Networking for Sales Success: Your Key to Business Growth
By Tom Boogher, CPSM, & Richard Cilley, CPSM

If you could make positive changes in just one area of your sales process, what would provide you with the biggest long-term payoff? If you are like most A/E/C firms, the biggest bang for your investment of time and money would come from increased, organized networking with your clients and your peers.

First, what's the one thing every design and construction professional in the world dislikes the most: the Square One, out-of-nowhere cold call on a prospect for a project. Coming from ground zero to try and create a relationship over the telephone in a few minutes that is at least warm enough to warrant an appointment is tough. You face a lot of indifference if not outright rejection. Cold calling is one of the worst, most psychologically debilitating activities around-even for seasoned professional egos. Since there's no way to totally eliminate cold calling, what's the best way for you to drastically cut down on the number of painful cold calls you have to make? Networking! The more people you know, the greater the chance you will have a partial and indirect contact with the person you are calling, through a mutual organization, association, or acquaintance. It makes the atmosphere so much warmer to have some connection somehow.

Networking brings more contacts into your life. You find more people who know you and, hopefully, like you. More contacts mean more leads on work appropriate for you and for others. More leads convert into greater opportunities for work for everyone you know and, ultimately, into more projects for you and your firm. All things being equal, people will do business with and refer business to people they know, they like, and they trust. The more people you get to share in your communities, the more opportunities you have to develop relationships of trust and respect.

What Is Networking?
At its simplest level, networking is just helping others. It is the most powerful form of indirect marketing available. Networking is becoming an active member of a community, a group with shared interests, and helping the members of the community prosper. You probably already belong to a number of communities, however peripheral your involvement, ranging from alumni associations to neighborhood watch groups to volunteer organizations like the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society to golf foursomes to yoga classes to professional societies, and in each of these communities there are people who need your time, energy, and ideas, and people with ideas and information that could help you if only you would take the time and energy to get to know them and understand how you could help them succeed as well.

This has been described many times as The Favor Bank: If you help others, you make deposits in the bank so that later you can make withdrawals. Keeping a positive balance in The Favor Bank requires not only generosity but also a conscious effort to build up your bank account by finding out ways you can help others and letting them know how they can help you. As John Lennon sang at the end of the Abbey Road album: "And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make."

The Golden Rule of Networking
The Golden Rule of Networking is: "Give help, leads, and support unto others as you would have others give help, leads, and support unto you." How do you know what help, leads, and support others need? By investing enough time and energy into working with them to find out what their business challenges are, what sort of work appeals to them, what their goals are and how can you help them achieve them. In turn, you can educate them about your firm and your goals. As well, networking gets you involved with groups that can enrich your life and make your city or town a better place to live.

Overcoming Objections: "OK, however,..."
How can I know that networking actually works? Just think about how you feel when someone makes an extra effort to help you. Are you grateful? Do you feel a certain amount of loyalty to that person for treating you as a valued acquaintance? Don't you want to reward them in return? The philosopher William James said that the deepest human need is to be appreciated. Being appreciated reverberates positively with everyone.

I'm new in town and I don't know anyone. As a newcomer to any city you have a great opening to meet new friends, join communities, and introduce yourself in any situation. "Old hands" love to offer newcomers help and opinions about everything under the sun, and you can be the recipient of this positive energy. Remember, by choosing to live in their town you have validated their choice in living there. Ask the people at your firm about organizations and societies you should join and start your list of people you need to meet. And within those associations, societies, or organizations you do decide to join, do yourself and your firm a favor and get involved and be active--this means attending all events and meetings, getting on a committee, or serving in a leadership role.

I kind of feel like planning this whole networking thing is just using people. Then you should concentrate on how you are helping others and building communities to help them realize their goals. Networking is in reality a reasonably selfless activity with great payoffs.

I'm not really a people person. If by "a people person" you mean naturally outgoing and confident, then most people aren't, and it isn't required to be successful at networking. Consistent effort and a motivation to help others are really all that's required to succeed in building up a network of friends and acquaintances.

I just don't have the time for all this. So how much time are you spending on sales and marketing now? Is it enough? Has it been productive? If you are going to succeed, you have to have an approach to sales and marketing and organize the time you spend. Networking is one of the most productive ways to use the time you have because it can be integrated into many of your other community and personal activities.

Building Up Your Network
The most important way to begin to expand your network is to schedule and implement time set aside for networking.

• Make a list of people you already know slightly or by sight who you think would be important additions to your network. Find out whom you do know that can provide an introduction.
• Every day, make a conscious effort to call people and put yourself into places where you can meet people at meetings, luncheons, and public events.
• Call up people and ask them out to lunch. Tom Peters says, "You are who you hang with." Find the most interesting people you know and hang with them. You will enjoy this and learn a lot.
• When you are with people, LISTEN TO THEM FIRST. Ask them about their business, about their successes and, even more importantly, their failures, and find out what they have learned from them. What kind of help would they welcome?
• When people ask about your business, tell them what kinds of help you need and the sorts of projects and contracts you and your firm want. Remember, they can't help you unless they know the kind of help you want.
• Keep in touch. When people help you, send them a thank-you note as soon as you can. A personally handwritten note shows you really care.
• As a corollary to the old adage that you never end a sales conversation without asking for the work, never end a networking conversation without asking, "What can I do to help you today?"

The Necessity of Networking
Why is networking so important? Why don't our firm's unique design talents just "sell themselves"?  In the professional services world, you only have two things to sell: solutions and the experience of working with you. It's not enough in the tremendously competitive A/E/C markets just to have highly competent professionals with innovative solutions to difficult technical problems any more. That's just the price of admission to the marketplace. In order to thrive, you have to make working with your firm a great experience as well. It's always a better experience when you work with people you know and like and a key to finding those folks is networking. It's a fact: Networking works!

About the Authors
Richard Cilley, CPSM, is CEO of Transcendent Consultants, and Tom Boogher, CPSM, is Executive Vice President of Professional Service Industries, Inc. (PSI—www.psiusa.com). Richard and Tom have a combined 50 plus years of experience in marketing and sales within the A/E/C industry.

This is the second column in a new monthly series. Hosted by SMPS' Business Development Institute, this column will provide tips, best practices, and suggestions on how to excel at sales and client development. Remember that nothing happens in business until you make a sale! The Business Development Institute is a Specific Interest Group of SMPS with the goal to promote, inform, and educate the A/E/C industry on the importance of sales and the necessity for business development best practices.

Your comments, feedback, suggestions and questions are encouraged. Please drop either editor an e-mail with any input. You can reach Tom Boogher at tom.boogher@psiusa.com or Richard Cilley at rcc@transcendentconsultants.com.

To register for an upcoming session of the Business Development Best Practices Workshop, visit www.smps.org/interestgroups/bdi.htm. [ return to top ]