Yesterday I gave you a road map for a networking marketing plan. Today, I want to start with the first destination of that map. Pain.

Nope, pain is not a very nice word, but if you are in sales, you are in the business of finding and relieving pain. By “sales” I am referring to you job seekers as well. You are selling yourself, and your skills are the “product” you have to relieve pain in an organization. So don’t think these posts won’t apply to you.

What do I mean by “pain” as it relates to networking and sales? Almost every purchase you make is (directly or indirectly) aimed at satisfying a need. Generally we recognize a need when we feel pain. I’m using “pain” very broadly here to describe what we feel when we’re dissatisfied with our current situation in some way. A few examples:

1. I recently bought a new iPhone because upgrading the OS on my old phone made it very slow. I was frustrated by the sluggish performance, and that was affecting my overall productivity. That was a a form of pain.

2. We buy sheets for our beds because our skin is a lot more comfortable if we’re not lying directly on the mattress.

3. People pay for my coaching because they don’t know or understand networking and social media. Lack of knowledge is often painful.

What about entertainment? Do we go to a movie or buy a book because of an unmet need? Ask a parent of an overactive 5-year old! The latest Disney film can buy that parent 90 minutes of relative peace. Yep, that’s pain relief!

If you’re uncomfortable with the word “pain,” and some are, then think of it in terms of unmet need. The basic question you need to ask yourself is what motivates a prospect to talk to you.

I’m not talking about “what” you sell. People don’t buy financial planning. They buy peace of mind, knowing that they will be able to retire and live in comfort instead of on the street. Too many people in sales focus on what they sell and not the intrinsic value of their product or service.

A good way to determine the need you meet is to think of some client stories. Ask yourself the following questions:

1. Why did the client come to me?
2. What did I offer the client?
3. What was the outcome?

I’ll use myself as an example. I recently worked with a small non-profit on their social media strategy. They came to me because they knew their target community was using social media, and they’d been told they needed to as well. They didn’t know which channels would be the right ones to attract and communicate with their target audience.

I worked with them to identify the right channels, craft an overall message strategy and decide how to manage their time so social media didn’t overwhelm them.

After about six weeks, they were getting inquiries from the right people and starting to build some partnership relationships through Twitter.

What was the pain? Lack of knowledge and fear of making the wrong decision. What did I provide? Knowledge and a sound strategy.

See how it works? Answer the questions above for your own business. Tomorrow we’re going to delve further into how you relieve pain and turn that into a value statement, which is going to be the key to communicating about your business.

For real estate, it’s Location, Location, Location. But not in networking.

If you are active in your networking, you are probably meeting a lot of people. And if you are meeting good people, they are also meeting a lot of people.

So you need to give us some context when you follow up with us.

I recently received an email that I almost deleted as spam. It thanked me for taking time meeting with this person and had a brochure as an attachment. I didn’t remember meeting with this person, and the brochure was aimed at someone in an industry with little relevance to me.

I decided to email back and ask for context. Good thing I did, because it turned out that he had been a participant at a workshop I’d been invited to speak at, and he might want to use my services in the future.

From spam to prospect just like that.

He could have saved much confusion by including where we’d met in the initial email. I still might not have remembered him (even after he gave me context, I don’t remember which audience member he’d been),but at least I wouldn’t have initially assumed the email was spam.

It doesn’t take much time to add where you met someone and, perhaps, briefly what you might have discussed. It’s good manners, gives us context and makes us more likely to return your email, phone call, or tweet.