For sales or business development professionals, your network is everything, so why do we fail at creating the network effect? Unfortunately, many professionals often approach transactions as a one-off activity failing to capture the full potential and value of relationships within their network. For example, studies frequently show that many sales professionals fail to ask for referrals. At times the percentage of sales professionals not asking for referrals can approach 80%. Quite odd for a relatively straightforward and highly profitable activity. How is this possible, and why the disconnect? Interestingly, the challenge transcends borders, markets, and cultures across the Middle East, Asia, and the US.
How can we leverage our relationships?
Does the inability to effectively leverage relationships speak to a short-term mindset, simple laziness, or cultural taboos? I don’t think so. A more probable explanation reflects the lack of understanding of the steps required to exploit the numerous opportunities within your network. Whether selling software, financial services, basic widgets, or raising capital, a well-defined and optimized network means the difference between sustainable value creation and rapid value destruction.
Building relevant and sustainable networks need not be a complex affair. However, at its core are relationships. An optimized network speaks to the nature of these relationships (the who and the what) and how they are formed and nurtured. Maximizing value from your network requires an understanding that, at some level, we are all interconnected.
What is the Network Effect?
So, what exactly is the network effect? Creating the network effect integrates your total available market, heightened situational awareness, and personal branding. Moving beyond the simple concept of referrals, the Network Effect forces a deeper understanding and higher awareness of you and your customer base. If executed well, the Network Effect allows for rapid value creation while achieving it effortlessly and cost-effectively. We offer three (3) ideas to create the Network Effect by leveraging the power of interconnectedness.
Idea #1: Understand Your Pie
Individuals and teams often fail to understand their market size or pie. An essential first step in any planning process is that some idea of the addressable market must factor into your approach as it directly impacts human and financial resource allocation. The total market potential for your product or services constitutes the addressable market. Ideally, it should be the starting point. Whether a rough estimate or detailed, it doesn’t matter as some individuals and teams may not possess the resources to conduct a comprehensive analysis. At a minimum, a market estimate should offer some perspective on the opportunities supported through validation. The exercise works best if undertaken as a team. Whatever product or service you offer, understanding your market is essential to creating the network effect. Not undertaking this analysis risks wasting time and resources, capping your upside.
As you consider how your network fits into the overall market opportunity, we usually instruct our teams to provide an initial list of names they may know. This so-called warm market includes potential clients or customers, including friends, relatives, coworkers, professional connections, etc. While the list is of some utility, limited network success can sometimes diminish its value. The lack of success becomes draining on the user, reducing their motivation. The failure to create value from your initial network is partly due to understanding the potential economic value of the network. Placing key parameters around your warm market to understand its economic value achieves multiple objectives, including:
- Developing a comprehensive understanding of potential revenue opportunities
- Forcing the individual to consider the relevance of their network
- Creating strategies for a more targeted approach
Parameters will vary from industry to industry, but the minimum is the product, pricing, and closing timeframe. The list should be dynamic and adjusted from time to time.
Idea #2: Enhance Your Situational Awareness
Another misstep often encountered by sales and business development professionals is the limited understanding of the customer throughout their journey. The customer journey is the entire process of customer interaction with a brand from the first moment of interaction until the customer leaves. For many sales organizations, the disparity in capabilities and competency frequently leads to lost opportunities.
Lack of situational awareness limits new opportunities from current customers and prospects from your network. It weakens the network effect. Situational awareness, a concept taken from the military, refers to understanding what’s happening around you—in the context of sales and customer engagement, not being aware of your customer’s journey results in failure to ask pertinent questions. Often, I encounter teams that possess a basic knowledge of their clients. However, it stops there. The ability to engage exists at a base level, but the breakdown occurs when integrating client engagement with a deeper understanding and a more holistic client picture. Heightened situational awareness is essential in gathering intelligence and insights to better understand current and future clients. Consistently working through a customer’s journey collecting information and data points along the way, enables you to lay the groundwork for creating the network effect.
Idea #3: Leverage Your Personal Brand
Exploiting the numerous opportunities available through the Network Effect requires building credibility. A client’s perception of their journey and your role in it goes a long way to building recurring and future value. Product knowledge, relevant solutions, honesty, integrity, clarity, and physical attributes are some factors that affect your personal brand.
Building and developing your personal brand will cement in a client’s mind their willingness to support you as you expand your portfolio. Developing a personal brand requires self-reflection to determine who you are and your value beyond the offered product. As a sales professional, it’s something that requires constant refinement. A well-defined personal brand factors prominently in your Opportunity Zone, the intersection of your unique value proposition with specific product attributes. The Opportunity Zone should absorb most of your focus and time whenever possible. In the Opportunity Zone, the comfort of client engagement is high, your credibility is strong, and the Network Effect becomes easy.
Some final thoughts about creating the network effect
Leaving money on the table in sales and business development is never a good thing. Yet many of us do. The network effect creates substantial scalability, sustainability, and long-term value-creation opportunities. Is it the state of flow? Not quite, but close, and it works. We’ve seen several instances of the power of this approach resulting in considerable expansion of customer pipelines. For most sales and business development professionals, the Network Effect remains an elusive state. However, effective planning and a complete understanding of your clients and your own value will get you closer to this outcome.
