26: Networking

hey everybody it's john bills with make it happen mondays thanks for joining me uh happy monday hope you all had a great weekend um i did it was my daughter's seventh birthday so that was a blast we had about 70 80 people here over at the house and we had an american ninja warrior course set up uh which was actually super fun these people came over and set up this whole course in our backyard and had kids running all around and uh keeping busy but uh that was uh saturday and then sunday um what's the pats game so brought my daughter to her first home patriots uh game which was fantastic she went to she's already been to another game but uh the home game was it was a special treat for us so we did the whole tailgating thing and everything else but um super excited just today to talk a little bit about um networking and going to networking events and i want to make sure that we're still on here uh but it looks like yep all right good go all right so i wanted to talk today about uh how to get the most out of networking events all right um now as always feel free to ask whatever questions in the chat form here i'll answer whatever you have this is really more for you than anything else so i'd love to go back and forth with whatever questions people have topics that they want to discuss but usually kind of pick a topic here and riff on it for a little bit and then i'll put up for q a and the reason i wanted to tap into networking events is because first of all i've been to two or three conferences over the past few weeks here and you know there's some that i prepared for and there's some that i didn't and obviously the ones that i prepared for went a lot better and i got a lot more out of them and just in general networking events for those of you who aren't going to them and i don't just mean the conferences i think the conference are conferences are a form of networking event right but a lot of people go to those conferences to to learn something from the presenters and don't really look at it as a networking event itself i'm talking about networking events that are in any one of our local communities like all you have to do is go and do a google search on you know boston business social networking events and see what comes up or go to the chamber of commerce or or the the local business journal or something like that and look to see what events are happening in your area because the importance of these you know if you go and you find business that's fantastic you know that that to me but i never looked at them that way to say okay i'm going to go find a client that i can close here uh to hit my quarter target or anything like that i looked at it as a fantastic way to practice because especially for those that you were inside sales they're looking to move into outside sales or field sales networking events are the perfect area for you to go practice in somewhat of a safe environment right because everybody's there for the same reason it's still awkward to go introduce yourself to people you don't know but at the end of the day it's a great place to practice and there's some science behind this as well uh the way that we communicate as human beings is broken down by 8 35 57 8 is the words that we use 35 is the tonality and how we use those words and the other 57 is body language so if you're doing all phone sales by the way you're only dealing with about 47 of the way that people communicate right i'm sorry 43 of the way that people communicate i'm not a math major but anyways you know that's why it's hard to read people over the phone obviously that's why email is even harder because you know reading tone into email is a dangerous thing but networking events by going to a networking event you are seeing everything like you are seeing how people receive your message and so when somebody says john what do you do right because that's the way they typically work you go in you grab you know your name tag you give them 10 bucks or something like that and you walk around you start introducing yourself hey nice to meet you what's your name what do you do and then you give them your pitch and if you give them your pitch if you if somebody asks you hey you know john what do you do and you just regurgitate to them your elevator pitch or whatever it is and you watch their eyes glaze over or you watch them look right around here instead of here in your eyes or if you watch them drink their beer a little bit faster than they were drinking it before which is my little trick for getting out of shitty conversations every time i always walk around an event with my beer about you know quarter filled and anytime i'm in a crappy conversation i'm like hey i gotta grab a beer i'll be right back all right so if that's happening in front of you what do you think's happening over the phone all right so so events like this give you the opportunity to practice engaging with people and reading people and it's like i said it's a perfect transition to to field sales and so so i wanted to share kind of some my approach and some tips to get the most out of them first of all i would go to at least one a month at least one a month okay i would go i used to go to two three a week and by the way as a sidebar here the relationships that i developed by going to those events and meeting people and networking and sharing business i still those are still some of my strongest business associations today all right 20 years later so outside of the relationships that you can develop um the key is like i said practicing and getting the most out of them and so you know the the tips that i'll share with you here i also have a document that i'll add to this where you can download it it's just a two-page doc that'll walk you through the process here but the first step of any of it is really identifying which events are good to go to now i think it's good to go to almost any event that gets you out there and get you practicing but some are way more valuable than others let's put it that way you don't want to go to an event that's completely off topic or completely out of your realm uh and there's no relevance because yeah you'll practice but you're going to practice with people who aren't really going to care at all with what you say so first and foremost go do a scrub on a monthly basis of again uh the local business journal uh just do any online search for you know networking events in whatever your local town is and then take a look at those events and see what the target audience is who are they looking to attract and ideally you know it's your target profile or people like you who at least sell into the same space so it's smb focused if it's enterprise focused if it's software focused what is it is it is it you know executive focus like vps or is it more sales reps what is it figure out what that profile looks like and then i would even reach out to the organizer right to say before you sign up for it reach out to the organizer and see if you get a few minutes on their calendar or send them an email and say hey you know could you give me a general breakdown of of who tends to uh who tends to go to these events and and your last event how many people showed up right they're probably going to lie to you they're probably going to fluff up the numbers a lot so i don't know take take 50 of whatever they said but regardless you want to make sure that you're going to show up and again there's not going to be five six people there uh in a previous events should give you a pretty good gauge on what the next event should look like and so after you figure out who's going to be there um and if there's going to be a decent amount of people there you can do one of two things you can go in by yourself uh or you can go in with a team now i used to like going in with a team because it pretty much uh cut my time and half there because they would take one side you know if there was two of us i would take one side they would take the other side and we'd be we'd both be looking for the same results uh but we wouldn't have to talk to everybody there so regardless you need to sit down and first and foremost well after you profile the account and see whether it's worth going or not then you need to just sit down and say or what are my goals for this conference uh and you have to be as specific as possible one is obviously to practice and to get to to to know how to give your pitch and engage with people but there should be some more concrete things there like how many people do you want to meet um how many you know follow-up meetings do you want to get uh you know and how much time do you want to spend with each person i recommend having each interaction with somebody being a timed event you know you don't actually click the stopwatch or anything like that but in your in your head you have a mental clock running for about five minutes or something like that because you don't want to get stuck in a long conversation you know hour long and not get a chance to meet anybody else and a lot of times when you get stuck in those long conversations you tend to uh almost oversell yourself to somebody who might be interested in it and and now what do you have to say for a follow-up so write down your goals of how many people you want to meet uh how many follow-up meetings uh how many i mean you could even go as far as to see how many pieces of business that you want to try to get out of it if you really want to go that far and then with that go in and make sure you have your your stuff right make sure you have a pen there were two of them i would recommend a stack of business cards sidebar here on your business cards make if you do have business cards i mean i know a lot of people don't even have business cards anymore but if you are going to get them i'd recommend having a white background on them so that you can write stuff on the back because that's what i used to do i still do is when i get somebody's business card and i have a good conversation with them i turn around right after the conversation and i just flip their business card over and i write down the the applicable points so anything specific that we talked about you know any information that i was able to gather from them so my follow-up can be as targeted and as personal as possible it's not hey it was great meeting you at last night's events so that's a sidebar here but you know make sure you got your materials right make sure you got your head on straight i recommend going in and eating before an event because nothing's more awkward than you know trying to eat and talk to somebody unless you want to take the strategy of grabbing food and going to a table where other people are and using that as the introduction a lot of people who are less confident going up and just straight up introducing themselves to people they can they can use that as a little bit of a crutch where they grab food and they go find a table you know one of those stand-up tables that people are mulling around and you just hey you mind if i sit here and strike up a conversation that way it's a little bit easier getting into that conversation so you do that you eat beforehand i again i recommend doing that and then when you get there i would get there early because usually earlier there's less people and everybody's just looking to talk where sometimes when you get there a little bit later the clicks and the groups have already formed and it's a little bit more challenging so you tend to you know it's a little bit harder to bump into those conversations so you get there a little bit early and then you got your goals written down if there's any anybody specific you wanted to meet there that's the people you want to hunt out and then you start practicing about how you introduce yourself and this also takes a little bit of prep of you got to think about when somebody says john what do you do what's your answer to that and it's not the elevator pitch right the elevator pitch nobody cares about and if you give somebody a traditional elevator pitch when they say what do you do they'll probably leave halfway through your explanation of what your product or service is so you want to talk you know and i train on this called attention grabbers you know like what can you say in the first five to 15 seconds of a conversation to get somebody to say well tell me more how do you do that and i go based off of this and i'm sure you've heard me talk about this before the old school glenn gary glenn ross right aida attention interest desire action and that again is the fundamental process of sales we have five to 15 seconds to get someone's attention two minutes to earn their interest and then we get them desire and action by telling them what we do and having a call to action so at networking events we're not trying to sell anybody anything well you can't i mean if you can sell your product or service in a 30 second pitch or a one page email first of all you're better than me second of all you're probably selling a commodity okay most of us who sell b2b can't sell our stuff in a 30 second pitch or one page email so we got to stop trying so instead of elevator pitches i talk about attention grabbers what can you say in that first five to 15 seconds to get somebody to say tell me more how do you do that and so a lot of it has to be contextualized to the person that you're talking to which is why when somebody comes up to me and they say hey john nice to meet you what do you get what do you do instead of just jumping in and blurbing out all over them you know giving them my elevator pitch and is completely unqualified if you will at this point i tend to qualify them and use that as an opportunity to to give my pitch in a way that's most relevant to them based on their role in their industry so for instance when somebody says john you know uh so what do you do you know tell me what you guys are all about so okay well happy to share with you that just out of curiosity what kind of company do you work for and what industry you guys in and um and what's your role within that company they're like oh well i'm you know i'm a vp of sales in this you know in the sass industry and we tend to focus on these type of clients okay well for vps of sales in the sass industry that focus on these type of clients this is what i do versus you know coos in the healthcare industry this is what i do and so the idea there is first of all you want to put your pitch in in context to their role to give them more relevance there but also what you're doing there is you're qualifying them to a certain degree to see if you really want to spend too much time with them because if they're just like oh yeah john i'm a um you know let's see a director of it uh selling b2c services uh in the healthcare space like that's or or in retail like that that's not my target audience and so okay well then i'll tend to give them my general sales but i'll do sales training consulting but i work mostly with sass companies you know salesforce linkedin box those type of things and you know and be nice in the conversation but but try to get out of it soon rather than later whereas if somebody says well yeah you know i'm a vp of sales in a startup right now we got about 50 people we're scaling really heavy and um you know we tend to focus on the bdc market we're trying to really move upstream whoa okay now i just realized that this is a prime demographic target for me so my my my attention grabber if you will needs to be pretty on point and it will be because i understand that role and my goal there is to get them to go oh really interesting how do you do that that's the response i'm looking for when i tell you what i do my the response i'm looking for you from you is is how do you do that or tell me more versus oh you know if you get oh you could have done a lot better if you get tell me more how do you do that i almost want to get somebody to call me a liar and if somebody's like shut up you know there's no way you do that well now we're in a conversation now we're in a dialogue now it's got to be something legit right you can't be like oh sales training would cure world hunger you can't say that but you can say stuff like you know for instance you know when i'm a dream force so dream force is coming up here in a couple in about a month actually wow uh and right i mean that is my exact target audience for for i mean salesforce is my biggest customer all those sas companies are clients that i can work with and so to a vp of sales in the sas industry at dream force when somebody says john what do you do my my pitch if you will my attention grabber isn't i do sales training consulting for fortune 500 companies it guarantees you the results you're looking for at every stage of the sales process no that's an elevator pitch and that's where people fall asleep but when when somebody says again vp of sales sas industry at dream force says john what do you do my response is i train salesforce how to sell and then i shut up and i wait for it and i'll tell you 100 of the people that i tell that in that format in that forum if you will excuse me how do you do that or how long you been doing that and then so that's my attention right i get them with the attention and then it's well you know i've trained about 5 000 of their sales professionals on prospecting techniques to drive a media business in the pipeline it's all about doing a little bit of homework on somebody coming up with a thoughtful story that doesn't take too long too long to put together and firing it off to an executive right you got about a 10 to 15 response for percent response right doing it interesting tell me more actually you know what now that i got your attention i know you're interested why don't we take a little bit of a step back and figure out what your situation is and see if it makes sense for us to keep talking here you know we're here at dream force it's pretty much a mess here you know i'm sure you're meeting a whole bunch of people uh you're probably not even going to remember this conversation a little bit later on this afternoon so why don't we schedule something next week do you have your eye do you actually actually do you have your iphone on you i know you do sit in your pocket why don't you take it out right and and by the way i i make it awkward on people like i don't when i find somebody that fits a qualifying criteria for me somebody that i do want to have a schedule call with and they show interest right attention interest i'm not going to go into my hardcore pitch nobody wants that right you want to have a conversation with people and so what i do is i ai and then close on 15 minutes or close on the next steps and right there i grab my phone if they're serious like right there i'll grab my phone and be like hey you just want to schedule some time right now i'm just pick the time next week or let me send you an email right now and we'll connect this way this way you'll you'll lock people in now does it guarantee they're going to be there next week absolutely not but is it way better than sending the email out uh hey it was great meeting you with dreamforce i mean i can't tell you how many of those emails i get after an event like dreamforce it's ridiculous and they all follow the exact same format so you know and i don't respond to any of them so for me after an event like dreamforce or any evening networking event that you can go to my follow-up my next week is filled with 15 to 30 minute qualification calls of people that i had good conversations with and with that i can keep it as a timed event right five minutes ten minutes at most i can hit my goals of you know meeting five ten fifteen however many people and practicing my pitch to see how they it resonates and um and i can get more comfortable just getting out there and introducing myself and so with that plan again with that mindset of getting the most out of events you networking events are one of the more powerful tools you can do from a developmental standpoint as a sales professional and i can't recommend them enough and it allows you to practice it allows you to make connections you always want to have go in with that uh giver's gain mentality i learned this a long time ago uh bni so if you guys want to get involved in actual networking groups that meet on a weekly basis the one that started my career was called bni which is business networking international every city has them every city has multiple actually actually i think almost every town has one and you can go and you can't compete so if you provide a competing service to somebody else in that group you can't join that group so everybody has a different type of service and they typically meet once a week and it's a structured form of networking so what happens is you get in you give a little 30 second pitch about what your business does everybody goes around the room and then you talk about you know leads you have for other people in the room and the whole mentality there is is again givers gain like the more you give the more you're going to get back and i didn't realize how powerful this was early in my career i was like yeah whatever i but i just i did it because i was always trying to make connections and help people out and do whatever i could and not really expect too much back and what i've gotten back with that approach has been uh off the charts so i think i've told this story before where when i went off on my own with j barrows you know i had to start up because i had to start a company and so well actually when i went off uh after basho into kensei uh my first company before j barrows i had to start a company and i hadn't really started a company before as far as on my own you know and so when you start a company there's a lot of stuff involved in that you have to there's legal there's finance there's there's payroll there's health care there's all these different things that you have to come you have to figure out and for me because i had done so much heavy networking early in my career and given away so many opportunities you know so many connections and help so many other people out when it was my time to cash in and and when i needed help every single one of those services was a phone call away so i'd call up my buddy who was a lawyer and i said hey but you know i need some contractual help i'm starting my new business i don't have a lot of money right he's like john don't worry about i'll take care of it for you payroll john you know i'll give you six months of free payroll like let's just get you off the ground right and so within a week i had a website i had a fully functioning company and i hadn't really spent too much money or time doing it because all of those relationships that i had had and developed and cultivated over the years through networking really came to fruition so like i said i can't recommend it enough if you're not doing it right now uh i highly recommend you do just get out there just get out there and get comfortable you just the the sheer act of going out and introducing yourself to somebody you don't know and just sticking your hand out and saying hey nice to meet you tell me what you got tell me what you're all about uh that alone will build your confidence and it'll translate over the phone it'll translate in meetings it'll translate in everything else so do some networking all right like i said i'll put together the um the one uh i think it's a two-pager here it's a pdf that i'll put in this post here that you can take a look at and also from the down from the podcast you can go download it off the site as well but get out there start talking to people practice again if you get business out of it fantastic but if not don't just go to events and and hope for the best or or wander around and and and kind of hope that somebody else is going to make an introduction or stick those it's better to not even go because you know you're not you're wasting time there when you could be doing something else like cold calling or something like that so if you're going to go to events or conferences or anything like that go to learn at those conferences but also go to network practice and if you can find some business fantastic so it doesn't look like there's any um any questions for today's session uh but if you do as always like i said hit me up on snapchat instagram facebook any of those any of those mediums uh most of my handle is john m is michael barrows all one word and um yeah make it a great day make it a great day today make it a great week all right try to go out there make somebody happy there's uh there's too much negative next hit negativity in the world going on right now so take it upon yourself to go make somebody happy these days and make them smile at least all right have a great day everybody let's go make it happen later We'll see you next time.

We'll see you next time.