Once you have established and further developed your professional relationships, you need to present your organisation’s interests and objectives to business contacts. This involves doing promotional activities to entice customers and giving presentations to inform colleagues and peers outside the organisation. Doing these relies on you understanding your business contacts and being able to communicate effectively.
Like with all activities, you also need to seek feedback in order to improve. Informing the relevant personnel in your organisation about any issues you encountered allows them to give you advice. This can help you identify areas you can improve on and give you specific techniques you can apply in future networking events.
Promoting to Customers
As discussed before, ineffective marketing and low customer loyalty can be barriers to your organisation’s objectives. Promotional activities can help you reach your target customers and entice them to buy your products or services. Promotional activities include:
This activity helps you reach a larger audience by advertising your products or services through television, radio, newspapers, magazines, billboards, and social media. The medium you choose would depend on the customers you want to attract. Promoting on social media is one of the most cost-effective methods, and it allows you to connect with potential customers without trying to sell them something in an obvious way. Additionally, you can receive feedback from this type of promotional activity directly from customers who send messages or by monitoring their comments on posts.
This activity involves sending mail, emails, text messages, pamphlets, and brochures to customers. This allows you to build a relationship directly with customers, but since this may be unsolicited contact, take note of any privacy regulations that apply. To receive feedback on your direct marketing activities, you can attach surveys to the mail you send.
This activity involves directly communicating with one customer at a time to build a relationship. The customer can ask questions, and you can convince them to try the product or service directly. This is one of the most expensive and time-consuming activities, but it can create more meaningful connections and bring in loyal customers. Since this activity relies on direct communication, you can ask for feedback directly from the customer.
This activity helps build the organisation’s image and makes a good impression on potential customers. This involves press releases, press conferences, media interviews, sponsorships, and word-of-mouth referrals. It can lend your organisation more credibility, as customers will be receiving this information from third parties such as media outlets. Public relations can also be used for damage control. It helps the organisation improve its reputation if they receive negative publicity. You can check if your public relations activities have been effective by making use of customer surveys or by monitoring website and social media traffic. For guidelines on conducting public relations activities, you can refer to the Public Relations Institute of Australia’s code of ethics.
This activity helps increase revenue for short periods of time. Sales promotions include coupons, discounts, contests, free samples, and trials. This type of activity attracts more customers, introduces new products and services, and can help clear out inventories. You can receive feedback from customers by asking them to answer online and written surveys about the products and services.
Further Reading
For information on how to market on different online platforms, you may access the link below.
Websites, social media and digital marketing | Business Queensland
Presenting to Business Contacts
Presenting your organisation’s interests to other types of contacts can be done through formal and informal presentations. Whether you are giving a formal presentation to a group of contacts or giving an informal sales pitch at a networking event, you need to communicate effectively to align your organisation’s goals with your contacts’ goals.
Before giving your presentation, you need to plan and prepare for it. You may find the following guidelines useful:
Identify what you want to achieve by giving a presentation. Consider if you want your audience to become informed or to take any actions so you can tailor your presentation accordingly.
Research who will be listening to your presentation and where it will be held. Everyone has different interests and prior knowledge about the topic you will be talking about. You can also check the details of the event to see how formal your presentation needs to be.
Based on your objectives, decide on the topic and the main points you will be presenting. Ask relevant personnel in your organisation for guidelines on what you can talk about and do additional research about the industry. This makes sure that you do not reveal any confidential information, as well as establishes your credibility as a reliable source of information.
If you can have visual aids, prepare them in advance. Ensure that the photos, videos, and graphics you will be using are appropriate for the topic and the event. If your visual aids include text, make sure that these are readable for everyone.
Before the event, practise your presentation. This familiarises you with your topic without relying on reading from a script, and it allows you to time your presentation and adjust when necessary.
When you finally give your presentation, keep the following in mind:
Avoid rushing or dragging out your presentation. Try to stay under the time limit provided to you, but do not speak too quickly. You also need to remember to control your tone of voice. Keep it formal or informal, depending on the context of the presentation. If the event is casual, you can try to include humour into your presentation to engage the audience but remember to be mindful of the jokes you say.
Remember that aside from verbal communication, body language is something you need to be aware of. Avoid crossing your arms or slouching and try to appear open to the audience. You can utilise hand gestures to emphasise certain points and walk around on the stage to maintain the audience’s interest.
After the presentation, the audience may have questions. Scheduling time for a question-and-answer session allows you to clear up any misunderstandings and helps the audience understand your points even more. When someone asks a question, listen carefully and summarise their question to ensure you fully understand it. If you do not know how to answer, just be honest and ask if you can follow up on it. Take note of their name and contact details so you can answer their question at a later time.
Formal networks are easily identifiable, as they have an organisational culture attached to them (Wierzgac, 2018). Examples of formal networks are associations, professional conferences, and management groups. These usually rely on a hierarchy, where the leaders of the network manage how the information reaches the other members.
Meanwhile, informal networks have no hierarchies and are structured around the social ties the members have with each other (Van Kempen, 2015). You can meet contacts through any means, even at places outside of professional events. This type of network is characterised by its give-and-take nature. Regardless of their seniority, every member can share information freely.
Before any networking event, remember to prepare and plan for the following:
- Your message according to organisational objectives and policies
- People you want to contact at the event
- What materials you need (business cards, brochures, etc.)
Formal networking events include conferences, seminars, and professional meetups, while informal networking events can occur anywhere, even in your personal life. Regardless of the type of networking event you go to, opportunities to connect with potential contacts are often fleeting. This means you need to be prepared to get your point across as quickly as possible.
The way you interact with potential contacts at these events can be structured similar to making presentations. You need to have an objective for interacting with others and adjust the way you communicate according to who you talk to. When considering how to make your message brief:
Summarise your key points
The longer you take to get to your point, the less impact your message has. If you say too much but do not get through your main point, you would have wasted the opportunity. When speaking, do not rush, but shorten your key points as much as you possibly can. Always consider how you can say something with fewer words.
You can evaluate how effective your message is by considering whether you have answered the following: who, what, when, where, and why. If you are preparing for the networking event and some of the information is not related to answering these questions, it can safely be left out.
Avoid fillers
Avoid saying any phrases that could be considered fillers. Apart from the usual, such as ‘um’ and ‘like’, you should remember to avoid the following:
Phrases like these add nothing to what you are saying and can even frustrate those listening to you. Instead of using fillers, pause to gather your thoughts. In general, try to speak in short sentences, pick your words carefully, and make sure everything you say has an actual impact on the listener.
Divide your message into categories
Try to assume that you will get five minutes with each person you contact at the event. You can divide your message into the following:
- 30 seconds to introduce yourself and your organisation
- 30 seconds to try to gain common ground
- One minute to discuss your organisation and its goals
- Two minutes to discuss your key points
- One minute to make a call to action
If you categorise your message into segments, you can develop a strategy for each of the segments. You can go through them all in sequence, knowing that you will safely have time to cover everything that you need to say.
Own Image
Apart from your message, you need to prepare and manage your own image for the networking event:
- Be enthusiastic and try to raise others’ energy levels, too.
- Personalise your message instead of just reading from a script prepared by your organisation.
- Use humour appropriately.
- Mention and refer suitable individuals to your potential contacts.
- Use an appropriate amount of eye contact with those you are speaking to.
- Know when to stop talking about business-related topics.
Attendees
One of the most critical things you need to know is who will be at a networking event. Research who has been invited, what organisations they belong to, what knowledge they may have about your organisation, their biases, their current clients and suppliers, and whether they have any vested interested in what you can offer them.
Usually, you will know everyone in your local business community reasonably well – especially if you are meeting with a specific industry group. However, be careful not to assume too much. You may find that new people are attending the event, so always prepare.
If you know certain people are attending from a given organisation that you want to meet, take the initiative to know their organisation well. Look at:
- Current news related to their organisation.
- Issues that they are known to be having.
- What their overall strategies and plans are.
You can find this information usually through their website or news articles related to the industry. When you have planned your message and have an idea of who will be attending the event, consider what your other objectives are. What else do you want to achieve at the event? Consider the following questions:
- Do you want them to just get information about your organisation?
- Do you want to make a sale?
- Do you want them to refer you to their contacts?
- Do you want to be offered positions at their organisations?
After your efforts to establish and maintain relationships with your business contacts, you must inform the relevant personnel within your organisation of any issues that exist. This will let them know if they need to address these, as well as help you evaluate how successful your networking processes were.
To identify who you should notify about these issues, refer to your organisation’s policies and procedures or ask someone within the organisation, such as a supervisor. You should also use these guidelines to decide if you will inform them of the issues through writing or during a meeting.
Before sending an email or scheduling a meeting to discuss, compile the issues into a list. Some other issues you may have encountered in your professional relationships, regardless of whether you collaborated with them or not, are:
- Business contacts’ lack of interest in the organisation
- Not enough business contacts
- Many business contacts, but your relationships with them are not strong enough
- Business contacts do not have the resources to help your organisation
You can also describe the specific events or situations where the issues arose to help them understand better
Everything you do in your business requires you to receive feedback to understand how well you did. You can try to accomplish something, but unless you know whether you achieved it or not, you will not be able to tell how successful you actually were.
Evaluating your networking activities requires you to seek and receive feedback. Feedback will help you improve both your networking and presentation skills. You can ask for feedback from your business contacts:
- Suppliers. You can provide surveys to evaluate the business as a client.
- Customers. You can provide a way for them to leave online and written reviews about the business’s products and services.
- Colleagues. You can ask for feedback verbally during formal feedback sessions or informal discussions.
Once you have informed the relevant personnel about issues with your professional relationships, ask for their suggestions on areas you can improve on.
Consider your message and the manner in which you delivered it. Think if you were able to meet the needs of your organisation and your potential business contacts. One of the things you need to seek feedback for is how you communicated your message during networking events.
Feedback will tell you whether:
- Your information was accurate and sufficient.
- Your message was appropriate for the audience.
- Your information was beneficial to the organisation.
- You were able to connect and establish rapport with contacts.
- Your message had impact on listeners.
- You used visual aids effectively.
Apart from the personnel specified by the policies and procedures, you may be able to seek feedback from others within the organisation. Find colleagues who have experience in networking and can give you advice about the skills you need to develop. Ask them specific questions so they can give you helpful, concrete suggestions.
Always treat feedback as positive and constructive. Ensure that you do not get defensive when you are receiving feedback, rather treat it as something designed to let you know just how well you established and maintained your professional relationships. Feedback is not about destroying your efforts. Rather, it is aimed at reinforcing what you do well and making you aware of any areas of improvement.
Once you have received feedback, consider how you can apply the suggestions to your professional relationships. Improvement is a continuous process, so implement the techniques you learned when interacting with current and potential contacts and ask for feedback from your supervisors and colleagues whenever you need to.
Further Reading
You can access the link below for more detailed steps on seeking feedback.
Watch
Simon Sinek on Seeking Honest Feedback to Get Better
For many people, networking can be intimidating, as it is something that usually does not come naturally. Everyone has varying levels of socialising that they feel comfortable with. However, regardless of how good you are at socialising, you need to become more at ease with business-related social situations in order to become a more effective networker. Networking is necessary to promote you and your organisation to contacts and seek their assistance in achieving certain goals.
Before networking, you must identify your objective for doing so. It should serve some purpose, such as helping your organisation reach its business development objectives. With this in mind, you have to research other organisations and individuals who will be able to help you and the events where you can connect with them. Interacting with them for the first time requires you to practise etiquette and communicate effectively to make a good impression.
After meeting business contacts and agreeing on channels of communication with them, you must then continue to work on developing the relationship by establishing rapport through different communication techniques. Issues can arise in your relationships with these contacts, so you must identify them to figure out how to resolve them. One of the techniques to address these issues is negotiation, where you and the other party work together to resolve any conflicts. If you cannot resolve these issues on your own, you can consult with others and seek their advice.
To further improve your professional relationships and ensure that your contacts know what your organisation wants to achieve, you must develop your message. The content of your message and how you convey it depends on who you are communicating it to. When communicating with customers, you can take advantage of different promotional activities, while communicating with colleagues and peers from other organisations can be done through formal and informal presentations. The methods to present your message should be planned according to what your target audience needs and the context of the message.
Networking is a skill that you must continuously improve, so seeking feedback from others is necessary to identify what areas you need to improve on. Informing the relevant people about the issues in your professional relationships allows them to give you suggestions. Taking this feedback and applying it will allow you to build onto your professional relationships and improve your communication skills.
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