Visit the Sage

Everyone Nodded Knowingly When Donna's Business Died

I'm a business-networking madman -- attending an average of three public events, and having an average of 10, one-on-one, one-hour meetings with clients, prospects, referral sources, acquaintances, etc., every week of every year.

As you may imagine, I've shaken thousands of hands and observed the full spectrum of business-networking styles -- the good, the bad and the ugly.

At almost every public event I attend, I spot someone trolling the room with an arm full of fliers, company brochures or other marketing material -- pushing them into the hands of every person they meet. The moment I spot one one of these flier pushers, I switch my focus from networking to mystery-shopping -- making it a point to "accidentally" meet this person. (Learning what not to do is a key element of being a good coach and trainer.)

In 30+ years in sales, with thousands of public events attended, I have yet to shake hands with even one of these people and like him or her when we parted. And in most cases, I actually dislike him or her.

So when one of their businesses or sales careers fold, I knowingly nod.

Everyone Knowingly Nodded When Donna's Business Expanded

To be effective at business networking, here's what you must know:

1. Networking is a marketing activity, not a prospecting activity.
2. For marketing to succeed, it must be designed to:
• Get people to know you.
• Get people to like you.
• Get people to trust you enough to call when they have a need.
• Make sure they remember you when they have a need.
3. When you're networking, if you focus on yourself instead of the people you meet, they will:
• Know you.
• Dislike like you.
• Distrust you.
• Forget you. Or, worse yet, specifically remember to NOT call you.

Networking works when your goal is to build win-win relationships. It fails when your goal is to generate a win for only you. And by "win-win," I mean a relationship that is based on something other than one of you writing a check to the other.

The laws of physics state that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. If you attempt to push yourself into someone else's life, that person will push back with equal vigor. If, however, you focus on being useful to people, then serendipity will ensure that you receive as much as you give.

Note: On March 28 at 1 p.m. CST, the founding board of directors (me included) of the Yellow-Tie International Business Development Association (a business-networking organization) will assemble for a one-hour discussion about networking on WGNU in St. Louis. For those not in radio range, you can hear the interview live at http://www.wgnu.net/ (just click on the Listen Live link located top right). Of course, if you're in the area, you can listen at 920 on your AM dial.

Gill E. Wagner, Sage of Selling
President of Honest Selling
Founder of the Yellow-Tie International Business Development Association

Stand Your Ground

I'm in the process of a whole-scale telephony, laptop, PDA, CRM system, e-mail, GPS tracking, etc., change, so yesterday, my IT guru (Steve Smith of The M.I.S. Corporation) and I stopped in at the Sprint-Nextel store to see whether their phones and services met my needs.

One of my major show-stopper questions is "Can I transport my land-line phone -- (314) 416-1440 -- to a cell phone and cut my overall bill in half?" (This has been my business phone number since 1996 -- changing it would cause me tremendous transitional pain.)

After window-shopping their phones and brochures, Steve and I headed to the counter to get my questions answered. Upon introducing myself to Chris Schmidt, the communications consultant who was assigned to help me, I gave him my phone number and asked him to see whether they could port it to their service. Chris and I then engaged in the following conversation:

Chris: "First I'll need to run a credit check to see if you qualify. Can I have your drivers license, please?"

Me: "I'm not buying today, I'm just here to get a few questions answered."

Chris: "I still need to run the credit check. Can I see your driver's license?"

At this point, my internal voice said, "You've got to be kidding me." But then it said, "My driver's license number is publicly available. Just give it to him and get on with it."

Chris (after attempting the check): "What's your social security number?"

(I won't share with you the exact words my internal voice SCREAMED, because I don't want my language to offend half the people who read this post.)

Me (quite calmly, considering the high-speed rant my brain just heard): "I'm not giving you my social security number to buy a cell phone."

Chris (somewhat flustered as he turned to a colleague): "He doesn't want to give me his social security number. How do I run a credit check without it?"

Chris' Colleague: "Just enter all zeros."

Chris (after entering all zeros): "You're good to go. No deposits required or anything."

Based on this experience, I have some random thoughts to share:

According to an article on the Michigan state website, "... there is growing evidence that identity theft most frequently occurs at the workplace." (See: http://www.michigan.gov/ag/0,1607,7-164--103001--,00.html.) While the article discusses employers' use of employees' SSNs, I assume this means any time you give your SSN to a business you increase your chances that one of that company's employees might steal it. So never give your SSN to anyone unless you are absolutely convinced it is necessary. (Note: One of the easiest ways to learn whether it is necessary is to simply say "No" and see what happens.)

Sprint-Nextel should get its collective head out of its collective rear when it comes to asking people for their SSNs.

First, they should  drop the credit-check policy completely until I'm ready to buy -- they don't need to know my credit rating to answer a few simple questions.

Second, they obviously don't need an SSN to run their level of credit check, because 000-00-0000 seems to do the trick quite effectively. So why the hell are they exposing hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of customers and prospects to possible identity theft by asking for something they don't even need?

Third, if the ramification of not passing their credit check is that you must fork over a deposit, wouldn't it be more customer-focused to give people the choice up front instead of simply asking for everyone's SSNs? Or better yet, why not give people the choice of supplying a credit card number and auto-billing for a month's worth of services up front? After all, if Sprint is big enough to buy Nextel, aren't they big enough to make the billing system changes needed to auto-bill credit cards in advance and auto-cancel customers whose credit cards get rejected?

Opinions vary as to what percentage of people are dishonest (my own experience says its around 4 percent). But with Sprint employing around 60,000 and Nextel employing around 80,000, even at 1 percent, that's 1,400 probable thieves with potential access to a massive number of Social Security Numbers that Sprint-Nextel does not really need to do business.

Finally, whether you're buying or selling, hiring or being hired, helping or asking for help, etc., listen to your internal voice and to the hair it raises on the back of your neck when it screams "STOP!"

Your life experience has created finely tuned instincts that tell you when you're exposed to danger. So the moment you feel the hair on the back of your next stand, let your next action be in support of stopping. After all, you can always take the chance later after you've had the time to more carefully analyze the problem.

And let's all tell Sprint-Nextel to "shove it" when they ask for our SSNs.