Richard Branson, Steven Spielberg and Nigel Botterill all have one thing in common – as do all successful people – a real passion for what they do. Love them or hate them we all take notice of people that are passionate about what they do, produce or sell. They are just impossible to ignore.
And it’s just the same when you are networking.
You can have a plan, all the tools, dress the part, and have a great opening line (lift pitch, seven second introduction, whatever you want to call it) but, without real passion, you will never truly succeed. So what really fires you up about what you do? What you sell? What you produce? Steve Jobs used to call this your ‘Passion Statement’. It’s a simple sentence, “I’m excited about this product (company, initiative, feature, etc) because it ?????”. Once you know what your passion statement is, share it with everyone you meet networking and everyone else you meet. [click to continue…]
by David Wimblett on January 21, 2013 · 1 comment
I’ve recently started to mentor a business owner who needs more sales, not just to make a profit, but just to stand a chance of staying in business. Now there are a number of things that we need to work on urgently, and one of the most important is the marketing of the business.
The simple truth is that the business is a good one; it just needs more sales. The trouble is, however good a business you may have, without sales it’s dead. So, the marketing of any business is the key to its success. [click to continue…]
by David Wimblett on December 19, 2012 · 1 comment
This is something I hear pretty often and I heard it again this week, at the networking skills workshop that I was providing; so I guess no real surprise there. The person knew that networking was good for their business but they hated it.
Now there are different reasons why people don’t like networking, so I asked the person concerned what their biggest fear was. Their answer was – what it is in most cases, the biggest hurdle to those new to networking – who to talk to and what to say. [click to continue…]
by David Wimblett on November 26, 2012 · 0 comments
I was at a networking event recently. You know the sort of thing, loads of business owners in a room, food and drink, lots of noise, so you have to shout to make yourself heard, and a few people get to give a minute sales pitch. And, unless you are standing in the front row, or the event has a PA, they can’t be heard and so everyone just continues talking, not taking the slightest bit of notice.
Pretty much a waste of time! Well at this event one of the speakers did their best to be heard; to stand out. They jumped up on a chair and spoke from there. From where I was at least I could see him but I still couldn’t hear a word that was said. [click to continue…]