What do most sales people fail to do?

But despite understanding that loose principle I had no plan or strategy to leverage it. Its amazing really that having been successful in sales for over 20 years in the corporate world I failed to realise a plan to maximise the strongest sales force and greatest resource of leads available to me, ie my colleagues contacts and associates.

Don’t get me wrong I worked with the buyers and senior contacts I knew wherever I could, and successfully created openings for companies that they may never normally have got anywhere near, but I never sat down and recognised the power of  at any single point in my whole career.

Until now that is.

Why one company wins business where another fails

I was talking to two business club members recently and one told me he wasn’t getting any business from his networking or contacts within the business club, while the other said he was doing extremely well from the same resource.

So what was the difference?

Did one have a sexy product or service, a ridiculous price structure, or a massive company infrastructure to maximise his networking potential?

Same industry sector, same meetings, same people

So what is the difference between success and failure?

I ask anyone going to a business event to ask themselves the 3 following questions.

1. Do you go to the event, bump into 4 or 5 people, decide they won’t be buying your product, have a drink then go home?
2. Do you take a look at the guest list, decide that there isn’t a company attending which will want to buy your product and service so don’t bother going?
3. Do you simply not bother going to business events?

The single biggest mistake in my view is to misunderstand the power of people. Like it or not people buy from people NOT companies.

Everyone attending that business event which you decided would be fruitless, will know 100’s of people who will be interested in your business service or product.

If there are 50 people there the combined contacts in that room will be well over 20,000.

Someone in that room will know a decision maker from your number one sales target for the year.

So knowing that principle does that change how you might answer those 3 questions in the future.

How do you leverage the opportunity?

The 500 Club is built on word of mouth, networking, and referral. One of my key roles is to connect people using the same principles we have used to develop our own business.

We have built The 500 Club at Derby County Football Club from scratch to over 60 members in a few months.

But guess what? When we first started the project I didn’t know anyone at the football club.

Someone made a referral for me and as a result I made an appointment and now we have an excellent working relationship with Tom Glick and Tim Hinchey the Executive Directors of the club, who are two people who clearly understand the power of referral marketing.

In the last 4 months I connected various people who I had met and trusted and watched as business opportunities began to develop from these relationships.

Creating business opportunities between companies when you do not work for either of them is an interesting principle, and something most sales people would find totally alien. After all that’s not what you get paid for is it?

Satisfying though it is, the real light bulb moment occurred for me while working with a good colleague of mine Rob Brown of Referral Institute fame.

The material he was working with was dynamite and it suddenly occurred to me that while I was having success creating opportunity for members and non-members alike we were missing the bigger picture by a football pitch.

So what is it all about?

Imagine having 10 people in our business community working the way I do. Not simply looking to develop their own business but working together with trusted and respected colleagues to share the 100’s of business contacts everyone has in their network database, in a professional and thought through strategy.

This is not the same as touting someone else’s business cards and asking them to give your mate a try. This is about creating a strategy in small groups and looking for genuine business opportunities with mutual benefits between colleagues from companies you know and trust.

Of course the more people and companies you know intimately the easier this becomes, but then that’s the purpose of having a business club.

So what next?

The 500 Club works at a number of different levels.

There is a lot of talk in the public sector of ‘partnership’. We use the phrase ‘community’. The 500 Club is creating a business community (offline and online)

Ostensibly it is a high profile corporate level business club connected too and working with major sport brands. As such we have a number of recognisable branded corporate members.

We provide larger business events with topical speakers to create an active networking audience, which appeals to the corporate marketplace.

However behind that we are creating smaller ‘Special Interest Groups’ – industry specific to share ideas and promote professional referral marketing.

Clearly the client who buys printed marketing material will have website issues, online marketing needs, design and branding challenges, visual communication requirements, digital marketing and telecommunications opportunities and a whole lot more.

Our marketing group can offer solutions to all these problems and many more besides.

Far better to help your clients from within a team of trusted colleagues. After all you not only have access to your colleagues expertise, services and products that will be of benefit to them, but you now also have a structured referral programme of connections which could be invaluable to your client.

Our eventual aim is to share knowledge between interest groups within a clear strategic plan. Then we will have duplicated my individual efforts to drive new business opportunity 10 fold and more.

All of a sudden producing £1,000,000 of referral business now seems a relatively small target.

So who wants to share £1,000,000 new business?