The sales process · Lead generation
A referral room pays back in the second year, and charges you all through the first.
A networking group is a standing room of business owners who meet on a fixed day and pass each other the work they hear about during the week. The cost is attendance, not the fee. GullySales helps you judge whether your trade belongs in a room like that, and keeps the record that answers it.
Scope, fee, reporting and term are agreed in writing after we have read your brief and spoken to you.
In one paragraph
A networking group is a standing room of business owners who meet on a fixed day and pass each other the work they hear about during the week. The cost is attendance, not the fee. GullySales helps you judge whether your trade belongs in a room like that, and keeps the record that answers it.
Somebody you trust has invited you to visit one. They get work from it, and the morning starts at an hour you would rather be asleep. The question is not whether such rooms work. It is whether one works for what you sell, at the price of a morning every week.
A structured referral group is a room with rules. Members turn up on the same day, most rooms allow only one business per trade, and everybody is expected to bring work for somebody else rather than only collect it. Miss enough mornings and the room stops thinking of you, which is the whole mechanism working as designed.
The step before this one is influencer marketing, where you rent somebody else's audience for money. A room is the opposite trade. You pay in time, and what you build stays yours afterwards, which is word of mouth, the step that follows.
Where this sits
Stage 4 of 10, lead generation. The routes an enquiry can arrive by, and what each one costs in money or in time.
- The stage before
- Prospecting
- The stage after
- Sales enablement
If you want this done for you
Build a group of people who show up for your brand without being sold to every time.
The work
What this step is actually like.
“What membership actually asks for”
A morning a week or a fortnight, at a fixed time, for at least a year. Then the meetings outside the meeting, where two members sit down and learn each other's business properly. There will be a joining cost and a renewal cost, and you want both in writing before your visitor's morning.
“Why the second year is the one that pays”
In the first year the room is working out what you do and whether you turn up. Referrals come from members who have watched you long enough to put their own name behind yours. That takes months of ordinary mornings, and an owner who quits at eight months pays the whole cost and collects almost none of the return.
“Sending a junior kills it”
A room refers to a person, not to a company. Send somebody who cannot quote, cannot commit to a date and has to check with you, and the referral stops there. The seat belongs to whoever can answer a customer on the spot, which in a small business is usually the owner.
“Who should not join one”
If you sell to three purchase managers in one industry, no room of local owners will ever meet them. Need orders this quarter? Wrong channel, and no room will rescue it. A diary that genuinely cannot hold a fixed morning is a reason to say no now, rather than pay for a seat nobody sits in.
What we do
What you end up with.
The artefacts this step produces, what each one is for, and how you know it is finished.
The one-line ask
The sentence you say when the room asks what you want this week. Name the trade, the trigger and the size: the builder who has just won a site in Rajajinagar, not anyone who needs flooring.
Result: A member can repeat your request to a stranger without you in the room.
The attendance plan
A year of dates in the diary, with the name of the person who goes and the name of the one who stands in. Agree the substitute early, because the day you need them is a day you are stuck on a site.
Result: No month passes with an empty seat that nobody noticed until renewal.
The referral log
A spreadsheet with seven columns: date, the member who gave it, the customer, what they wanted, who called them, what happened, and the value if it closed. Record what you give as well as what you get.
Result: At renewal you read the year instead of arguing about how it felt.
The renewal note
One page written before the fee falls due: work received, work given, hours spent, and the one thing you would do differently. Whoever pays the fee reads it rather than hears about it.
Result: Staying or leaving is decided on paper, not in the room on renewal morning.
Where this fits
Three pieces of sales work, in this order.
This work sits inside sales process design, at stage 1, prospecting and lead generation. The audit comes before it, and sales management keeps it running.
Step 1
Sales audit
Find where deals are being lost and what to fix first.
Start here if you cannot say where orders are lost.
Step 2 · you are here
Sales process design
One written way to sell, from first enquiry to repeat order.
Start here if every salesperson sells differently.
Step 3
Sales management
A target, a review routine and someone who owns the number.
Start here if the team has targets and no routine.
FAQ
Questions owners ask before they call.
Not here? More answers, or ask on WhatsApp.
How long before a networking group produces work?
Who in our company has to agree before we join?
Can we send a different person each week?
Is this worth it for a business that sells to other businesses?
How much does it cost?
How long is the contract?
Who will actually do the work?
What do you need from us?
What if we are not happy with the work?
Where to go next
The work that carries this step further.
The rest of lead generation
Or read the whole sales process in order.
Your next practical step
Tell us what you are trying to grow, and we will read it before we call.
Eight short steps, mostly taps. Skip anything you would rather answer on the call.