This week I have been doing a great deal of networking and meeting people and spreading the PG word but also following up with meetings about doing business. It has been an exceptionally busy week.
One of things this week was joining the truly gentlemanly Oli Barrett in his quest to break the speed networking world record. I have no idea whether we did break the record or not but I bumped into some old friends and met some very interesting new friends. We have covered networking before in the Code before here and here. So I am not going to talk to you about how to do it well because you can read that in those articles.
One thing though before I change topic, there are a number of personalities in networking events some of which are a little amusing and could certainly come along to our ‘Be Charming’ course. My personal favourite is the ‘By the Numbers’ individual, these are the ones who have read the books and studied the how too and have to go through the steps sometimes fast and everything comes out in a gabble or the others that cannot move off the script and our thrown if you interrupt them or ask them a question off topic.
But really, my main subject this week is about the job of the CEO or whomever is the ‘Face’ of the brand. I was brought into this business and I found the CEO was always behind his desk working on projects and ate at his desk and very rarely went out into the wide world. I was brought in to raise the brand awareness of the company and make the company a larger force. The first thing I said was that the CEO needed to be out more, shaking hands and doing deals. Sitting behind a desk is getting for getting the work done and even for sending out emails but still even in todays digital world people buy from people and those people they like and see. A CEO or Founder needs to go out into the world and be the face of the brand, he needs to spread the message and live the Brand. He can’t do that from behind the desk, he needs to go to the networking events, to the lunches, to the conferences and tell the world about what he does.
This is so important it is frequently forgotten. You need to build a relationship with your clients, your potential clients and even people who would never be your clients because they might recommend someone to be your client or at least speak highly of you.
You can do this for the digital world, you can do this with video maybe even a video blog. This builds a genuine relationship with you and the audience. I have a Facebook Friend who does this exceptionally well and though his posts may not be everyone’s cup of tea he is genuine and true in his posts.
Though I still believe that a physical presence is key to developing long lasting relationships so even though it might make you a busy person and work the long hours you need to get out there and shake the hands and do the business deals.
If you need help in making that first impression, then we are here to help…but in the meantime get out from behind that computer and be the brand.
Respectfully yours as always,
Zach – #1PG
