How to engage your network to grow sales

The best products are created by folks who are filling their own pain points. If you've been in the industry for a while, you probably already have a wide professional network of potential customers. Engaging them in the right way can help you grow your business.

Pulling a network for a sales pitch can feel icky for most of us. Instead of starting with what you need, approach customers from the perspective of what they experience. It feels better to explore, learn, and collaborate around pain points with a warm connection than to "sell" a product to a cold connection you don't understand very well.

Engaging in these type of discussions can build the foundations for a trusting relationship - one you can pivot into business development later. Dave Fields wrote a book catered to independent consultants, but many of the tactics and ways of thinking can apply to building any business across your existing networks.

This tactic can be time intensive - so it works best for companies making large (or repeated) sales to their customers. Need help figuring out which tactics are best for your business? Find more (and future) resources here.