G2 Strategic Advisory Services

Fairly early in our careers we learned that it is not smart to “burn bridges” in our personal and professional lives. As a result, most successful professionals take great care to nurture their professional relationships and view their relationships as assets.

An individual who has established a positive reputation within their profession in the workplace has done so because they have proven to be reliable, dependable, trustworthy and proficient at their job as an executive, manager, employee, vendor, partner or customer. They have enhanced their professional brand equity as a result. In other words they have established credibility within their circle of business contacts, colleagues and friends. Other individuals trust that a trusted or credible individual will not act in ways that would diminish their own reputation or the reputation of their company. Nor would they risk damaging their reputation and relationships within their professional network. This reminds me of my Grandmother telling me at an early age that no one can ever take away your good name unless you help them.

There is no question that when my professional network overlaps with the professional network of the individual I am interesting in speaking with on behalf of my business or a client, the conversation is scheduled sooner and tends to flow easier with better results. It’s pretty obvious it starts off better because neither party wants to offend a professional contact of one of their contacts or in some cases a friend of a friend. And as long as one conducts oneself with courtesy, the process can advance to determine whether perceived synergies exist or not. The other positive aspect is many astute professionals realize that an ever expanding network is a great thing to have and the only way that happens is by meeting new people.

Now back to the title of this blog post - Leveraging Your Professional Network to Establish Credibility for Your New Product. It is my opinion that the same principle I cited above applies when a founder or a sales professional tries to sell a new product for a new company or an established company. This also explains why sales professionals in established companies don’t simply run out and try to sell all of their existing customers every new product their company releases. They tend to experiment with one opportunity or hold back while another sales rep is experimenting since they don’t want to lose credibility in their accounts if things don’t work out. This is why management sometimes offers higher commission rates on brand new products as an incentive to sell new products.

What if you don’t have any established accounts because you are leading or selling for a brand new company with all new products? Regardless of whom you are selling for and what you are selling, you have to sell yourself first, then your company, then your product. Buyers tend not to buy from individuals they don’t like/trust or from companies they don’t like/trust or products they don’t like/trust. If we flip this statement around, we see that Buyers tend to buy from individuals they like and trust. This is of course easier if you have successfully done business with the buyer before, but if you haven’t you can still leverage your professional network. My recommendation for building pipeline for a new product in a new company is not to try to sell the product to everyone in your rolodex or network but to leverage your network. What I am advising is the following: Once you have uncovered the use case where your product delivers the highest value proposition, map the use case to specific job titles that correlate to the prime suspects who have the highest propensity to buy the product. Once you have the job titles you can map them to company size and vertical industry to create your list. Once you have your target list, I suggest going back to your rolodex and prioritizing your prospecting efforts according to overlap with your professional network.

Further, you probably know how to do the following already but just in case you don’t, here is a simple example for how you can accomplish this using LinkedIn.

1. On the top right hand side of the LinkedIn Page, next to the Search Window is the Advanced button next to the icon of the magnifying glass.

2. Click on the Advanced Search button.

3. Enter the title you are searching for in the Title window and Click - Search.

4. If you have the right level of service from LinkedIn then LinkedIn will list next to In Common the Shared Connections and Shared Groups you share with the Contacts that were returned in your list. LinkedIn also lists them according to their proximity to your contacts. i.e. 2nd, 3rd, etc.

5. Once you have this data you can decide whether to ask your network contact to introduce you to the individual you desire to speak to or you can contact them directly. As you can imagine the former works better.

6. The above also works for Company searches. Sometimes I have to ask one of my network contacts if they know anyone within a particular company or find it out on LinkedIn and speak with the friend of my friend to find out the right person to speak with inside their company. I also recommend asking that person for an introduction since their introduction will be better received than your “cold” call.

The above approach is useful for gaining an introduction, connecting and obtaining an initial conversation, however, keep in mind that unless the use case for your product is needed by the individual to solve acute pain within their job responsibilities, you won’t be able to sell your product. Assuming the need exists and your product offers value to the buyer, then your ability to leverage your positive reputation within a shared network even once or twice removed should overcome most vendor credibility obstacles unless the transaction has the stigma of extreme risk for the buyer due to its’ size or nature. Best wishes for your continued success