© Rawpixelimages | Dreamstime.com

Growing revenue is critical to all organizations. Yet finding new markets, new buying points, or new needs in existing clients is increasingly difficult. That is why organizations desperately need all employees, not just salespeople, to be able to effectively uncover new opportunities.

But it is not that easy.

• A U.S. engineering firm, thinking that a financial incentive would generate new business, began offering its consulting engineers a bonus for uncovering new business from the clients they service. However, after a year, of their 35 engineers, only three had found new business opportunities.
• Research at the Stanford Shyness Institute suggests that almost 60 percent of young adults entering the business world have difficulty introducing themselves and engaging in conversations with potential prospects.
• A study in Harvard Business Review shows that strategic networking skills will help organizations uncover and capitalize on new business opportunities.

The reality is that many organizations are leaving revenue on the table, not from a lack of incentives or desire, but because of a lack of networking skills. Or, as Francesco Polese said, “The relationship with a customer has a major impact on the total value received by that customer, because value is increasingly created and delivered over time as the relationship develops.”

Unfortunately, networking skills do not come naturally to every salesperson. Technology is partly to blame, suggests Ruth Sherman in Fast Company: “Dependence on remote forms of communication has left many younger workers bereft of interpersonal skills.”

Anne Baber and Lynne Waymon, leading experts in networking skills, have boiled the research down to eight critical skills needed for effective social networking.

Eight Critical Networking Skills

1. Understand and leverage personal style: Networking is not just for the extrovert! Introverts can be just as effective at developing interpersonal networks; they just do it in a different way.
2.  Strategically target your activities: Not all networking events or organizations are equal; you need to determine which events will give you the best return on your investment.
3. Systematically plan networking: Meaningful connections don’t just happen — planning activities, evaluating experiences, and anticipating next moves is what leads to great connections.
4.  Develop relationships over time: You don’t meet someone today and become their trusted adviser tomorrow. You need to learn how to build relationships and whom to build them with.
5.  Engage others effectively: Sure, laughing and socializing with others is fun, but it is not how you create effective business networks. You need to learn how to engage meaningfully, remember people’s names, and make sure they remember yours.
6.  Showcase your expertise: You can learn to talk about your accomplishments and skills without coming across as a braggart, and it is essential to do so if you are going to have an effective network.
7.  Assess opportunities: Easy to join, hard to leave — it is essential that you evaluate your networking experiences relative to your changing goals and decide when to get more involved and when to exit gracefully.
8.  Deliver value: At its core, networking is an exchange of value, whether it is time, information, or your talents. You need to be able to recognize what you have to give, as well as what you want to get.

These eight skills reflect a comprehensive body of knowledge that gives salespeople the skills they need to immediately begin to build organizational and personal success. Organizations can achieve better performance, have more effective employees, and bring products to market faster if they devote time and effort to building effective networking skills.

MANA welcomes your comments on this article. Write to us at [email protected].