How can you improve your team's networking skills?

Nobody is born for networking: Networking is not a regular human activity and no person is born with the skills it requires in the professional world. While that is true, there are few people who are good at opening and holding conversations with strangers compared to others. Everyone has their own style that they're comfortable with. As a first step in the networking process, it is important to assess your team's skill level and style that comes to them naturally. People who can open conversations might need help with making them meaningful. People who fear approaching strangers might need help with specific questions they can use as an an opener. Understand your team and work with it.

Elevating your team's networking skills is pivotal for professional growth. Implement targeted training and coaching programs to refine interpersonal connections. Begin with interactive workshops, offering insights on effective communication, relationship building, and cultivating a strong professional network. Provide real-world scenarios and encourage role-playing to enhance practical skills. Personalized coaching sessions can address individual challenges and offer tailored strategies for improvement.

Role-play networking: Even though a role-play with colleagues within the sales department is an artificial setting, it can be turned into a useful activity. To make it useful, record these sessions with a few basic cameras. Watching replays of trying to have a conversation with others, is an eye-opening experience. It also helps point clear areas for improvement.

In networking, reps really matter: The more you try and repeat this artificial human activity called 'networking' the better you become. Doing it well, doesn't come naturally to any person. For some it is very difficult while others might be comfortable but not effective. To improve, the number of times you try to participate in networking activity really matters. Reflecting after each session on what you did well and areas of improvement leads to improvement. If you are a sales leader and 'networking' is an important contributor to your team's success, you should incentive the process. Because every team member of yours, will need the reps to get good at it.

Measure and Reflect: Measurements in terms of how many people you met, how many pitches you mentioned and how many leads you created is important. These are output metrics. Reflection in terms of how you approached people, what were the questions that lit up their eyes, how did you craft your pitch that got them nodding, is equally important. These are input metrics. As a leader, you need to measure both and get your team to discuss which input elements are leading to desirable output results. There is no point in repeating the process endlessly unless you're seeing improvement with time. Therefore, reflecting and finding the best methods that give results, is what you need to find. Takes time, but worth the effort.