Being present

People may assume that local business networking meetings are just for people who want to win business from small, local companies. Yet, what these meetings lack in quantity they just might make up for in quality. We all know that one or two business cards from the right prospects are a lot more valuable than dozens of cards from companies that are not right for you. The more I speak to our members, the more I become convinced that local business networking often provides a great opportunity to identify and cultivate these prospects.

For example, during a recent conversation, PRISM member Bill Palisano, president of Lincoln Archives, Buffalo, New York, shared some of his firm’s successes and mistakes as it ventured into data protection services. And local networking was among the company’s successes.

“One thing I did wrong was assume that our existing clients, who use us for such services as record storage and document shredding, would automatically embrace us for data protection,” Palisano said. “We found that it was not a slam dunk.”

When selling data protection services, commercial records management companies have a different customer: their clients’ information technology departments.

“IT specialists don’t care whether you’ve established a relationship with another department in the company,” Palisano said. “They’re going to use whatever vendors they want to use—ones they’re familiar with.”

Palisano discovered that a hard sell doesn’t work well with these individuals. Trust and confidence take time to build.

To raise his firm’s profile with IT professionals, Palisano became active in a local IT professional association and now serves on its governing board. Last year, he chaired the organization’s annual conference.

The intense networking has paid off.

“The biggest thing that has been working for us is just being present,” Palisano said. “The IT people keep seeing us, and they are now reaching out to us and asking us for information. We’re acting more like a consultant.”

We are living in a digital, Internet age, and the rest of the world is a lot more accessible than it used to be. But, clearly the personal touch—a face behind the sale—still matters.

Palisano and several other experts in data protection will join us in Chicago in September to discuss trends, best practices and more in the area of data protection and media vaulting. For additional details please visit www.prismintl.org.

We hope to see you there!

Dave Bergeson is executive director of PRISM International, Chicago. He can be reached at dbergeson@prismintl.org.