“Networking” has become one of the sales bywords in recent years. Many will tell you that the key to building your sales is to “network” effectively.

There is no question that building a strong network can be incredibly helpful to your sales efforts. Nevertheless, many services professionals who sell face the same difficulties in networking that they face in cold-calling. It sounds great, yet for some reason they just don't seem to be able to do it effectively. Let's look at some of the factors and see if we can debunk some of this.

Exactly what is “networking?” The first thing comes to mind for many services professionals is that networking is about finding clients without having to make cold calls! A common perception is that networking means going to a lot of events, meeting as many people as you can (also called “working the room”), handing out your business cards to “qualified” prospects, and then waiting for them to call you.

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