or brand for him and the company he owns. Moreover, he is still an active networker, and he notes that the articles he writes put him way above his competition by enhancing his credibility with the people he meets. He capitalizes on this regularly by bringing his recent articles to networking meetings.

This businessman’s experience serves as a great example of what’s possible for your own networking efforts. When you get some of your pieces published, promote them. They won’t necessarily increase your sales overnight, but they will greatly enhance your credibility throughout the networking process, which absolutely increases your sales over time. My friend also told me that he now includes links on his website to some of the online articles he produces as a way of enhancing his credibility with existing and potential clients.

So, if this is such a great idea, why haven’t I said more about it in the past? Well, in my book Masters of Success, I talk about success being the “uncommon application of common knowledge.” If you ask a successful person the secret of his success, you will almost never hear a secret! Writing articles regularly and continually to increase your credibility and enhance your networking opportunities is not a secret. It’s simply an idea that most people are just too lazy to implement.

The bottom line is, 98 percent of people won’t actually do it. Or, they’ll do it for a little while and give up. The associate that encouraged me to talk more about this strategy agreed, but he said, “Do it for the 2 percent of people like me who will apply the idea. It will make a difference for them, as it did for me.”

If you believe you can stick with this strategy over time, sit down and jot out topics of four articles you could write that fit with your business and networking goals—and that you believe would serve the readers of a particular publication. Then, draft a letter addressed to the editor of that publication, and pitch your ideas. If he says yes, it’s time to start writing! If the answer is no, consider following up with him to determine what kinds of articles would better fit his needs.

Here’s a professional tip for ascertaining in advance what kinds of articles that publication might want: visit its website and check out the section devoted to prospective advertisers. Look for the publication’s editorial calendar. It tells advertisers what themes will be covered each month or in each issue. Review that editorial calendar for topics that you could credibly write about.

If you are not an experienced writer, you may want to practice a bit before sending out your work. Make sure to have someone proofread at least your first few articles (the publications do have editors but you will look more credible if you submit your articles free of major spelling and/or punctuation errors). You might also want to make sure your library includes such reference materials as a dictionary, a thesaurus, and at least one style manual (many publications use AP style).

Well, there you go. That’s a lot of advice and my associate should be happy that I took his good suggestion to talk more about branding for the 2 percent of people that will follow through. So, the question now is: Are you part of the 2 percent or the 98 percent? It’s your choice.

Editor's note: The above article is based on material from the bestselling book The 29% Solution: 52 Weekly Networking Success Strategies by Dr. Ivan Misner and Michelle R. Donovan.

Called the “father of modern networking” by CNN, Dr. Ivan Misner is a New York Times bestselling author. He is the Founder and Chairman of BNI (www.bni.com), the world’s largest business networking organization. His latest #1 bestseller, The 29% Solution can be viewed at www.29PercentSolution.com. Dr. Misner is also the Sr. Partner for the Referral Institute, an international referral training company (www.referralinstitute.com). He can be reached at misner@bni.com .

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NETWORKING SUCCESS: Why Getting Published Can Help You Network

FRANCE: 3 Common Mistakes About Business Networking (It happens in France too!)

by Thierry Mazué
French Bureau Chief

#1 Networking overload
Have you ever met one of these desperate business owners who attend almost every single network event they hear of? Does this sound familiar to you? Hope it doesn't. Based upon result, they may end being a well known networker... crying out & desperate to get more business. Truth is, you have to be selective when it comes to choosing the networks you participate in. It does not make any sense to spend your time at all network events held in your area!

#2 And the winner is...
I know this guy, the Net-King! He won the latest speed-meeting contest with over 75 business cards in... minutes! GREAT! I guess he can do better next time.

But let's take a look at the day after: Who are these contacts? Can you remember any face, what they where looking for, not mentioning what do they look like?
If you ask yourself any of these questions, it is time for you to consider acting differently.

Multiplying contacts is definitively not the best contact sport you should choose.
It leads you to a weird zone. Mike Macedonio (President of the Referral Institute and co-author of the new York times bestseller "Truth or Delusion - Busting Networking Myths") has a nice definition for this zone : he calls it IN-VI-SI-BI-LI-TY!

#3 The day After: Wow! Email is such a nice tool!
Quite often, after a networking event, we all receive an impressive amount of emails, offers, "You need it/You need me/Buy it" sort of message.

How do I feel when this happens? Good! I don't even read it!

I've met somebody for the first time yesterday, spend 3 minutes talking just to have a single reason to exchange business cards, and the next day this prospect turned into a customer! How fantastic is that!

We all know that networking is all about people, getting to know them, building serious and meaningful relationships with them. It remains true for business and social networking.

Whatever your goals are, if you are really serious about how you net-work (thanks to Dr. Ivan Misner for this one), take a look at http://www.29percentsolution.com. This is a serious and fun journey!

Please help all the "invisible Net-Kings": share this link with them!

Thierry Mazué

Maisons-Laffitte

(France, Paris)

___________________________________________________________

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FRANCE: 3 Common Mistakes About Business Networking (It happens in France too!)

NETWORKING SUCCESS: Identify Your Networking Strengths and Weaknesses

Networking Success with Dr. Ivan Misner

Ivan's section is sponsored by qAlias.com

Now, more than ever, networking is critical to the survival of your business. So. . . how good are you at it? What are you strong at and what can you improve upon?

In order to know whether or not you’re headed in the right direction with your networking strategy, you need to be able to pinpoint your networking strengths and weaknesses and have a clear understanding of where your networking efforts leave room for improvement.

Making these assessments can be difficult, I know. Scrutinizing yourself in front of a mirror and asking others to be completely honest about how they see you can be pretty uncomfortable to say the least—I’ve been there.

However, I’m now better and wiser for the experience and you will be too. Acknowledging the areas you need to spend time becoming stronger in is vital to achieving networking success.

Luckily, this process can be made a little bit easier by utilizing the structured self-assessment tool that you will find outlined below. It will help you to identify your strengths and weaknesses but you need to commit to being brutally honest, as well as asking others for their honest perception of you, in order for it to help you accurately focus on specific goals and accountabilities.

For each answer, respond with 1 to 5 (1 = not at all; 5 = all the time).

1. I have written long-term networking goals. ____

2. I block out time in my weekly schedule for regular networking activities. ____

3. I can profile my preferred client as well as a TV profiler. ____

4. I have a strong team of referral partners. ____

5. I live by the “Givers Gain^®” philosophy (I give business to others before I expect them to give business to me). ____

6. I have an organized contact management system that I use effectively. ____

7. I know the top ten traits of a master networker. ____

8. I have a very diverse personal network (people from differing professions, ethnicity, age, education, gender, etc.). ____

9. I know who can get me to my target market. ____

10. I keep in contact with people from organizations I used to belong to. ____

11. I make sure that my brother/sister/parent/family member can accurately explain what I do for a living. ____

12. I attend at least two networking functions or activities per week. ____

13. I belong to a Web-based networking group. ____

14. I am someone whom people seek out when they need help. ____

15. I bring personal value to my relationships. ____

16. I typically am the one who puts the wheels in motion in a networking relationship. ____

17. I have a networking accountability partner. ____

18. I am an active volunteer for something meaningful to my life. ____

19. I send thank-you cards regularly. ____

20. I consistently follow up on referrals within twenty-four hours. ____

21. I have found myself networking in the grocery store or elevator. ____

22. I capitalize on my hobbies to meet people. ____

23. I make the focus of my lunchtime meetings, how I can help the other person. ____

24. I am good at making a connection when I meet someone new. ____

25. I am an active member of a referral networking group. ____

26. I am an active member of a chamber of commerce. ____

27. I sponsor at least one event per year for a referral partner. ____

28. I host an event for the people in my network several times a year. ____

29. I am skilled at asking the right questions of a networking contact. ____

30. I have created my message to be about the customer benefits of my product or service rather than its features. ____

31. I can consistently describe my target market without saying “anybody.” ____

32. I make sure that people hear the passion in my voice when I talk about my business. ____

33. I make a good first impression with my business card. ____

34. I provide information that is valuable to my audience whenever I give a presentation. ____

35. I send a newsletter to my business’s clients. ____

36. I regularly put out press releases for my business. ____

37. I have written articles for publication. ____

38. I make getting client testimonials a part of my sales process. ____

39. I have provided my referral partners with success stories about my business. ____

40. I have prepared a written introduction for each time I am presented to a group. ____

41. I am comfortable sharing my accomplishments. ____

42. I make a practice of asking for feedback from clients. ____

43. I start new networking relationships by acting like a host at networking events. ____

44. I have asked my vendors for referrals. ____

45. I provide support to my target market beyond my services. ____

46. I ask for referrals every day. ____

47. I look for referrals for others daily. ____

48. I am comfortable speaking in public. ____

49. I surround myself with others who can help my clients. ____

50. I mentor others in the art, science, and philosophy of networking. ____

51. I have an advisory board for my business. ____

52. I enjoy learning more about how to network effectively. ____

Total Score: ___________

Scoring

260 Master Networker

There is no doubt that your networking skills are remarkable. Most likely, you already are in the top one-fourth of the population who truly are separated by six degrees. Your challenge now is to stay there!

234–259 Outstanding

You are in the 90th percentile. Clearly, you know how to network. You are most likely skilled enough to have you approaching the top group of networkers. Your thirst for learning will have you devouring books on strategies to further improve the return on your investment of effort in networking and with commitment, you’ll be a master networker in no time!

208–233 Very Good

You are in the 80th percentile. You’re doing many things right. Your effort can be very effective and your relationships strong. Seek out resources to help you focus your plan and hone your skills to improve your efforts even more.

182–207  Good

You’re in the 70th percentile. The great thing is—you believe in networking! However, there’s still a fair amount for you to learn. Reassess how you view the networking process and focus your energy on devising an effective system in order to gain a high return on your networking investment.

156–181 Fair

You are in the 60th percentile. On the bright side, you’re probably building some good relationships around you. You most likely have people who care about you and want to help you and your business grow. They can be a great resource to help teach you how to build your networking skills and strategies. However, you could be doing some things that will hurt your business with respect to networking. Make a habit of reading articles and books that will help you focus your efforts and move further into the networking arena, one strategy at a time.

0–155 Weak

Networking is an acquired skill. You need to focus on developing a basic networking skill set in order to network your business. If you’re ready to connect more closely with people and learn the skills necessary to move toward becoming a master networker, utilize every avenue possible to develop networking skills. Talk to experienced networkers, tap into resources such as books, articles, blogs, and podcasts on business and networking. You’ve got nothing to lose and everything to gain—the world is waiting to know more about you and your business!

Understanding Your Results

First off, your score is between you and yourself alone. It’s not meant to be shared anywhere outside your own head.

Whatever your score, remember that you’re simply taking your networking temperature, so to speak—not engaging in any value judgments about yourself, one way or the other. Indeed, if you take this self-assessment a few months from now, the score will probably be different—assuming you make a dedicated effort to pursue continuous learning and develop your networking skills and strategies!

Editor's note: The above article is based on material from the recently released bestselling book The 29% Solution: 52 Weekly Networking Success Strategies by Dr. Ivan Misner and Michelle R. Donovan.

Called the “father of modern networking” by CNN, Dr. Ivan Misner is a New York Times bestselling author. He is the Founder and Chairman of BNI (www.bni.com), the world’s largest business networking organization. His latest #1 bestseller, The 29% Solution can be viewed at www.29PercentSolution.com. Dr. Misner is also the Sr. Partner for the Referral Institute, an international referral training company (www.referralinstitute.com). He can be reached at misner@bni.com .

___________________________________________________________

Posted to THE NATIONAL NETWORKER. To subscribe for your free newsletter, go to www.TheNationalNetworker.com. For the complete National Networker Relationship Capital Toolkit and a free, continuous RSS feed (available either by traditional RSS or by direct email), go to: http://thenationalnetworkerweblog.blogspot.com. You are also invited to click our buttons:


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NETWORKING SUCCESS: Identify Your Networking Strengths and Weaknesses