Tag: Sales
Strategies For Successful Business Networking
There are a variety of organizations that run networking groups across the country. The largest group is probably BNI, which offers members the chance to attend weekly meetings and develop new professional relationships to help them grow their business. some chambers of commerce are now organizing “leads groups” for their members as well. These groups are intended to offer members a way to connect with each other and potentially refer each other business.
In most “leads groups” each group allows no more then one representative from any industry, so if the group has a mortgage broker other mortgage brokers have to join another group or wait for the seat to open up. The idea is that by restricting membership, you eliminate competition within the group.
The agenda at most structured networking meetings is pretty straightforward. Each member is given an opportunity to introduce themselves, then there is a short presentation by one or two members (each member gets the chance eventually). The meeting ends with members discussing potential referrals for each other. This means that most of the members get about one minute to present who they are and teach the other members of the group how to refer to them.
Most people do a great job of presenting themselves. However, most people do not think to ask for referrals. At most networking events, you are not expected to ask for a referral or explain what a good referral for you is. However, at a leads group it is not only acceptable, it is expected!
I am involved in a number of networking groups and have used the simple outline below to create my elevator pitch (quick introduction). When I deliver my elevator pitch to a leads group, my goal is to educate everyone in the room about my company and what I do, as well as to teach them the best way to refer others to me. In addition, I want to make sure I actually ask for a specific referral. I will go through each piece of the outline in detail, but here are the basics.
* Introduction
o Name
o Position + company name
o Location of the company
o Overview of services
* Tell a story
* Call to action
The introduction piece of your presentation should stay the same every time you give it. You might say something like, “My name is Joe Smith. I am mortgage broker at ABC mortgages in Anytown, USA. We offer a full line of residential and commercial mortgage products.” You can add some additional detail, but you should really focus on keeping this short and on point.
At each meeting, you will have the chance to differentiate yourself from the competition by telling a short story during your presentation. The story can be related to a specific challenge you helped a client overcome, a unique feature of your product or service, or you can simply talk about a new development at your company. Consider writing out your stories in advance so you know what you are going to say at each meeting. In addition, you can schedule the content so that the other members of your group learn more and more about you at each meeting. You need to focus on educating your group a little more each week.
The “call to action” is very important and the piece that most people overlook. You need to tell the other members of your group exactly what type of referral you are looking for. For example, our mortgage broker, Joe Smith, might say, “Today a good referral for me would be a Realtor at XYZ real estate company.” Joe may also say, “Today a good referral for me would be anyone who purchased their home more then 10 years ago.”
I alway recommend that your “call to action” is as specific as possible. If Joe stands up and says that a good referral would be anyone who needs a mortgage, the rest of the group will have a harder time thinking of people to refer. If Joe asks for an introduction to a specific person at a specific company, someone in the group may know that person or know someone at that company who can facilitate Joe’s introduction. The more specific the request, the more likely it is to trigger someone else in the group’s memory.
A last minute hint:
Keep focused on the networks of the people in the group, not on the people themselves. In other words, when you are participating in a networking or leads group, you should not focus on gaining the business of the people at the table. Instead, you should focus on gaining their trust so that they will refer you people in their network.
How Well Do You Know Them?
It is often said that it is not who you know that matters, it is who knows you. Well I would like to extend this statement by saying that it is not only who you know and who knows you, but how well do you know them and they you?
In business, networking is the ultimate form of promotion. It can help you to obtain new clients, a new job, or even help you to move up the corporate ladder. It is the process of building relationships. Any time that you attend a meeting, trade show, or a social function, you are networking whether you realize it or not. It is the relationship that you have with people, a prospect or a client that makes the difference between success and failure.
Often we fail to realize the reasons that we have for doing business with an individual or a company. In the case of products that we regularly buy, what helps us to make the buying decision? There are those that will buy a specific brand of product because they trust that brand to be of a high quality or durability. There are others that will make a buying decision based on price, although this is less frequently the case. Often we simply do business because we feel good about it. In fact most purchases or decisions to do business are based on two things. Trust and comfort. Trust is a very intangible emotion or feeling. How do you measure it? How do you develop it?
Trust is measured by the feelings that are generated by a process of letting someone get to know more about you than just product, features and price. I know a gentleman who provides a seminar on selling to C-level executives. He says that to sell to the C-level executive you have to be more than a salesperson selling a product or service. To sell to the executive level, you have to be more of an advisor. You have to find needs other than the ones that you can fulfill and help them to fulfill these needs. In doing this, you become a “trusted advisor”. They feel “comfortable” that you have their interests in mind more than just making a quick sale and a commission.
In our daily process of seeking prospective clients, do we often just look for a person to pitch, or do we spend a bit more time getting to know them before we try to sell?
When we take the time to know a persons desires, dreams, and needs, and make an honest effort to help them realize that these things are important to us, we are really on the fast track to doing business with them. We are building the trust, confidence, comfort level, and most importantly the relationship that is needed to not only make the sale, but to create in them a resource for endless referrals.
As we go into the community meeting people who are prospective clients, we should keep the following in mind. The customer is a person just like me. The customer has needs other than the one that I can fulfill. Until I understand what the ultimate goal or dream of the prospect is, I cannot fulfill it with my product or service.
Selling and networking are about relationships. You sell in everything that you do whether you realize it or not. The time is now for more effective selling. Change the way you think about the prospect and the prospect will change the way that they think about you.
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The Biggest Impacts of Choosing a Niche
When you pick the niche for your new site, you are actually picking much more than just a niche. This decision isn’t just going to affect what you’re writing about for the lifetime of your new business – it’s also going to impact very nature of your business model and the very fabric of your website…
It can’t be overstated just how important this is for the eventual success of your blog as a whole. So to demonstrate just what a profound impact this one decision will make, read on to see some of the top areas affected by your choice…
The Look
When you choose a niche, this will almost certainly impact the design of your logo. In turn, this is likely to spill over into the look of your site if you want to strengthen your brand identity. As a result, your web design will be heavily influenced by your choice of subject matter – which is why football sites tend to be green and technology sites tend to be white/blue/silver.
The Tone
The niche you choose is also going to dictate the tone of your site and the ‘voice’ you use. A website on lifestyle for instance might have a colloquial and ‘fun’ tone of voice, as though you are speaking directly to your audience. On the other hand though, a website on finance or on medicine is going to sound a lot more professional with far more terminology.
Your Audience
This is one of the biggest ways your niche will influence your business model: once you choose your topic, you will also have decided on the type of person who is likely to read your content. In turn, this will influence the types of interactions you have on your site, the amount of loyalty your audience displays and even their disposable income.
Monetization Options
The way you monetize your website will depend on which products and adverts are available. If you’re in the ‘make money’ niche for instance, you’ll find there are tons of eBooks and courses being sold on the topic and that people are willing to spend a lot of money here, viewing it as an investment.
But on the other hand, if you’re writing about your favourite TV show, there won’t be many things you can sell without facing copyright issues – which means you’ll likely make most of your money through Amazon sales.
Learn to Master Your Niche Research Skills
If you want to succeed in any given niche, then you need to offer something different that the competition isn’t already offering. This is how you stand out as different and memorable and this is how you make links ‘clickable’ and sharable.
But coming up with new content is hard. Especially in a crowded niche where there are thousands of new articles published every day!
Moreover, you’re going to have to do your research if you want to appear accurate, reliable and trustworthy too. So how do you go about mastering your research skills so that you can really stand out? You read on, that’s how!
Your Inspiration
The more information you take in, the more inspiration you put out. Without meaning to get too philosophical here, most psychologists now agree that there’s no such thing as a truly ‘original’ idea. Instead, our ideas are created when we combine different ideas we already had.
So the more information you are taking in on a regular basis, the more bits of data you will have available to recombine into something brand new.
And this shouldn’t just mean reading on the topics that you’re writing about either. Reading on different topics is also important as this way you can bring related knowledge in from other fields or combine subjects in order to come up with something completely new.
What’s more, reading other blogs and websites can give you ideas for structuring articles or spinning them that you can apply to your own work in new ways. Like that article on how to dress like a bodybuilder? How about taking it and applying it to your own niche for an article on ‘how to dress like an entrepreneur’?
Great places to get ideas and material then include:
- Websites
- Blogs
- Magazines
- Books
- TV
Subscribe to some RSS feeds and keep reading!
Looking for News
It’s also important to try and stay up-to-date by following the latest news and developments. This sometimes means going straight to the source, which can mean reading journal studies (look for them on Google Scholar) or looking at press releases (you can find sites that collect and publish these).
Taking it Further
The truly unique and interesting stuff though comes when you start going deeper and really researching into your topic. Often this begins with asking the right questions. When you next read an article telling you about a new discovery for instance, ask why that’s true. Why does that new workout routine work so well? And what if you were to turn it up a notch or introduce a new element?
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How to Use Pen Names to Penetrate Multiple Niches
Choosing a niche is one of the most important things you have to do when you first set out to create a blog. A niche doesn’t just impact on what you’ll be writing: it impacts your target demographic (your audience), your web design, your earning potential, the types of products and adverts you can earn from and much more.
If you get your niche right from the start, you’ll find you can quickly rise to prominence as one of the top bloggers and start earning a lot of stable income. Get it wrong and you might find that you struggle to get noticed, or that there’s no money to be made even when you start making progress.
So instead of stressing about it and letting this decision stall your progress… why not just enter multiple niches right from the start?
The Benefits of Entering More Than One Niche
There are plenty of very good reasons to try entering more than one niche and this is something that can help any blogger.
For starters, being in more than one niche is fun. It means you aren’t constantly writing content on the same topic and you won’t find you get bored of your ‘day job’ too quickly.
What’s more, being in multiple niches at once gives you resilience. In business terms, ‘resilience’ basically means that your business model is stable enough that a single thing going wrong won’t be devastating for your company. In other words, if you’re in more than one niche, it doesn’t matter if one of your websites – or even one of those industries – stops being profitable.
And on top of all this, with multiple niches you will have multiple different audiences and multiple different opportunities to start making money online.
Using a Pen Name
So how do you enter into these different niches?
One thing that can help is having more than one pen name to use on the web. Why? Because that way, your efforts in one area won’t negatively impact your efforts in another.
Having multiple blogs all on different subjects and using the same name could look as though you’re a ‘Jack of All Trades’ and expert at none. It could appear as though you’re just interested in making money rather than having a real passion for what you’re writing about. Finally, it prevents you from referencing or linking to your other blogs without it appearing biased.
So come up with a few names and enjoy writing on multiple subjects simultaneously!
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The Top Types of Website/Blog You Hadn’t Considered Creating
If you’re planning on creating a website or a blog, then there’s a good chance you’re considering one of the major niches like ‘fitness’, ‘making money’ or ‘dating’.
The only problem is, these ‘big’ types of blogs are very overcrowded and if you create a new site in that niche you’re going to be going up against a lot of already established competition.
So the question is: how do you stand out with something completely new? And what other types of blog are there that you hadn’t considered?
Instead of going with a very generic and very derivative topic, why not try making something entirely new so that you will be more memorable for your visitors and so that you’ll be able to monetize in more creative ways? Read on and we’ll take a look at some of the top types of website and blog that you perhaps hadn’t already considered…
Fan Sites
Creating a fan site is a great strategy for a number of reasons. For starters, there doesn’t tend to be that much competition – particularly when compared with the bigger niches. At the same time, creating a fan site means you’ll be creating content for a highly committed and passionate audience that likely has a strong community. Head over to the ‘Doctor Who’ Google+ pages and you will see there are people there ready to eat up new content.
Career Content
Don’t have a hobby or interest? You probably at least have a job and probably that job is something that many other people share. There’s all kinds of information you can create in this field!
Education
You can create a lot of novel type of content in the education niche. This can range from teaching other adults a new topic as you learn it, to providing research materials for students. Or why not go one step further and create a website for children? Do bear in mind though, that this will mean selling to the parents rather than the children themselves.
Entertainment
Not every website has to be serious! While it’s harder in some respects, you can potentially be very successful with a website that’s funny or that publishes fiction. Just look at things like XKCD!
Broad Niches
A niche can also be broad enough to encompass multiple other niches. Think of magazines like ‘Men’s Health’ or ‘Wired’. These focus on a lifestyle rather than a strict niche and cover lots of topics together as a result.
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