Careless talk costs business | Business Networking

There is a saying ?words are cheap? but in business networking they can prove very expensive.

I was recently working with someone to help them get more quality referrals from business networking. I had worked through all the normal things that get results with people such as clarifying his target audience, specialising, getting his stories right, making sure he nurtures his relationships and being clear on what to ask for. However, it was still not working for him. I couldn?t understand why he was not getting results.

I had noticed that this guy had been promising a lot when we spoke but rarely following through on the commitments he made. It occurred to me that perhaps he was like that with others. Some discreet enquiries confirmed the case. Suddenly I had the answer!

Despite getting everything else right and having a big network of people who liked him, he was not getting much business because people could not trust him to do what he said he would. They had, in effect, stopped listening.

People do business with people they know, like, and trust. The same goes for word of mouth referrals. If people cannot trust us to follow through on the small things then they will certainly not trust us with the big things.

This guy was not dishonest. He just liked to please people and he had a habit of telling people what he thought they wanted to hear. He had to learn that promising things in the moment and not following through does not please or, indeed, impress people. It is better to avoid committing than to promise something and fail to follow through. Fortunately it is easily fixable over time but, as you can imagine, it takes more than just words!

Richard White

Richard White is a sales coach and trainer. He specialises in helping IT consultants win more sales through effective networking. Richard is the author of ?The Accidental Salesman Networking Survival Guide? and is a highly?sought after speaker on the subjects of networking and soft selling.

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Tagged as: audience, business networking, habit, referral, relationship, saying words, Social psychologySocial psychology, SociologySociology, target audience, TrustTrust (social sciences), word of mouth

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