Entries Tagged 'workshop' ↓

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I was reading a book on networking (my car was in the shop so I needed to kill time and it had a nice cover, okay?) and some points came out that I thought would be incredibly valuable in the year of a down-economy.

First, it articulated a painful truth that I’ve always thought (but management typically disagreed with), that most of the attendees at “networking” events are not high-level decision-makers, but people who want to sell something, as well.

For most people, I’ve found, that when they realize you’re just “another sales person” they disengage and start looking for the next person.

I usually try to start some kind of conversation, but until now, it’s been more generic, such as “How’s business?” and some will literally expand their chest, put on a huge grin, and talk louder: “It’s great!”  I’ve had others tell me right off, “It’s the worse I’ve ever seen.”

Well, being boastfully pollyanish or depressed are not good options.  For those who seem a little more proactive and creative, I’ll ask: “Think there’s a way we could work together to find prospects faster?”

An article which I’ve mentioned before (and will keep referencing) talks about the importance of indirect sales networks.  These are folks not in your immediate sphere (such as fellow employees or even customers) whom you can network with to access new accounts and contacts.

Other sales people are great for that.  In “investment” terms, if you can find reps who target similar accounts and contacts but have a low correlation to your existing contacts, that’s a win.

Tomorrow, I’ll share an exercise I do almost every day to keep up on partnerships and see how abundant they are if people would just do this one thing.

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Here is another workshop where we randomly select a vendor and imagine how they would use Allyforce.  Note: this does not mean that the company is using Allyforce or is endorsing it in anyway.

We do these workshops to help readers and other organizations understand how quickly they could implement Allyforce and get them thinking about the Partnership Paradigm of finding new accounts and contacts faster.

Red Condor targets companies with their anti-spam technology and they partner with:

• IT consulting firms
• Web services vendors
• Systems integrators

Each of those firms probably has a sales rep, either working on the inside or in the field, who is trying to sell their own specific products.

What if Red Condor’s inside sales team had better visibility into whom they knew and could request contact information for them to start making calls?

What if the partners knew that the hand-off of contact information and contact information would be easily documented in case a sale happens.

It’s truly win-win for them to share contacts and information as easily as one shares photos and videos using Facebook!

 

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Let’s do another workshop to show how Allyforce could work.  I’m going to use as an example a “random” company I came across called Elluminate which sells web-conferencing technology to education.

Why should they create an allyforce?

I sold as part of my territory into colleges, and I found getting contact information to be incredibly difficult.  Sometimes the titles or department that I would need to call on was difficult to find.  And in some cases, knowing what was the right existing infrastructure at the institution ( I was selling IT Infrastructure), would’ve helped.

I’m not saying education is any harder than calling into other industry organizations, but it wasn’t any easier.

Whom should they invite into their allyforce?

They are already far out the starting gate!  They had a formal partner program and with some excellent companies.  Blackboard is one of them.  I partnered with them and they are everywhere and know everyone in Education.  Well, not everyone: even I found contacts and people they weren’t having discussions with.

The challenge: I didn’t know which rep to call, whether they had a relationship or not, and so it was a very sporadic conversation.  But when we did talk — boy, it was like gold.  I just needed a way to automatically match me with the right reps regarding the right accounts and have a seamlessly way to see contacts and account information.

Here are the other partners Elluminate could quickly work with:

• Blackboard
• eCollege
• Fronter

They also have training partners whom, I am sure, have products and clients other than Elluminate.  If they could exchange information, there is a mutual (possibly even Financial) incentive to do so.

• Cyberstream
• eLearning Innovations

Each of these companies probably has a rep.  What if a single Elluminte rep could easily match, connect, and communicate with, say, five other reps in the education space.

Who are they missing?

So, hey, not a bad start.  But there are plenty of other people targeting schools — I looked on Craigslist for companies that are hiring reps selling to schools.  Not all were selling to IT but some were.

Maybe the products weren’t complimentary, which is usually how partnerships are formed; but the territory and the titles being prospected to do.  For example?

• Schoolloop: intelligent websites
• Revolution: tutorial services targeting school administrators to develop partnerships

What about others?

My friend used to run the Bay Area territory for schools and government for Peoplesoft.  There’s probably not going to be a formal relationship, but an informal relationship where reps and exchanging with each other…why not?

Feed the network…and the network will feed you!

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