How important is it to get out there? Smarter Networking surveyed more than 600 trainees across all types and sizes of business in 2009, asking four questions. How important is networking to your business? How confident are you? How willing are you and do you have a networking strategy? Replies were rated one (low) to 10 (high). The average rating for importance was nine, confidence was at five, willingness at six, but 75 per cent of people do not have a networking strategy.
Yet the phrase “people buy from people” remains as true as ever and personal contacts are vital to long-term business relationships.
The reason networking works is simple. People want to do business with someone they like and trust and you don’t learn to trust someone until you know them. Imagine how much easier selling would be if each sales call started, “Oh, hello mate”.
But it’s vital to recognise the difference between networking and selling. The purpose of networking is to make contacts and enhance relationships with people with the aim of them subsequently becoming customers. Aim not to sell when you’re networking. It’s not such an easy distinction to make, especially at an exhibition when you aim to do both, because there are common elements - good networking involves asking questions, listening, finding common ground and establishing mutual trust. It also involves talking more about the other party than yourself.
Fruit Logistica is an ideal chance to make more of the right contacts, normally considered the hardest part of networking. You need to be very well planned otherwise you’ll spread yourself too thin and waste effort, especially at a big show like this.
Will Kintish, a leading UK networking specialist, says the magic ingredient is to be generous. “Turn what’s in it for me into what’s in it for you,” he says. If you find opportunities to help others, they will turn into sales leads for you.
But just why do so many personable, worldly people find networking such a strain? The answer is fear: fear of the unknown (“I don’t know anybody here”), fear of rejection (“they’ll all think I’m a fool”) or fear of failure (“I’m no good at this”).
Owning up to those fears is a good start. Most other people there will share at least one of them. Here’s a line my brother uses: “I’m going to break a vow I made to my mother - never to talk to strangers”. It works because it establishes common ground - whose mother didn’t tell them the same? Apparently, the conversation turns philosophical pretty quickly.
Don’t be a bull in a china shop. The guy (it usually is) who joins a group making a big statement and proceeds to dominate the conversation and talk forever will rapidly find himself on his own. A tip from Tina Lamb at Impact Factory is to aim to speak for no more than 30 seconds at a go. Try timing yourself - I did and I was horrified. Lamb also recommends thinking and acting like a host. If you’re the one in a group drawing people out of themselves and involving them, you’ll rapidly establish a good reputation.
Don’t start with your business card. The person who tries to foist their business card on you before they’ve said hello is one of the commonest pet hates of networkers. It’s also extremely silly - this person could be a competitor rather than a potential customer. The exception is if you have a name that’s hard to pronounce.
By all means make and keep contacts via business networking sites such as LinkedIn, but they are no substitute for face time. Don’t expect a rapid payback and don’t just collect cards and send your brochure to them. Get those names on your database and contact them regularly.
A piece of advice that comes back consistently is to aim for a few good contacts, not a pocketful of business cards. Set yourself a target of a handful of important contacts. You will thereby give each of them appropriate attention. Further contacts you make are a bonus.
ARE YOU AN EXHIBITIONIST? THE SCIENCE OF TRADE SUCCESS
Visiting an exhibition has almost as much science involved as exhibiting. A lot of visitors waste vast amounts of time, miss half of what’s to see and end up exhausted.
You can always tell the pros. They’ve pre-registered, they’ve got their handbook and it’s indexed with post-it notes. They spend a couple of minutes at the hall plan, making sure nothing’s changed from the handbook and then they’re off and running.
Copy their system. Visit the ones you want to see first, then visit the ones you ought to see. It’s a fair bet that most of these stands are in the middle of the hall so, in passing, you can check that you aren’t missing anything important on other major stands. You probably aren’t.
Then you go for a walk round the outer edge where the small stands are. This is where the fresh new ideas are usually to be had. You have to be hawk-eyed too because some of them are such lousy exhibitors that they hide their light under a bushel.
Note that a successful visit to an exhibition is not judged by the weight of the carrier bag you bring out. If anything, the opposite applies. Those professionals have a carrier bag with maybe just 10 items in, but they make very sure that they are an early call list for the exhibitors who matter to them.
They also make full use of the handbook. This publication costs serious bucks for the organisers to produce and half the visitors only look at it when they can’t find the toilets. Make it a source of information by jotting notes against each stand. This will help you remember them far better than their literature. Incidentally, one real time saver is to get the exhibitor to staple their leaflet to their handbook entry.
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