***6 Actions To Get You Prepared For Networking

When prospecting or getting to higher-level people, most sellers suffer the rejection and futility of cold calling because they hate to ask people they know for help.
Resulting Problem

People lose motivation and waste time making cold calls. They get nowhere slowly. Even worse, the ...
When prospecting or getting to higher-level people, most sellers suffer the rejection and futility of cold calling because they hate to ask people they know for help.
Resulting Problem

People lose motivation and waste time making cold calls. They get nowhere slowly. Even worse, the constant rejection causes them to totally avoid prospecting for new opportunities and clients. This sales call avoidance results in a sales slump that make them feel worse. They become desperate and do start cold calling again with the same negative results and the downward rejection cycle continues.
Prepare Yourself

1. Identify and write down your target accounts on separate sheets of paper or in separate Excel files. You cannot do this in your head.

2. Now, ask yourself, “Whom do I want to get to” and follow-up with “Whom do I know that knows, for example, an IT person at ABC Company?” Keep asking yourself, and sooner than later an answer will come. If you don’t blatantly ask yourself, the ideas won’t come to you - guaranteed. Record these names.

3. Ask others for help! Get over you’re inhibitions. Look to people in your company, to people in the target account, to other complimentary vendors you know. Call a sales person in the target account and say, “Can you help me?”

4. Be specific about the person you want to meet, when asking for help. I.e. “Do you know an IT person at ABC that’s involved in systems, software design?” Or say to a vendor of a complimentary service, “When you sold the security system, who approved it and who got involved with the software interfacing?”

5. Ask your contact to make your introduction – either by phone or in person, not email. If you ask they will probably do it. This will get you past gatekeepers and get your voicemail messages returned. Do not get just a name. Names won’t get you a meeting.

6. Stop cold calling. It’s only busy work, and worse, it’s a waste of time. It either makes you feel you’re doing something useful, which you’re not, or it makes you feel nobody wants what you’ve got to offer, which again is not true.

And now I invite you to learn more.