How to leverage LinkedIn for Event Networking

First let us look at some issues while we try to socialize or network with key executives in events

Remembering people

Remembering and recognizing people by face and name becomes challenge specially in events. Most of us would have experienced this embarrassing moment where someone looks familiar but we are not sure about the person’s name, or company or the details. This is quite common when it comes to attending events. Remembering 100’s of people by name and face is a special skill set not everyone possess or not everyone’s brain is computed in such a way to recognize name, company and their face

Traditional follow-up:

You an extrovert, always likes to socialize with people in events but you still follow traditional way of exchanging business cards, converting them into excel sheet and then follow-up with them to stay connected, then let us look at the disadvantages. We make sure to record all details about the person but do not save their photo in the excel sheet. The leads to a situation where you will soon forget the person and what you discussed with that particular person

So how do we overcome this. Is there way to socialize with people and easily recognize them and stay connected? The answer is YES. LinkedIn offers a great opportunity to achieve this in simple following steps

1)    Create a group in LinkedIn with the event name as the group title

2)    The moment you exchange business card, just open the groups click on the invite button and request them to identify themselves in LinkedIn, just add them into the group.

3)    Make sure to write about your meeting and a short summary of the discussion in the invitation and patiently wait till they accept the invitation

4)    Staying connected is the key. If they still did not accept your invitation, politely remind them during your email follow-up.

5)    Once they accept, always say “Thank you” with a personal touch

6)    Initiate group discussion, keep the group active

7)    Finally, if you attending next event, ask the group how many are attending and make sure to meet them

Please share your feedback. If you like this article, please also visit my book, you find many interesting topics https://lnkd.in/fPvBbCN

TAKING CONTROL OF CUSTOMERS THROUGH VALUE SELLING

The ever unsolved puzzle in the sales world is how to influence customer decision towards our favor. This is one costly technique any organization would like to afford but the question is, are there really techniques available to solve this puzzle? The answer is yes. The distance between urgency of the requirement and availability of budget determines the length of the sales cycle.

This in-between situation always pushes customer to over- educate themselves, it creates curiosity in them to choose the best, and that drives them to learn, listen and look for reviews and feedback from other customers. This situation has always forced the customers to a confused state to choose one solution out of surplus competition.

Once the customer reach this stage, they are no more interested in stories. They clearly know what they wanted but they are not sure who can provide them the solution. Here is where one can take control of the customers through value selling. Value selling is positioning of your solutions value through their pain-points and making them realize the return on the Investment.

Value selling is like a mirror, where you have to reflect your customers thoughts, make them understand you are aware of their problem, once the trust is established, handhold them to future. It is a story of past and future, where one substantiates the loss of the past with facts and numbers, while presenting the hopes of the future with the return on Investment.

The below are the key important things to focus while you work on value selling.

• Company Name:
• Organization Goals:
• Decision Makers KPI for the year:
• Area of problem:
• Pain-points of the problem:
• Estimated loss of human efforts towards the problem:
• Estimated loss of profits towards the problem:
• Over-all estimated loss due to problem:
• Desired state - what if story?:
• Your solution connecting to desired state:
• Value-added services beyond addressing pain points:
• Savings from human efforts:
• Savings from profits:
• Savings from value added services:
• Over-all Return on Investment:

Once you explained the customer, it is equally important to substantiate the story again with relevant success stories and customer references. The below are the key important things to focus while you work on success stories

• Reference Customer Name:
• Customer Industry:
• Vertical:
• Geography:
• Revenue:
• Employee size:
• Organization Goals:
• Decision Makers Key KPI for the Year:
• Area of problem:
• Pain-points of the problem:
• Estimated loss of human efforts towards the problem:
• Estimated loss of profits due to problem:
• Over-all estimated loss due to problem:
• Story on your solution connecting the desired state:
• Savings from human efforts:
• Savings from profits:
• Savings from value added services:
• Over-all Retun on Investment:
• Contact Name:
• Phone Number:
• Preferred time to contact:
• Customer Testimonials:

The art of selling is to keep the customer engaged through this phase and positioning your solution at the best of your efforts. All his questions need to be answered in a satisfying manner. Every answer to his question around the deal need to be tied back to his ultimate requirement, pain points and the ROI proving the real value of the engagement. The more the questions from the customer, the more the chances to answer. The more you answer his questions, the more the customer gets confidence. The more the customer gets confidence, the more the customer gains trust. The more the customer trust, the more the chances for you to question back the customer on the decision, the more you question the customer on decision, the more you become influencer. The more you influence the customer, the more the deal is in favor of you.

UNDERSTANDING KPI, DECISION MAKING AND BUDGET FLOW KEY FOR SUCCESSFUL SELLING

The one key formulae every sales team is aspiring to have is to understand the time, efforts and money spent on closing a deal and definitely to understand the length of the sales process. To arrive at any such understanding, the knowledge is very important

 1)     KPI and Decision Making 2)     Budget

 KPI and Decision Making:

Every Decision Maker will have KPIs to achieve and every KPI will have two components 1) Meets Expectation: Focus on core expectation 2) Exceeds Expectation: Focus on things that helps improve the performance of the core expectations. 

For example: Meets Expectations: In manufacturing companies, managing the production unit will always be the core expectation, so when the machineries are properly taken care and when the employees working in the production unit delivered their work expectations, then they meet expectation.

Exceeds Expectations: In the same manufacturing companies, when the machineries and employees were able to achieve expected results and if they were able to identify methods on how to improve the efficiency of the machines and how to improve the production of the employees, then they are complimenting factors that lead to exceed expectations.

Any decision maker’s ultimate focus will be to achieve his expectations first and then focus on things that will help him to exceed the expectations.  From selling point of view, it is very important to know, the services/ solutions you sell creates urgency to meet his meets expectation criteria (or) to exceed expectations. Anything that creates urgency to meet expectations first creates urgency to buy and it becomes easy to sell. Only when the expectations are met and can be met, the urgency to invest into something that helps exceed expectations

Budget:

Now let us understand how the budget works. Most of the organization expects every LoB’s heads or the decision makers to present their budget requirement by third quarter of every year for the next financial year. This includes the both core business and things that compliments the core business. The management then decides on the allocation of the budget according to the business demands on the first quarter of next financial year. Most of the budget requirement will focus on the core business and very minimal business case will go for complimenting factor.

Even the most compelling solution that exactly meets the KPI of the decision maker will go through slow decision making process due to limited budget availability. So it very important to understand how much is the budget available and how the decision maker will handle the budget. If you are already in customers allocated budget (or) waiting to get in his business case to get allocated. Developing this ability is very important as the time spent on one opportunity has equal chance of missing another opportunity.

Please share your thoughts on the same

Technology cannot disrupt the emotions in Sales

I am one among the modern sales person to believe someday technology would hijack the entire sales process. I belong to a generation where I saw e-commerce changed every organization’s sales model. E-commerce slowly emerged as a mandatory sales model for all types of business. From small scale businesses to enterprises, online store fronts has become an important source of lead generation and this shows the power of technology

Two weeks back, I was invited to attend one of the successful business’s 20 year celebration. During the celebration, their long standing customers and partners were invited. The company is one of the best and highly advanced technology company which breathes only technology. So, I was curiously waiting to see someone speak how technology has changed the way they sell and how it helped them to improve sales but in contrast, all their customers were discussing only about their experiences with staffs in the organization. In fact, I see them recalling the names of their ex-colleagues and memorizing the moments, how they helped solved the problems.

This made me realize there is no technology or digital revolution that can substitute emotions. It is emotions that identifies problems, It is emotions that pushes one to look for solutions, It is emotions that converts the solution into needs and it is emotions that play a crucial role in decision making. If I summarize, I see four stages here which is problem, solution, need and decision making and if you compare it with sales process, it is pre-suspect, suspect, prospect and customer. They align perfectly to each other. So, the technology should remain only as a platform to connect human emotions.

It is 100% evident that technology creates value and emotions creates satisfaction. You just cannot sell only value without creating an experience that leads to customer satisfaction. They both should work hand-in-hand. Technology can save a human lives but it is emotions that drives him to live and not live. Please share your thoughts

Right audience, always a wonderful motivation for Entrepreneurs

After every struggle, the only biggest need for any entrepreneur is “motivation”.  This word would mean a lot for any entrepreneur. In my experience, I have seen two kinds of situation with every entrepreneur 1) Before success and 2) After Success

Before Success is a period, where every entrepreneur feels really great about his idea. He wants to share his idea with every person he meets and gain confidence about his idea but most of the times he may not be aware of the fact that this is the toughest period of his entrepreneurship because in most cases the situation will offer them only a playground with a great story teller and bored listener. 

Before Success is just not a period of time, it is also a time frame that decides the fate of any business. It demands enormous motivation for an entrepreneur to still feel his idea is fresh, innovative and gives him confidence that his idea will win over the market. The most important thing in this period is to find the right audience (or) right listener. The right audience (or) a listener here need not be a customer but can just be a well-wisher, who gives good guidance, different perspective of thoughts, healthy argument and finally some recognition for his ideas and thoughts

Some of such great brilliant ideas never come to light simply because they were rejected by a bored listener (or) simply they were demotivated. So the most important step for any successful entrepreneurship journey is to find the right audience to share the story. But the big question is where to find people who listen to the story. We must thank the internet, social media and the networking platforms. Start-ups and entrepreneurs should make use of such platforms. Professional networking sites like LinkedIn offers Groups and Community to create and start any discussion. Don’t get surprised even if Bill Gates likes your discussion. Similarly, successful entrepreneurs clearly understand this problem and they are creating multiple networking platforms like TIE, Women Entrepreneurs and etc. The specialty of such platforms is, it just not only get you to the right audience but also it gives an exposure to investors. They are highly managed, monitored and motivated by a good crowd of investors, what more an entrepreneur wants if his story listener is an investor?

Do I need to mention about After Success period? After success is a period, where successful entrepreneur summarizes his successful journey for 1000^th time to a group of curious listenersJ

Best practices, a unique selling point

Becoming a monopoly in any business has become near impossible in today’s competitive environment. To stay sustain and to win over competition, there is a need for Unique Selling Point. Cost to product not just carries the cost of manufacturing but also a lot of other things including, HR, operations, procurement, profitability and etc. So, each and every unit inside every organization is inter connected and they will have direct impact on pricing and profitability. Even a single employee’s salary could affect the pricing and profitability.

So, it is always important to understand what kind of best practices could be implemented and what best practices are being adapted by your competition. The best practices can be in anything; they can be something operations, applications, hardware, storage, security, network, infrastructure, mobility, social media, cloud, process& methodologies and etc. It is not mandatory to follow the same but it is important to stay updated and adapt the best things that could suit your organization

For example, PMP, ITIL are followed by thousands of organizations. Because, they follow, they were able to save millions of dollars, increased productivity and sales which in turn mean better quality, increased quantity, higher profitability and finally less cost to customers. Lesser cost to customers is always an increased customer satisfaction.

QQBP - Competition Analysis

Most innovative solutions born never reached the needy customers successfully due to ignorance on how to overcome various forms of competition. A decade ago competition was found only between organizations, they had to mostly compete with quality and quantity but the route to customer was always unique, it was always unanimously through distributors and retailers. But today’s online world created competition even on the route to customers through online retails. This revolutionary change brings lot of changes in the traditional way of selling.  To add to it, innovation and technology is itself becoming competition to any business. For example Smart phones, Tablets, Social Media, Cloud were all trend setting innovations but if you closely watch they are becoming a tool for competition, making them a compelling business strategy to adapt to stay relevant in business. No businesses ever thought online or mobile or cloud will become a separate industry but the reality is they left no choice but to adapt them for survival.

So the competition here can be divided into two

•  Business to business competition
• Competition created by adapting to innovation

Business to business competition:

Mostly business that offer similar products or service become competition to each other. This competition can be easily overcome by creating a "unique value proposition" to customers. Unique Value Proposition can be in any of the following Quality, Quantity, Benefits and Price.

Quality: Most Technology companies use quality as a value proposition to customers. Use of Quality materials, expertise skills and advanced  futuristic technology in production.

Example: Apple v/s Samsung

Quantity: Retail companies use quantity as a value proposition to customers. Two products at the cost of one (One + One offer)

For Example: Target v/s Walmart

Benefits: Mobile companies use benefits as a value proposition to customers.  Google store (or) Microsoft Market place for applications

For Example:Microsoft play store v/s Google play store

Price:  Most online companies use Price as a value proposition to customers.

For Example: Online retails v/s Retails

It is very critical for any company to understand the competition. Scoring and realizing your own organization with competition will prepare yourself to overcome competition.

Sales person in every organization should be made aware the above. One who has the knowledge on the QQBP analysis win over the competition easily

This exercise will not only help you to realize your competition but also gives the luxury to choose your competition

	Customer Reviews and Market
Company Name	Quality (/5)	Quantity	Benefits (/5)	Price
Apple i-phone	5	1	4	100$
Competitor-1 Samsung	4	1	4	70$
Competitor-2 Micromax	3	1	4	30$