Alpha Sirius Blog Zen and The art of networking

One of my favorite books is Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, this is one of the most influential books written in the past century. This book is about an unforgettable journey with a father and his teenage son.The book talks about love fear, growth discovery and acceptance. Well, that is a bigger picture of life. Let us narrow it down to one aspect which is networking specifically to business networking. Business networking is a marketing method for developing sales opportunities and contacts based on referrals introductions either we're face to face meeting are at conferences and gatherings. For the past 10 years I have been attending lot of conferences including the large-scale ones like SAPPHIRE, Oracle Open World Dreamforce and many more. Companies spend thousands of dollars to send their sales team to make business connections to these conferences. The typical attendance at SAPPHIRE is about 15000 people and the sales team has three days or less to make as many connections as possible make as many introductions as possible and collect multiple business cards within a short time.The challenge for the sales and marketing team is this out of the 15,000 attendees probably there are very few who are very interested in the services so how do we get to know them. Sales people are walking around randomly trying to strike a conversation, reading the name on the conference batch identifying the company name to see if there's a potential lead. As a sales person I can understand the stress and the amount of effort that goes in it. Let's be honest not everyone is interested in your service so you striking a random conversation is providing very little chance of finding the right customer.Granted after the sales conference you might have collected tons of business cards talked to quite a few people gather their contact information then start the mining process. Basically as a salesperson you're spending a lot of time and effort to network but you were networking with the wrong lead or with a lead who is not a potential business for you. So how can companies maximize their return on paying a heavy price to attend the conference? One way is to narrow down the right customer but also have the right "icebreaker" conversation.How can one narrow down the right customer? As a salesperson what if you have enough information about your potential customer but you already connected with them at some basic level before the conference? This is a huge "icebreaker" you don't have to do the "elevator pitch" for every person you meet. So how do you make that connection and introduction ahead of time? The answers - mobile apps like FLYGHT CLUB and CONCONNECT. FLYGHT CLUB is a new and dynamic social media app that lets sales and marketing people connect ahead of time on the same flight. My own example I was traveling to and SAP conference in May on a Sunday afternoon when more than 60% of the flyers we're going to the same conference. What if I could see the profile of the attendees, identify and narrow down the potential customers and connect with them on the flight before the conference. Imagine the amount of time and effort that is saved but also imagine the amount of time that can be utilized in the flight talking to your potential customer. FLYGHT CLUB is a new social media app specially designed for business flyers. It will bring passengers on the same flight together you can connect with passengers on a specific flight with each other before during or after the flight and exchange information about the flight build the network and also you the same to provide feedback about the flight the journey the airline and even to the extent of the flight attendants. This significantly reduces the amount of time spent on unwanted leads but also focuses on your targeted customers. You can connect with a potential customer by checking the profile LinkedIn or Facebook and narrow down the right people you want to connect. In today's digitally connected world it does not make sense to strike a conversation with the unneeded or unwanted customer. You can download FLYGHTCLUB app on iOS and Android at:iOS: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/flyght-club/id1039375653?mt=8Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.ibizsoftinc.flyghtclub&hl=en&utm_content=buffer9de00&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer