Becoming a Master Networker - Establish Your Budgets

Last month we created three target personas that will be used to help us to identify our ideal opportunities. They were: Target Buyer, Target Power Partner, and Target Networking Opportunities.

Today we want to establish a budget in terms of time and dollars that we will be willing to invest in networking activities. Note that I said invest and not spend. Any successful networking opportunity will deliver returns in excess of your investment. If it does not, find one/some that will.

While we might mention different types of networking activities, we are not here to discuss those today. We definitely will in our next article and will do so in depth! Not all networking opportunities are created equally.

I’m one of those people who are keenly aware that there is selling time, when you see customers and prospects, and non-selling time, before and after work when you can do paperwork. Networking is a prospecting activity that should be engaged in during both times.

So, let’s start with time and we can look at this a couple of different ways:

Time slot – Morning, afternoon, evening
Frequency – Weekly, monthly, occasionally

Networking groups will generally meet for breakfast or lunch. Most, but not all, are weekly. My guess is that few will meet on Fridays and Mondays. You could do six networking groups weekly (three breakfast and three lunch) but, can you be a quality giver in multiple leads groups? Two … maybe. Six? Fuggetaboutit.

Now, if leads groups are good for breakfast and lunch, and let’s say that those are weekly, there might be some other functions that will meet monthly during those times. Do you want to leave time open for those? How about evening events such as Business After Hours at the Chamber of Commerce(s)?

We will also want to leave some time available for social networking (LinkedIn, Facebook, etc.). The nice part about social networking is that much of it can be done during non-selling hours. Certainly, that is when I would be doing the heavy lifting in terms of laying my foundations.

Honestly, as much as I love and believe on networking, I am not about to fill my days and evenings with nothing but this activity. If we look at this as a part of our prospecting process, and it is, we still need to leave time available for actually seeing and selling to customers, Not to mention follow-up and paperwork.

Next we will need some sort of a budget starting out. Let me be very clear about one thing. You often have to spend money to make money and if you bypass a great business building opportunity because you can’t see the difference between an expense and an investment … I feel sorry for you. I also can’t help you. If the difference is not obvious … I’ll leave it at that.

Still, it’s simple math. The average straight commission rep makes 10% on a sale so that means if I invest $5,000 annually on networking activities, I’m going to have to sell a minimum of $50,000 in order to pay for that. Round numbers … $4,000 per month.

What is your average sale? I’ve been in a lot of different B2B industries and I can tell you that $4,000 would be on the very low side of an sale for any of those industries. If you can’t make one extra sale per month as a result of a concentrated networking activity … wrong activity or … you are going to have to look in the mirror and we will talk about this in a future article.

Here’s the good news in terms of your budgets for time and money. With one good weekly leads group and some quality power partner relationships, I was able to keep my pipeline very very full with quality opportunities. It was extremely rare for me to network outside of those areas. The secret is quality vs quantity.

$5,000 per year can buy you a lot of networking! You should be able to do well with an investment of well under 50% of that figure. This leaves plenty of money for taking important power partners to lunch (if that is a part of your program) and also for other awesome events.

If you eat breakfast or lunch out, have a fondness for specialty coffee, or enjoy tasty adult beverages … you are already spending that and more … without the ROI. Are you willing to invest $200 and 20 hours per month toward networking? If not, what are you willing to invest? Stay tuned! Next month, we will be discussing where to make those investments!

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Craig M. Jamieson

Managing Member at Adaptive Business Services

Craig M. Jamieson is a lifelong B2B salesperson, manager, owner, and a networking enthusiast. Adaptive Business Services provides solutions related to the sales professional. We are a Nimble CRM Solution Partner. Craig also conducts training and workshops primarily in social selling and communication skills. Craig is also the author of "The Small Business' Guide to Social CRM", now available on Amazon!