Networker Profile: Andy Szebeni

• Stuart Russell
• Tuesday 10 April 2012

What is your business called?

A&P

Briefly describe what your business does?

Train sales and customer service staff to increase revenues. We are focussed on professional services, specifically the legal sector and run the National Solicitor Selling Survey as well as the Solicitor Networking workshop series.

Which networking group(s) do you attend?

Trafford Enterprises

DG8

Office Drinks

Business Executives Association

I used to attend the 3-letter business breakfast groups but rarely do now. I do think they are brilliant for smaller businesses with a wide customer base (the trades, health, printers, solicitors, etc) but we focus specifically on solicitors with one part of our business and medium sized enterprises with the other. 13 years of networking has taught us to go directly where our prospects go rather than relying on indirect referrals.

How often do you attend networking events?

Roughly weekly. Two groups I attend religiously monthly to get third part referrals by educating my surrogate salesforce of fellow networkers. The other events are occasional ones where I seek to find legal sector representatives specifically and to build on those initial contacts offline.

How much of your business is directly or indirectly derived from attending business networking events?

80% of our revenue derived from new clients come from networking. The other 20% is existing client referrals and a very small amount of advertising online and offline.

What format of networking event do you most enjoy?

Informal events where there are few people that I know. I like meeting new people and hearing their stories and putting brand new prospects into my pipeline through my own efforts. Personally evening events over a drink are more relaxed and tend to be more productive.

What do you feel you gain from attending networking events?

It might sound harsh but I don’t go to networking events to make friends – I have enough already. That said, I still have good personal and business relationships with people I met in two different BNI groups of which I was a member for about 8 years combined and also the Trafford monthly evening event has yielded long-term trusted relationships.

Networking events are also good places to ‘test market’ business ideas: you get a pretty frank response from most other networkers!

What is your top networking tip?

Find a genuine reason to follow up. I tell people of articles, research, other groups or useful web sites, make a written note on their business cards and contact them a day or so later. This allows me to connect via LinkedIn and to pursue potentially profitable connections.

www.a8p.co.uk

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