Nationwide Networking Special Report - Accessing Corporate Connections and Establishing Your Internal Sales Forces 
As business owners all around the world flock to break into the financially lucrative “Corporate Market”, they are failing to establish and sustain appropriate sales networks to help close the deals being put on the table.
Those who take heed in the basic fundamentals and work with a strategic plan in mind, will blow away their competition and become the fore runner every time.
However, businesses who fail to cover the basics and oversimplify the networking processes involved, will cause detrimental impact to their business through the potential loss of credibility and sustained future involvement with the organisation in mind.
To ensure you put your business at the front of the pack and win the contract each time, a clear strategic networking plan needs to be put in place considering the following:
Establishing your internal sales networks
In our gun ho world in the view of a quick sale of possibly gigantic proportions, business development managers and sales reps are going straight for the throat when pitching their product/service at our fellow corporate allies.
Targeting the top of the organisational food chain (the decision maker) they fail to establish their internal forces first, the internal forces of whom will affect and ultimately persuade the decision maker’s final say.
Identify Their Organisational Structure
Draw your perceived organisational structure of the company in mind you plan to target, including names and positions of its employees, decision makers and where possible key influencers.
This information can typically be accessed via the company’s website on the “About Us” or “Meet the Team” web pages. The larger the organisation the easier it is to access online via different searches through Google and or Ninemsn.
Identify Your Own Social Network
Once you have drawn the organisational structure and have in mind the individuals surrounding the decision maker (the influencers) you wish to target, draw your own personal and business networks on a sheet of a5 paper.
Identify all of your business colleagues, their roles, past employment, future business projects and experience, even including family members. From there you will identify who your own social networks are connected to.
Most likely you will find a connection to your target organisation through a colleagues existing or past client base therefore giving you a distinct path into the organisation in question.
Once you have completed this exercise, your social network will fan out like a spider web of connections, overlapping and forming one expansive network.
Identify all possible inroads to your key contacts through this network.
Evaluate Your Existing Networks
Target your networking by researching your existing social and business networks by asking the questions:
• Out of my social network, who may have a connection into the organisation that I am targeting?
• Who has worked in a similar organisation in the past who knows the industry, how they network and do they have current connections that can refer me in?
Ask yourself the right kind of questions and you will get the right kind of answers. Don’t walk around blind folded to the possibilities and value that is already inherent in your existing social network as many business owners do.
An Extreme Example
Many months ago in a half day training workshop on networking I was delivering, a participant raised his hand in frustration to the fact that he could not get any connections into the transport industry. On further questioning and having him identify particular company names he wanted access to, a Massage Therapist put up her hand and said that her mum was in fact friends with the owners of this particular company he was after.
He had literally already dismissed the Massage Therapist as being an inappropriate contact due to the size of her business. What was discovered in this brief moment was the fact that the size of the business or the type of industries your existing business contacts work in are completely irrelevant to who they know.
Never disqualify any of your business contacts, friends or family in having connections to the organisations you seek. It will always be the ones that you least expect that will give you the ease of access to who you are after.
Stop and think for a moment, have you already spoken to a couple of colleagues this week who have direct access to your potential clients?
One Degree of Separation to Your Ideal Client
It is said that everybody in this world is connected via six degrees of separation and it was once again proven in a study completed in 2003 via scientists oversees. With that in mind, in theory you are only ever six degrees of separation from your ideal client, right? Wrong!
Within business and social networks you are only ever one to two degrees at maximum from your ideal client or key business contacts. You see business owners and company executive’s all network within their own social circles. These circles expand into different social networks and tend to overlap into various different industries through business colleagues, friends and yes, even family.
But more importantly these overlaps also expand into your own personal and business social networks as you’ve identified above.
Who Are You Looking For Through Your Social Networks
Typically businesses go for the final decision maker in the organisation, the one who is going to write you your cheque. However, if you are looking to increase your chances of success in closing the deal, you will need to establish relationships with the influencers that work alongside the decision maker. This will help you complete the required research on your target company needed for you to create an educated sales pitch.
Once you have established relationships with the influencer/influencers and know more about the inside workings of the organisation, you will then ask to be introduced up the rank to the head honcho with a solid recommendation from within the company to your service.
Help From the Inside
Success in closing the deal and getting your foot wedged in the door will come from assistance from within the organisation you are targeting. Your inside contacts (the influencers), once relationships have been formed and established, will give you privy to information such as,
• How the decision makers base their decisions
• Who has influence over the end result
• What is the organisations underlying problem
• What is the decision makers communication style
• How to pitch your proposal
• How much do they have in the budget for the service that you offer
This information is vital in closing the deal as your sales presentation will be targeted directly to what they need instead of what you think they need.
What’s even better is that unlike the gun ho approach, you will have key contacts in the organisation rallying together to support your proposal. The pressure for the proposal to be completed and finalised will come from within the organisation instead of outside pressure coming from you and your organisation.
The sale is practically made before you walk in the door.
Three Years, Three Million Dollars
This kind of approach needs a long term view of 6 months plus, to get the desired results, as research, business relationships and credibility need to be established and proven over time.
A business colleague of mine a few years ago, networked his way into one particular organisation. It took three years to get the deal and it was worth three million dollars. A million for each year of effort he put in.
Are you willing to put in that kind of effort for the big bucks?
Remain patient, focused and complete your due diligence when aiming to access corporate connections, it is not as simple as it first looks.
Written by Ben Angel, director and founder of Nationwide Networking
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