Ian Blei

Have you noticed a shift in your experience of networking, either at events, or in general? The heat has been turned up, and everybody’s anxiously selling to one another, sometimes before getting each other’s names.  That’s not Networking. There is a distinct difference between Networking and Prospecting. They require different approaches, mind-sets, and have very different time-frames.  Prospecting is to Sales as Networking is to Marketing. Plenty of folks blur Sales and Marketing as well, so let’s clarify  terms a bit.

In Marketing you’re creating buzz—both an awareness of, and a desire for your products or services. In Sales, you’re ascertaining your prospect’s needs, and facilitating their choice. Marketing facilitates Sales. Sales does not facilitate Marketing.

Networking is a part of your overall Marketing Strategy, which obviously includes many other facets. Prospecting is a part of your overall Sales Strategy, also including many other facets. They’re not interchangeable at all.

Now we get to the heart of the matter. Networking is more about matchmaking than selling. It enables us to expand our circle of interaction, enabling us to find a CPA or a Realtor. Networking is an amazing alchemy that enables a group of 15 people who each know 500 people to share up to a 7,500 person database. When I learn what you do, I can run through my mental database and try to match you up with people I know who can help you. When all of us do that, we have increased the number of potential sales by many orders of magnitude.  If, however, I’m focused on the sales themselves within that group, I reduced my potential sales to the 14 other folks in the room.

Aside from severely limiting the number of potential sales, there is an insidiously deadly side-effect—everyone’s defenses are up. We’re already being bombarded with thousands of sales messages daily from every direction. We’re getting more and more inured to it, the way we can get desensitized to constant violence. Before long, we’ve turned down our listening and seeing apparatus just to get through the day.

Now when we walk into a networking opportunity and someone goes into prospecting mode, we shut down. Nobody is thinking about how to help each other, so much as how to avoid being sold to. The whole purpose of Networking is defeated.

In looking for possible causes of this behavior, a good first place to look is scarcity-thinking, which usually brings up clingy, grabby attitudes around money.  The severity of the Banking/Lending Frauds and what the media called “The Economy” put people in a state of fear verging on panic. This is not a resourceful state in which to make decisions.

Fear narrows our vision and often drives us to make unwise choices.  Fear shortens our timelines and makes us desperate. We lose faith in Networking, with its fuzzy metrics and uncertain returns. Thus another side-effect rises —the smell of fear. When you walk into a room where everyone is scared, desperate, and selling, how motivated are you to open up and think like a matchmaker? Once again the whole purpose of Networking gets defeated, as we toughen up our armor to go into battle.

Networking works, but only if you use it for what it is. Using Networking for Sales Prospecting is like using a screwdriver for a hammer. The results are dismal failure. “To everything, there is a season.” A time to be born, a time to die, a time to plant, a time to reap, a time to network, and a time to prospect.

In the dictionary, a Network is “an interconnected or interrelated chain, group, or system.” This is what you want to build, so keep your eye on the ball. Don’t split your intentions, and derail your efforts by allowing fear to push you into sales mode.

Action Steps:

1. The very next networking event you attend, make a conscious decision to not make sales. There are many opportunities for you to engage in the sales process. During networking is not the time. The first stage in the sales process is getting the appointment, not the sale, so why throw this out when networking? Networking is its own process, with its own actions and mind-set.

2. Make a goal for yourself that is realistic and attainable; something along the lines of: meet five new people and really try to understand what they do and who they are.

3. Try to connect them with people you already know.  Make appointments to get back together with them, after you’ve researched them and looked through your database (so you have something besides your products and services to offer them). This way it is not a sales call, and they won’t have their defenses up.

4. Follow-up within the week. This is probably the place most of us drop the ball. Don’t let a week go by, where your first meeting is no longer fresh in their minds.