Selling at Networking Events

Speaker 0: i wanna jump in a question that was just hot, and i know you are mostly our marketing people, not necessarily salespeople, but i didn't want to weigh in this one thing. i posted an article today about selling at networking events and talking to people and identifying whether they're in your target audience or not quickly and then moving on if they're not. and i got a lot of pushback from chief marketing officers, my friend trevor here saying, no. you gotta take your time, have those longer conversations. you never know when someone's gonna lead you to another client, etcetera. i just wanted to know what, what have this group weigh in on that situation. so would you, advise someone to have much longer conversations or try and get in and find as many clients as possible? mark?

Speaker 2: i think the answer is, it depends. i don't think there's a one size fits all for networking events. sometimes you meet people and it's a sales opportunity and, hey, we're in the business of closing deals. you know, that's why we go out at night and, you know, spend time away from our families to make a living. so if you can sell, sell. and there's lots of opportunities just to meet people, make connections, and you never know where those things lead. it could be friendships. it could be sales. it could be clients. but, yeah, i mean, i think that, you know, it's kinda like, you know, you just see where the wind blows and you go with it. but, yeah, i don't think there's a hard and fast rule for networking events. i mean, that would be unrealistic.

Speaker 0: fair enough. daniel?

Speaker 1: i've never had, i've never bought from anyone who sold directly at a networking event, and i've also never successfully sold. so i would say that, like mark said, it's about relationship building. and as excited as you may be about the perfect fit, the clients with the perfect demographic and all that, wait till you're home and had a chance to reconnect with them and maybe schedule a call or ask if they're at least looking for those services through a linkedin message or email. so i think it's about connections. and i'll also add that, like, i've met people at networking events that have worked with me a year later just because we stayed connected. right? and i didn't try to make a sale, but maybe they weren't even ready at that time from what i had to offer. right? so, similar to mark's answer, but that's what i would say. aima? i

Speaker 3: think for me, because i've done so much networking over the years, i kinda experienced it i kinda have a different experience. for me, it's always been if i go to a networking event and i know that the people there are looking to learn about marketing, typically, i have been able to successfully sell to them. but also in situations where i've gone to networking events, specifically to learn about wealth management, for example, because i was curious about, oh, you know, how does this work? people have been successful at selling to me. so i find that i think if you go just like online, you know how we always tell people to, go with the targeting, and, you know, try to connect with the people that, you know, match your ideal audience. similar to that, i found more success when i went to, like, very specific networking events versus in the beginning when i used to just go to networking events and try my best because i didn't have any guidance. so that's my thought.

Speaker 0: and i am a fan of all those things. on most networking events, i don't have anything to sell, so i'm just making relationships, connecting people. you know? i got free events like this going on. if anything got to sell, you know, come to my networking event, you know, but those tickets are really inexpensive, so it's not really i guess i'm selling those things at some point come on my networking event. but on the side note, i also suggest you exchange contact information immediately. hey. i let's ex because you're at a networking event exchange right away because it's harder later late in the conversation because you're something else might be interrupt or whatever. and all those interactions, you can follow-up with. so, i'm not suggesting you, you know, tell people to piss off or whatever, but you kinda get to the point. you know? you looking for you sell the specific products to technical people, and this person is a food person, and they're not interested in any of your technical stuff, great. you can make that contact and then you know who they are, but i would move on.

Speaker 2: yeah. craig, i think you know. i mean, we should call a spade here. like, we're always selling regardless where we're at. absolutely.

Speaker 0: i mean,

Speaker 2: there's soft selling, and then there's the hard sales. and i think it sounds like the people on this panel, we're soft sellers. we're just talking to people who are having a conversation. we're trying to you know, people buy things because they like you and they trust you. and the best way to make that happen is just be yourself and maybe they buy right away, maybe they buy six months from now. and i think, you know, the parallel activities, all the content that we're writing on linkedin, everyone's saying i wanna provide value, i wanna provide insight. what we're doing is they're just advertisements. we're just selling by just only pointing to us saying, look. we're smart people. we work for smart companies. you should buy from us. so, you know, to think that networking is anything else than a sales event, i mean, you know, if i had to be really blunt about it it's a little bit, misguided.

Speaker 0: absolutely. i think maybe, i say network marketing, whatever you wanna say, getting sales. i'm always looking for mentors, speakers, people to interview. so it's not always about trying to eventually get a client. i'm trying to build the network bigger and bigger. but as far as i'm concerned, the bigger the network odds are, the more likely i'm gonna get clients. so let's you know, it's all part of the same game.

And with that I'd like to do some final words and Final words over to you mark and where can people find you contact you reach out for you to find out more? LinkedIn for sure Write a lot of content on LinkedIn. I guess that's gonna drive my SEO if the MS Words are on the ball. Just look for mark Evans or mark Evans fractional CMO and my website is marketing spark dot co And do you have any events coming up that you want to talk about? I Should I should be doing better marketing myself? Didn't want to forget anything. No, no, that's it. That's it for now Naima That's funny mark You you know by you being present here that you that's marketing enough. Yeah, there you go Thanks, great for that. That's you're my event. You're my event my vent coordinator. I also find that when I first popped in here I saw that You know mark had his name but also his company name on the bottom So I really like that so I went back and you know did that so he knows what he's doing there For me, I would say my last words would be just thank you for having me here Craig You know Craig mentioned his events. I honestly love love love startup events And I would say that you can find me at the next one that's happening this Thursday So if you come come there, I'll be there and of course you can search up my name social sherpa on YouTube And if you feel so kind Or if you just want to learn more about social selling you'll see a playlist there that teaches you every single step of social selling So if that's something that you want to use for bootstrap marketing, it's there. So again YouTube social sherpa Yeah, stop playing on social and start selling Trevor oh Well, I'm glad that actually did to was able to finally get through to this. I gotta figure what's going on my computer, but um I Have I'm really happy that we were able to do this. I have a sales strategy workshop coming up next week with you Craig actually Thank you very much for doing that And you can find me at marketing genius HQ dot CA That's pretty much about it for me I mean the biggest the one takeaway that I have for everybody who's listening Figure out who it is you want to talk to because once you figure that out then you can figure out about the best messaging That's going to work for them Fantastic and Danielle Important one for sure I will add to that if you're speaking to everyone you're resonating with no one so that's important um I have a series of workshops coming up that are more so for social purpose businesses An organization so I have one I have a few coming up Basically every monday so you can check that out my page is called the good growth company um, we have a free series uh online different topics and Yeah, like I said, um content that actually Speak to your audience, but then has a purpose. They'll just put out content with a ticket with Think of the intention behind all of your content as a as a startup But try to invest in your own personal brand because thought leadership Uh, you can't ignore it a lot of people don't like to put themselves out there But if you're a founder invest in your own content not just your start-up content So that's that's where I'll leave you all tonight. Thank you for having this, uh, Craig That's great advice when we did the investor session last week we had Graham Barlow on and he suggested that When you start start building your personal brand first market Everything is your personal brand because if you sell or leave the company you still have that personal brand rather than Um having to start from scratch again So great advice Daniel All right Toronto starts.com for everything else that we do startup drinks to.com for startup investor drinks all those links will be wherever you're watching this in the show notes or in the podcast and links to everyone here is linked in And whatever links are going to send me tonight or tomorrow morning. I will include in all the show notes What i'm going to do. Thank you everyone for attending. I'm going to break this up into several sessions for the podcast Um and a few different videos as well as one big long video that'll go on our youtube channel And I'll send everyone the links for that. Thank you everyone for attending. Thanks everyone for watching. This has been great And we'll talk to you all soon Take care guys