They key to holding a successful business and networking event lies in creating a solid event marketing strategy, building collaboration, and tapping into your professional networks and connections.
But there’s one another crucial thing is often overlooked, and that is interpersonal skills.
Interpersonal skills go a long way in facilitating productive conversation at events. But more than that, they help you build a deep connection with your prospects. This helps you to make them open up to you and to express their challenges, thus giving you an edge in negotiations and solving their critical business problems.
Here is how you can use interpersonal skills at events to create potential lead capturing opportunities for your business:
To Foster Active Listening
Active listening is one of the most valuable parts of communication.
The truth is, your clients and prospects don’t care about how great your product is; they care about how your product or services can solve their problems.
And in order to solve the business challenges affecting your clients, you have to work at honing your listening skills, which is an integral part of interpersonal skills.
Active listening is not only about listening to what your clients are saying, but it also means giving your full attention to the client, and consistently providing visual cues to let them know that they have your full attention.
Listening cues include making eye contact, nodding your head whenever required, and giving verbal affirmations.
Once you listen to your client attentively, you will be in a better position to understand their problems, which will result in offering better solutions.
Naturally, the more attentive you are, the more leads capturing opportunities you will have.
To Help You Follow-Up Over Emails/Phone Calls
You are happy with your progress at the event you participated in. The business card scanning app that you used to capture lead information is now brimming with countless valuable leads.
However, the sales process doesn’t end here.
You have to now follow-up with your captured leads to let them know that you value their interests and would like to proceed with your proposal.
Here, again, your interpersonal skills come into play.
With exceptional interpersonal skills, it becomes easier for you to have a follow-up conversation via phone or email. It also comes in handy while articulating your sales pitch, whether it is verbal or written.
Sales representatives with better interpersonal skills always have the upper hand in breaking the ice and get the conversation going.
To Help You Relate to Your Audience
With impressive interpersonal skills, you naturally acquire the practice to make everyone around you feel comfortable. As a result, your potential clients are likely to find you approachable enough to share their problems with you. They will be comfortable interacting with you and will be at ease seeking your help and advice.
It also helps you foster a unique relationship with your client, which results in encouraging a great professional relationship. On top of that, you will also find that your ability to put people at ease and relate with them makes it easier to work with them, which ultimately leads to generating more valuable leads at events and ultimately more revenue.
Wrap Up
Excellent interpersonal skills, both verbal and written, are crucial to discern the requirements your leads have and then again comes in handy while articulating what you can do to meet those requirements.
Failure to get your point across can result in you losing your lead or worse, causing a rift between you and your client.
Thus, before you attend an event or conference in a quest to generate valuable leads, it is essential to work on your interpersonal skills.
Other than interpersonal skills, it is also vital to be armed with Martech-based sales productivity apps in order to generate the maximum ROI (return on investment). The blend of excellent communication skills and advanced technology will work wonders at events and help you make the most out of them.
Do you think that excellent interpersonal skills give a sales professional an edge when it comes to generating leads at marketing events? Give us your feedback in the comment section below!