Eliminate Selling by Expanding Your Influence
Are you one of the millions of women entrepreneurs who dread selling? If so, you can sidestep many aspects of this critical function by expanding your influence. I’m not talking about traditional networking—it’s much more deliberate than that. I’m talking about developing a strategic “Influence Plan” and then moving forward to make it happen
Here’s a 5 Step process to do this:
- Create a Top 10 List – Develop a list of ten individuals who can have the greatest impact on your business or career. Then, make a positive connection with each of them at least once a month. What does a “positive connection” look like? Well, it could be sending a relevant article, or a funny card—something that says you know them as an individual. It could be a referral or an invitation to attend a dinner meeting as your guest. This is not a mass production effort, but a well thought out, personal engagement with each individual.
- Create a Top 100 List – Create a list of 100 key people who should know about you. Then create a plan to connect with each individual once a month. If you do this correctly, you’ll find more value to these Top 100 than you would in a database of 10,000. These connections don’t have to be as customized as your Top 10 List, but be sure they are meaningful.
- Step Outside Your Comfort Zone – To grow your reputation, you’ve got to move outside of your comfort zone by interfacing with individuals who are progressively more powerful. You must join organizations with more serious agendas, programs, and members. And you can’t just join these organizations, you must become a key player. To achieve serious business goals, you must step out of your current network and into a group with wider, deeper, more powerful connections.
- Become “Famous” in Your Field – By writing pro bono articles for local and regional newsletters and trade publications, you can become well known in your community and your industry. To do this, start by identifying a problem and writing about a proposed solution. Then send it to the editor of the publication. Once you begin to be published, you can move up the ladder to higher level publications.
- Join Formal Peer Groups – One of the best ways to expand your influence is by joining a peer group of other women. The Women Presidents’ Organization (WPO), the Committee of 200 (C200), or The National Association of Women Business Owners (NAWBO) are three great peer groups. Each has different requirements for qualification, but you should investigate to determine if one or more of these is a good fit for you. And you might consider developing a mastermind group of five or six women in your industry who meet regularly to bounce ideas off of one another.
If you hate sales but want to grow you business, the clear way to do that is by expanding your influence!
Advisor: Mary Cantando
