Strategic Networking: What Works, What Doesn’t, and Why it Matters More Than Ever – in Just 7 Minutes with Joyce Layman

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I actually have three resources. The first one is a "3 Steps Success Guide to Networking" which is going to give you far more details than what I have here. I also have an "Executive Happy Hour Guide." ' And the third thing that I'm offering is I'm actually doing a 'free 5-day training' in my Private Facebook group. Go to www.Joycelayman.com and you're going to find that link on my website and it's going to take you in where you need to be.

Summary:

Founder, all in one business strategist, keynote speaker, and car enthusiast are just a few words that describe Joyce Layman. She's authored two books including Just Another Leap that was based on her TEDx talk, and Your Connecting Advantage: success tactics to turn life into one big connecting opportunity.

Joyce has been referred to as a walking LinkedIn and Bob Burg, best-selling author of the Endless Referrals and The Go-Giver calls her the greatest networker in the world. Since 2008 Joyce has worked with various industries, solopreneurs to CEOs, and sizes of organizations to help them grow their brands and businesses through the power of relationships.

Here are the highlights of this episode:

2:02 Joyce’s ideal Client: My ideal clients are service-based professionals; typically, B2B and I do have a couple of B2C, but they feel like they've been shredding water with their sales and marketing efforts far too long. And so, they want to work with somebody that's got a 360 (degrees) approach, especially right now with everything that's happening with the pandemic and understanding more about social media and technology to make their life easier.

2:31 Problem Joyce helps solve: I help them translate their business into an online world now. They have brick and mortar and they're always going to stay brick and mortar, but it's not being an Instagram influencer or a Facebook influencer. But it's taking what they do and it's actually using the power of relationships through social media and also through one-on-one, and get their voice out there in a bigger way. But it all goes back to crafting a clear compelling brand online, extremely important to do that first. Understanding how to strategically use their network and also leverage technology for growth.

3:24 Typical symptoms that clients do before reaching out to Joyce: They've been working far too long trying to joggle too many pieces. Often the clients I worked with, they hired individual consultants or coaches to come in with different aspects of their business versus one person that can handle everything. Whether it's from think, sales, and marketing but it's from start to finish. But ultimately, they want to sell something.

3:59 What are some of the common mistakes that folks make before finding Joyce and her solution: When it comes to networking especially business development, how you do business development has shifted. The three biggest mistakes I see are first of, they don't have a clear compelling brand; somebody's going to google you, they're going to google your company. If you’ll pull-up LinkedIn first in a search, that's their first experience with your company. Far too often, sales professionals and business owners are going to go hunt and network without building their brand. Second, they have no strategy so they end up wasting a lot of time at a wrong event, meeting the wrong people and you have no time to waste. Thirdly, it's not attracting connections or introductions, and when we're talking about networking, we're talking about millions of dollars, huge accounts, short in-sale cycles from months to minutes through your network.

5:09 Joyce’s Valuable Free Action (VFA): This goes back to mind set, you want to make a top 10 list. The reason you want to do it, you have a reticular activating system in your brain. It acts like a filter on your subconscious. If you're leading a team then you need to make a list of your top 10. These can be prospects, introductions that you want, companies that you want to go after. But when you do that, that RAS (reticular activating system) in your brain is going to be easier for you to read an article, you read on LinkedIn something on your feed, or even when you're having a conversation with your team to know who's wanting to call on whom to be very strategic with those introductions. It could be a person, it could be a company, could be a resource you need.

6:05 Joyce’s Valuable Free Resource (VFR): I actually have three resources. The first one is a "3 Steps Success Guide to Networking" which is going to give you far more details than what I have here. I also have an "Executive Happy Hour Guide." One of these events that I hosted resulted in a sale of a 4 million company through connections made. So, this is not your typical 'we're going to get together, have an event, have conversations.' And the third thing that I'm offering is I'm actually doing a 'free 5-day training' in my Private Facebook group. If you go in and opt in into the link, then I am happy to send you those free resources and also give you insights on that upcoming Masterclass in October. Go to Joycelayman.com and you're going to find that link on my website and it's going to take you in where you need to be. Just go to the homepage and look underneath the banner and you will find it

7:03 When should you start building your network? I see this a lot. When you're running a company, running a team, what happens is you tend to get stuck in that space versus thinking "I need to be out networking". Whether it's your shifting market, you’re doing pandemic pivot, maybe you're shifting roles right now. Your network is the fastest way to get the results that you need. And far too often people wave and go "oh, I don't need to network". The business developers, the sales people I work with, it takes 6 months. If they're meeting people regularly to get the right people. Don’t wait to build it, invest time weekly, and strategically to get the network that you need.