by Lina Martinez

When you’re trying to increase sales, marketing is obviously your best tool. If you’re targeting your marketing at the right people and investing heavily into it, you should see a big increase in sales. However, a big marketing push isn’t the only way that you can boost sales and people often overlook the power of networking. People talk about networking a lot when they’re giving advice about finding a job or first starting your own company, however, it’s also a great way for established companies to boost their sales. Here’s how you should use networking to increase your sales.

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Work Out Who You Want To Meet

Before you start attending networking events or even hosting your own, you need to work out who you need to meet. Networking is only effective if you’re meeting with people that are going to help you further your business, if you aren’t, you’re just wasting your time. Think about what the problems are in your business and why your sales aren’t increasing, and then try to identify people that could help you out in those areas. For example, if you’re struggling to break into a certain market, is there another company that you could do a marketing collaboration with to reach that demographic? Maybe you’ve got an issue with your sales staff, in which case, you might want to network with somebody that runs a sales recruitment company.

If you’re looking for business to business leads, you need to start drawing up a list of companies that might be in need of your services. Then you can look at networking events that those business leaders are likely to attend.

Integrate Your Network With Marketing Software

When you’re looking for business to business leads, you should already be using marketing software. It’s important that you integrate your networking efforts with that software if you’re going to be successful. For example, if you’re using Linkedin and you have a lot of good business contacts on there, you can connect it to marketing software like Hubspot (visit https://linkedintohubspot.com for more info on how to do this) and upload those leads directly into it. It increases your marketing reach because you can include leads that you’ve managed to find through networking.

Prepare For The Meeting Beforehand

Potential clients or business partners will be able to tell if you haven’t done your homework beforehand. They’re giving up their valuable time and they don’t owe you anything, so if you mess them around, you won’t be able to build a good relationship. That’s why it’s important that you do a good amount of research on the company beforehand. Visit https://web.boardroominsiders.com/ for some great tips on how to do your research.

Get The Meetings Right

When you eventually do set up meetings with the relevant people, it’s important that you conduct those meetings in the right way so you get results. Always make sure that you’re meeting in a professional setting and you look the part. Most importantly, you need to have a clear idea of what you want out of the meeting before you go in.  

If you learn how to network effectively, you can boost your sales easily and find new partners to help you further your business.