Are you a lazy networker?  I find that most people who are networking for the purpose of getting referrals are actually pretty lazy. Few people do any real homework on their target market, have no clue who they want to do business with or be connected to, have no systems for tracking, and most never even bother to follow-up.

There are so many things that you have to do to get good referrals, but somehow there is a belief that if you run around and spew enough knowledge about what you do, then people will trust you and send you business. It is lazy person networking. Here is a list of things you must do to be able to get quality referrals from your network.

1. You must know your Target Market.  If you do not know who you want to do business with then you cannot expect others to know either, most of my clients find this the hardest thing to come up with. Anybody who needs,  is not a target market. Hire a professional to help you
2.  You must be willing to go out and find referrals for your network. Everyone I meet just wants to spend all their time talking about themselves and their business. It’s easier to talk about me then it is to learn enough from my network members and talk about them.
3.  Track your activities, your time, your money, and your results. If you don’t track how will you know what is working and what is not. Who is giving you referrals, when was the last time that you talked to your network members, how many referrals have you passed to your network? All of these are very important things for you to know about your activities.
4.  You might have to make it to meetings, some in the morning, afternoon or evening. So many people do not want regular appointments just in case they don’t feel like getting up and going. Heck it is easier to sit at home and network online, I can do that in my jammies after all.
5. Develop a system for follow-up, stop being lazy and just using email. Step out and make yourself memorable. Drop a post card in the mail,or mail a thank you note. It takes a little more time and work, but it does pay off.
6.  Get educated about good networking and referrals. Most people believe that if they walk around and give out enough cards and talk enough about what they do, they are building credibility. Nothing could be further from the truth! There are programs being offered all the time that will improve your ability to make more money, but few people are willing to commit the time or the money to go learn more so they can earn more. I cannot tell you how many times I have been told by business professionals say they don’t read.

 Trust is the first step in the referral process, you have to slow down and build trust. Yea that’s what I said. slow down! Take the time to get to know me, what I want, how you can help me and what is important to me. When you do that, you will find out that I in return will feel better about you and want to learn more. Trust and credibility cannot be rushed, it takes time and work….oops there is that word again.

]]> http://hazelmwalker.com/are-you-a-lazy-networker-6-things-you-should-do/feed/ 0 http://hazelmwalker.com/women-are-the-most-valuable-target-market-in-the-financial-industry/ http://hazelmwalker.com/women-are-the-most-valuable-target-market-in-the-financial-industry/#comments Mon, 23 Apr 2012 14:00:15 +0000 Hazel http://hazelmwalker.com/?p=1535

Men and women invest differently, I know you are shocked by that statement right?  Probably not!  The following is from an article in the Chicago Tribune. 

In the financial services industry, the default language is male-speak. Women do not feel served. You look at the advertisements, lingo, acronyms. Even the client-engagement and retention process (sales) is a male model.

According to LearnVest.com, 87 percent of women would like to work with a financial adviser, but only 17 percent do. A big part of the reason is … women don’t meet the asset threshold to work with the advisers, so they get disenfranchised.

Several of the big companies have raised their thresholds recently, alienating even more women while they are spending their marketing dollars on the male market.

So, I went to my friend, TJ Couzens, of BrandX,  a market research firm who  researches the female market, to ask his opinion.  TJ wrote the following post in which he discusses the importance of  financial companies going after the female market more effectively.

Women control ALL of the purse strings. Women make over 68% of investment decisions. In the next decade, they will control over 2/3 of the total wealth in the U.S.

Consider this fact of high-end investing. All male investment clubs get an annual rate of return of 8% while all female investment clubs get an annual rate of return of 22%. (Source: Brand X Research, Investment Survey Analysis). Men are in it for the game while women are in it for the long haul. For men, it’s all about “me”. For women, it’s all about “we”. They invest not for their own wealth, but for the sole purpose of taking care of loved ones and friends.

In the area of retention, men change brokers about every 3 years, while women, if treated well, stay with their brokers for 10+ years (Source: Brand X Research). One of the reasons for this is men like bragging rights for great stock performance, so they will jump around if their portfolio is lagging behind their buddies. This leads to high client turnover for brokers. Women, on the other hand, invest based on her relationship with her broker. If they earn her trust and confidence, she will seek their advice and stay loyal because the relationship is valued more than bragging rights.

Another reason why all financial institutions should woo women is in the area of referrals. Men will refer their financial institution to 2.6 people on average. Women, if treated well, will refer you to 21 of her friends. This is huge and is worth billions of dollars over the long term. Right now the investment industry is doing a poor job of retaining women. According to a recent research study by Brand X Research, women only stay with their current broker 5-6 years. The cause of this is too many brokers cater to the husband and pay almost no attention to the wife.

What does this all mean? In essence, it means most financial institutions and brokers are spending marketing dollars on the wrong audience. They are sending out the wrong message. They still believe men make up most of the investment community and their marketing approach confirms this. It is male, ego driven themes based on competition and winning. Instead, they need to try to win over the women market through communicating, relationship building and mutual respect.

Companies need to realize they are losing by spending marketing dollars trying to win over male investors because it’s cheaper to do so. Men are easily persuaded, but are not loyal. You will always have a hole in your sales bucket. By marketing to women, you will spend more marketing dollars because she is harder to convince, but, once convinced, she is extremely loyal and will invest more money with you over the long-term. Remember 2.6 vs. 21 and 3 years vs. 10+ years. Who would you rather have?

If Financial Planners want more referrals they need to have a better understanding of the female market.  Changing your marketing message is not enough.

I met with one of my clients yesterday and we talked about his target market, I had a conversation with a friend who runs her business and we talked about her target market.  I had a phone call with a potential referral partner  to discuss our referral strategy and we talked about our target market.

It seems that Target Market is an important subject, and one that every business should focus on clarifying.  So why does it seem so difficult, for businesses and solopreneurs to identify a target market?  Not having clarity on this topic creates a whole host of problems;

1.  You spend your marketing money using an ineffective shotgun approach that nets low value results.

2.  You find yourself networking at completely inappropriate places.  If I sell cars and I know that 65% of all new car purchasing decisions are made by women, then I am going to go network with women and other businesses who sell to women, not a room full of men.

3.  You end up having the wrong conversations with the wrong people at the wrong time.  Because you are looking for anybody who needs your services you waste a lot of time talking to everybody even when they are the wrong somebodies.

4.  You cannot develop a good referral partner and you end up with a lot of sources who are referring you low level, low value leads.  A good referral partner has the exact same target market as you do, you are focused and you have a strategy for developing referrals.

5.  You miss great opportunities because you are so busy taking care of the low value clients and customers that your high value opportunities are passed by.

10% of your clients create 80% of your income and 10% of your clients suck up 80% of your time and generate little income, why would you use shotgun approaches that only net you more of the latter?  If you focus on the top 10%, spend your time and money seeking more of them, the other 80% will just show up and you will be able to regularly clear out the bottom 10% thus freeing up your time to nurture the top 10%.

I encourage my clients to network in a variety of places based upon their target market. One suggestion I often give them is to sponsor an event then network with both the attendees and the other sponsors. My friend Jill Bode, with Designed Write PR, is my guest blogger this month. The following article is excellent information if you are looking to create quality visiblity for yourself and your company. Next time someone ask you to sponsor an event take a look at this article and decide if it is a good fit for you and your company.

The typical business is offered opportunities to sponsor various events and organizations. It can be difficult to decide if the proffered sponsorship is good investment and even harder to say “no” to a good cause, but as a businessperson, those types of decisions are paramount if you want to keep the doors open.

Here are seven ways you can identify if a sponsorship is a good fit for your company:

1) Does it put you in front of your key demographic? A sponsorship that puts you in front of a large group of potential prospects, is usually going to be the very best investment of your marketing dollars and will help you achieve that all-important visibility with your market.

2) What does your return on investment have to be in order to make the sponsorship profitable for you? If you need to set appointments with 50 people and the event only has 75 attendees, it may not be a good fit. Unless…

3) Is the event organizer willing to highly recommend your product or services to the attendees? If they are AND they have good credibility, they may help you get to your target and then some.

4) Will you be able to interact and talk to attendees during the event? On-site access is paramount if you are going to be able to create those initial impressions and start the sales process.

5) How many staff/fans/friends will you be able to bring along to the event with you as part of your sponsorship? These folks can be crucial to your success because they can say the great things about you that you could never say about yourself. The more people you can bring as part of your sponsorship, the more valuable it becomes.

6) Does the subject of the event deliver information or ideas that are useful to your company? If you get an opportunity to sell to your target market AND learn something new in the process, this a real home run for you and your business. Be sure to factor the expense of comparable training when figuring out your return on investment.

7) Will you be able to follow up with the event attendees? Is the organization willing to give you access and do you have time to reach out afterwards and convert attendees into customers? The day after the event is frequently when the profitability phase of the event begins, don’t forget to plan for it. After all profitability is the reason that you can stay in business.

Applying these seven criteria to the next sponsorship that is offered to you and your company will help you make profitable choices. And, although I may be biased, I think that the sponsorship opportunity below does a great job of meeting those seven criteria for a large number of companies, especially those who sell to women (and there must be a lot of those companies because 85 percent of all brand purchases are made by women*).

Click here to find out more about this limited sponsorship opportunity.

*figure provided courtesy of She-conomy.com

Below is an article written by Barbara Weaver Smith on Target Filters.  One of the most important things that a business must do it understand who their customers are, who they want as customers and how to identify them.  Barbara’s article is full of excellent information not only for your sales process but also for your referral process.

Ten Tweaks for Your Target Filter

In a turbulent economy, big companies are changing more rapidly than usual.  Some companies are retrenching to preserve cash and weather this storm:  slashing budgets, closing locations, consolidating departments, laying people off, reducing their scope of products and services. Other companies are taking advantage of a slow economy to seize opportunity:  modifying their business strategy, investing in new products or services, acquiring competitors, hiring from an excellent applicant pool, increasing their marketing and R&D budgets.

Regardless of how the whales are responding, they are likely not the same company they were the last time they made it through your target filter and on to your whale chart.  They may have totally new goals, new rules and reasons around their buying decisions, different expectations, different decision-makers, different time-frames to produce ROI.  Your job, as always, is to know everything you can learn about you targeted whales–to know far more than your competitors know.

Quick review:  Your Target Filter is the set of criteria by which you determine an ideal large customer for your company.  It includes a set of categories that are important to you and metrics for each category.  Categories include things like company size, location, industry, brand, corporate structure (e.g. public, private, government, or nonprofit), You can find an example and a sample Target Filter form on The Whale Hunters website.  Once your team has created a Target Filter, you use those criteria to select specific companies that meet your needs.

Here’s a Target Filter Tune-Up Checklist:

1. With your team, brainstorm the characteristics of your best big customers from the past three years.  Do you still want more customers like those?  If so, be sure those characteristics match up with your Target Filter.
2. Have your products or services changed since you last reviewed your Target Filter?  Do you have plans to enter a new market, a new industry vertical or a new geographic location, for example?  You may need a separate target filter for that industry or that product.
3. What’s new in your industry?  What market trends are you observing?  Test your Target Filter to be certain it is up to date.
4. Ask your Scout to update dossiers on your Whale Chart list.  Do those whales still meet your criteria?  If not, remove them and find new ones that now meet your criteria.
5. Have you implemented Whale Signs?  These are signals of a prospect’s potential readiness to buy.  You should subscribe to RSS feeds or set Google alerts to learn anything new that is going on with the whales on your Whale Chart.  Review your Whale Signs to be certain that you have identified the best ones for you.
6. What are you learning during your sales process?  Are you still well-aligned with what prospects want, or are you finding gaps that you didn’t find before?  The target filter needs to lead you to companies that want what you have to sell.
7. Are you consistently getting bigger sales and bigger customers?  If not, or if your sales process has stalled, your target filter is no longer working for you.
8. Have you involved your entire team in the target filter discussion?  The perspectives from operations, customer service, and the key account management team are very important.  Build consensus among sales and operations about the target filter criteria and metrics.
9. Is your target filter realistic?  If your vision of an “ideal client” never materializes in your sales process, you may have a pipe dream rather than a filter.

10.  Do you allow your target filter to remind you when to say no to an opportunity that comes your way, such as an unsolicited RFP or a customer referral?  Unless these unexpected opportunities are consistent with the Target Filter, you should be confident about saying no.

The Target Filter is a critically important tool for whale hunting companies.  By developing a solid filter, reviewing and tuning up regularly, and sticking to the prospects who meet its criteria, you will close more sales, bigger sales, and better sales, routinely.

Learn more about “charting your waters”–using the tools of scouting (Target Filter, Whale Chart, Whale Signs, Dossiers) in Whale Hunting: Land Big Sales and Transform Your Company, available from amazon.com.

Join Whale Hunters Group on Linked IN !

Know your target market

This is a Question that I got on Linkedin, I thought it was very appropriate for this blog.

 In my coaching practice, clients (especially new entrepreneurs) often tell me they don’t want to nail down a specific target market because “everyone is a potential client” and/or they feel like they are missing out on business opportunities in other markets.

Have you nailed down one target market? If so, how did you go about making your choice? Did your target market choose you? How long after starting your business did it take for you to choose your target market?    Do you target more than one market? How do you balance your marketing?  Do you even believe that choosing a target market is essential to your marketing success? If not, please tell us why.

This is one of the toughest questions that I tackle with my students in the Referral Dynamics Program.  Generally business people think with a scarcity mindset, always afraid that they are going to miss out on some business regardless of the quality of the business.

For instance if I am an Insurance agent who writes insurance on anyone who has a business, then I am always running around trying to find anyone!  From the small one person business who has very little money to the multi-million dollar business.  It’s like shooting in the air and hoping that a bird will fly over.

On the other hand if I am the insurance agent who is an expert in working with Attorney Firms who have one or more partners in the Central Indiana area, I know exactly where to spend my time and my money marketing.  IF a CPA Firm calls my office and ask me to write a policy for them would I say NO?  Heck no, I would do business with them.

Declaring a target market does not mean that you cannot or may not do business with anyone else, it just means that you will have a target to aim your message to and spend your money on.  When the time comes to recruit Referral Partners they will be easy to find and easy to train.

It allows you to develop yourself as an expert so that your target market seeks you out instead of you searching for them.  It allows your customers to create a buzz about you!  Take a moment and ask yourself the following questions……..

1.  Who do I like to work with?

2.  What makes me the most money?

3.  What market do you have the greatest experiece in?

4.  Is there a market less served?

Building yourself a strong target market will allow you to work less and make more money!