Being able to confidently articulate the organisation’s brand comes down to connecting on a personal level with the brand, and owning how you talk about it with your networks.

Client example: Global Professional Association

The challenge for a large organisation, like a global membership association, is how to translate the brand’s positioning and value proposition ‘on the ground’ in a variety of locations and categories.

In this week’s strategy session in Brisbane for a professional association’s board, leadership, staff and committee heads, participants worked with a range of tools to connect with and communicate the global brand at an individual, team and national level, making it meaningful ‘on the ground’. The key to success using tools like an ‘elevator pitch’ (loathe that term!) lie in making it personal, individual, authentically inspiring, and human.

An elevator pitch that means something

Participants were encouraged to choose an angle that was personally meaningful when interpreting the brand’s value proposition messages, and to lead with this angle when constructing their own elevator pitch that they could use to talk to potential members about the benefits of joining the association. It was a balance between being clear on what is meaningful to their member audience, and what is meaningful to each of them personally.

Incorporating a ‘Brand Culture’ strategy at your organisation or professional association, where your people can meaningfully connect with your brand,  results in stronger positioning, connection and visibility, in order to reach individual and shared KPIs, particularly around target audience engagement and business growth… but it also helps with team unity, motivation and confidence.

How do you know you need a Brand Culture Strategy?

Consider these questions:

• How clear are your brand messages to internal and external audiences?
• Are your board and leadership team on the same page when it comes to brand positioning and direction? Is the board driving a culture that supports core brand values?
• What about your leadership and management teams – do they work towards common brand understandings and goals?
• Can your people confidently explain what the brand is all about… in ways that inspire them?
• Have your people been equipped with the right information and professional skills to represent your brand to clients and networks… confidently, clearly, accurately and favourably?
• Have you given your people the resources and encouragement to develop their own personal brands? Are you aware of how confidently positioned personal brands create better company brand representation, increased performance and happier, more motivated team members?
• Does your marketing team have a deep understanding of the brand’s positioning, value proposition, key messages, audience and communication style? Do they know how to formulate and carry out a strategic marketing plan? Are they being utilized as a key resource to guide and support others in communicating the brand?

The questions above are a great place to start your leadership discussions about your people’s connection to the brand.

Then, your Brand Culture Strategy should be informed by your organisation’s overall strategic direction and a solid understanding of where your team members (at every level) currently sit in terms of brand awareness, connection and communication. A truly powerful strategy session like the one described above starts with a well-planned team enquiry and engagement process.

More information:

Navigating the festive networking season to make the most of it, without feeling exhausted

This is the time of year when opportunities to network abound, and the choices are increasingly festive and bright… and yet, it is also the time of year when we feel rushed, overwhelmingly busy, and starting to tire out.

Our good intentions to show up for end-of-year networking can end up looking like a half-hearted attempt: we stay in the corner enjoying drinks with the people we see every day, or we show up frazzled and exhausted, with nothing much to say… or we don’t show up at all.

There is something to be said for being selective with events and focusing on other things that matter – finishing off projects, wrapping things up effectively with staff and clients, and looking after our health! I always have good intentions to make the most of the festive networking season, but in the end, I often find I’ve overcommitted, and have to bow out of one or two events in my diary, to stay back in the office, or to get some sleep!

At the same time, the festive season is such a natural time to connect with your networks: you can check in with those you haven’t caught up with in a while, to see how their year has been; you can ask new acquaintances about their holiday plans; you can wish those VIPs in your network a happy holiday! We all remember the human element during the festive season – we are relaxed, if a little tired, and we are ready to breathe out and have fun. This makes for easily-flowing conversation!

“I am currently enjoying delivering an ideal client project that started with a chance meeting at a Christmas event last year.”

We also know that just about everyone joins in the gatherings and celebrations at this time of year, so the chances of meeting those influential people who normally don’t have time to attend events increases. I am currently enjoying delivering an ideal client project that started with a chance meeting at a Christmas event last year.

Here are three things I am focusing on this festive season, to make the most of it while still maintaining my health and sanity!

1. Create my own meaningful opportunities to network. I have collaborated with others to create some simple but meaningful connection points before the end of the year:

• I’m co-hosting a long-table, invitation-only lunch for a group of women in business and professional industries that I admire and value having in my network.
• I’ve scheduled my annual end-of-year lunches or dinners with a few close friends, when we reflect on our year and our goals for the next.
• I’m calling or emailing clients located in other cities to check in on their progress and to wish them a happy festive season. While I am catching up with a couple of clients face-to-face during a family visit on the east coast, I’m keeping this limited during this busy time of year.

2. Selecting events more slowly. There are so many invitations at this time of year for us all, and I have to remind myself not to go on a guilt-trip for not attending everything – that I can say no even when my calendar says I’m free. Chances are, I’m not really free, because I’ll be finishing something off I didn’t schedule enough time for, or something unexpected will come up… or I’ll just need a rest for an evening! The events I am prioritising, where possible, are the ones run by clients I’ve worked with this year.

3. Booking less coffees, for now. After some time off recently to support a family member, I am playing catch up while juggling the usually busy work demands of November and December. I have a long list of coffee meetings I am supposed to reschedule or book in, and I’m keen to do them, but I am letting go of the expectation that I’ll get to them all this year.

As you can see above, my approach to navigating the festive networking season is not to avoid it, nor is it (any longer) to go hard and really push myself, arriving at holiday time exhausted! I am trying to be a little more realistic, to focus on what really matters and what I’d really like to do, and to try to show up fresh and to bring value to the conversations I do choose to have before the end of the year.

Develop your spoken introduction and your 1-pager that nails what you do and why it matters

By far the biggest area of interest in enquiries from professional services teams is getting help crafting strong professional value statements and building confidence in using them.

Why a ‘professional value statement’?

Your professional value statement consists of a very short statement (preferably one sentence) that sums up what you do, who for, and why it matters. Your statement is most often used in spoken and emailed introductions where you have to get the point of your work across quickly and impactfully. It can also be extended with a 1-page document summarising the key aspects of your work and your credibility in the industry.

Some call it an introduction or an elevator pitch, but a better term is professional value statement, personal value statement, or employee value statement. These more elegant terms point to the need to understand the value that we bring in our work… and this has a far greater impact on building trust with customers and stakeholders than a generic sales pitch!

When everyone in the organisation has a personalised and thoughtfully-crafted go-to statement that they feel authentically speaks to what’s most important about their work, they are much more likely to use it to help build the business.

The process of crafting your professional value statement

While I help people every day to create and use impactful professional value statements, working on my own has been the biggest challenge. It’s so much harder to make ideas clear and succinct to others when they are about you! I have spent countless hours crafting and evolving mine, and I feel that my current statement is able to quickly point to the benefits and direction of my work, which are not otherwise very tangible or easy to pigeon-hole.

One piece of content that leads with my professional value statement and has really assisted in providing a snapshot of my work in email introductions has been my 1-pager capability statement. This is a 1-page .pdf containing:

• My name and role title
• A photo of me
• My professional value statement (1 sentence, highlighted)
• Key practice areas
• Key clients
• Key speaking engagements
• Contact details.

What you include in your one-pager will be different according to your focus and audience. For some, establishing credibility will be more about listing formal credentials than speaking engagements, for example.

Here is the top fold of my 1-pager, showing my one-sentence professional values statement (this is how I introduce my work in-person, too):

How to stop feeling icky about promoting your strengths!

In a recent online workshop working with new leaders in transport and logistics across ANZ, we reflected on individual and collective strengths… and there were many.

Team members identified strengths that were recognised by many participants, including:

• Keeping promises
• Being knowledgeable
• Being hardworking and results-focused
• Being team players
• Having a can-do attitude
• Helping clients and staff to achieve goals

Yet, they also reported a reluctance to self-promote, while at the same time recognising the value of building an online profile and being able to talk confidently about strengths when needed. One team member said that if it wasn’t for his online profile, he would never have got the job at this organisation – a job he really values!

Identifying and being able to clearly articulate strengths does a lot, not only your personal brand, but your team’s identity and the broader company brand. It helps staff be confident in talking about their work when meeting important new contacts and developing relationships with current clients. It also helps grow personal confidence, pride, motivation and belonging – because when we are clear on the value we contribute, we feel really good about our work.

“…when we are clear on the value we contribute, we feel really good about our work.”

Yet, across the board, I have found that a great many professionals are reluctant to talk about themselves. They’ve seen poor examples on social media, and they don’t want to put themselves ‘out there’ or sound conceited or salesy in introductions and conversations. At the same time, they do have a desire to identify and articulate their strengths.

Moving to a positive approach to self-promotion involves:

• Identifying situations where you need to talk about your strengths, or to set yourself up as credible (e.g. external and internal networking, email introductions, running a meeting with a new client or prospect, phone enquiries, interviews and promotions).
• Having a clear plan and language for how you will approach such situations – what you will say and do to introduce yourself, to guide the conversation and invite people to see you in a certain way.
• Sharing the experience of reflecting on strengths, and practising talking about them with each other.
• Seeing positive role models talking about the value they bring through their work, and participating in mentoring, coaching or training opportunities to be confident professional communicators – both in-person and online.

You’ve prepared your introduction for networking events… but does your listener care about what you’re saying?

Perhaps your introduction is boring and lacks impact… just your name and your role title that means little to anyone else.

Or you are rambling on but not really saying anything.

Or worst of all – your practised ‘elevator pitch’ feels like an unwanted sales call to the poor person you’ve cornered at networking drinks.

What your audience cares about comes first

While you may not know what matters specifically to the person you meet networking, you can still prepare a thoughtful introduction by understanding what generally gets people to listen and connect with your work, and by knowing what human beings generally need in order to enjoy an exchange with someone new!

When it comes to articulating value, what you personally care about matters – but it matters mostly to YOU. Your listener needs to hear something that makes them listen – something that matters to THEM.

Let me give you an example from my photography business days… As a photographer, I spent a lot of effort and training learning to ‘get it right in the camera’ – using equipment, techniques and knowledge of how light works on the subject, to ensure the photos were as close to perfect as I could achieve, before I got to editing on Photoshop. I was proud of this – it’s how I was taught to practice photography at university – to honour the art of working with the camera itself. But this was more about my lack of interest in digital arts and not wanting to spend any more time than necessary at the computer, because I’d rather be on location, shooting. At the end of the day, the client didn’t care whether I ‘got it right in the camera’ or spent hours Photoshopping – they just wanted great photos (and a great experience).

Knowing that the client’s number one interest was receiving photos of themselves that they loved, and that number two was enjoying and feeling uplifted by the experience of the photoshoot, I had to lead with this in my brand communication. Yet, so many ‘old school’ photographers miss this in their communications – even during the actual shoot, where they spend so much time fiddling with the camera and lighting that the client grows increasingly tired and nervous, ignored and waiting.

If you want your target audience to really listen when you introduce your work, think like a good photographer – think about their experience, not yours. That means keeping it short, clear and human – no fancy terms, no sales speak, no monologues or memorised sales pitch. Just say what you do, for whom, and to what end – that is, what it achieves for them. That’s all… then pause and allow for space for questions!

Recently, I’ve noticed clients asking for support in empowering staff to network internally with others at the organisation. These clients tend to be large organisations, or those where staff are working remotely.

The motivations I hear for wanting staff to network with each other are varied, including: 

• We want staff to see how they can progress their careers within the organisation, by building strong internal relationships over time.
• We need our siloed teams to connect and feel like they belong to one community and under one overarching brand.
• We want staff to practice their networking skills and build their personal brands before they go out and build relationships with external stakeholders and audiences.

What is the difference between team-building and internal staff networking?

Programs to promote belonging, teamwork and psychological wellbeing are essential, particularly in large organisations… but they are not the same as internal networking.

The purpose of internal networking is to connect your staff to each other professionally, and help strengthen their professional confidence, professional relationships and career pathways within the organisation. It can be linked to peer mentoring or leadership programs, falling under the banner of HR and People Development… or the focus can be on strengthening how your people talk about the organisation and the brand, which brings it into the Marketing & Communications category. The work I do with organisations crosses over both of these.

Our approach to empowering internal networking

Because our focus is on how your people connect with and communicate the company brand, we create experiences with brand at the centre. Whether it’s a personal brand development program or a focus on developing team identities connected to the company’s purpose and values, staff are given guidance on how to communicate more clearly within and about the work they do. There are also embedded opportunities for staff to reflect on learning, plan goals and actions steps, and even share with other teams in the organisation.

Working with brand gives staff a common language to talk about the work they do, and this connects them and encourages confidence in networking with each other. Ensuring there is a ‘personal brand’ component means giving staff the opportunity to reflect on their own professional growth and what they want to achieve and be known for – not just in a broad sense but specifically with team members, managers, and other departments.

Where to start in guiding internal networking at your organisation

If this approach resonates with you, I suggest starting with an investigation of how connected your people feel to the organisation’s brand and to each other. How effectively have teams developed their own identities… and then found ways to share this with each other?

Guiding internal networking is more than just bringing your staff together… it takes a clear purpose and a plan to empower team members to connect and work more effectively with each other, through creating strong relationships and communication across departments, regions and even time zones.

With the business events scene opening back up as we move through Covid, professional people are eagerly signing up to attend conferences around Australia and beyond! Will you and your staff hit the ground running with a solid game plan when you arrive at your next conference, making the most of your money and time? Here are some things I’ve learned about how to make the most of attending conferences.

1. Understand the landscape to think strategically about your actions.

Look over the program for opportunities to connect or learn, then plan out what you will do at each phase of the program. For example, is it more important for you to be on time to the next session… or to linger at the morning tea break in order to network and meet certain people? Not always easy choices, but choices that can yield good results if you think strategically.

“Is it more important for you to be on time to the next session… or to linger at the morning tea break in order to network?”

If you can bring a team to the conference, you can divide and conquer based on different people’s strengths.

2. Do your research and think ahead about who you need to meet.

Who will attend the conference that you can keep an eye out for in order to introduce yourself; or better yet, get an introduction to beforehand and then arrange to meet up while at the conference? You can get clues about who might be attending by following the conference communications on social media, or asking your network if they know someone attending that you should meet.

“Get clues about who might be attending…”

If you intend to meet a speaker, approach them after their session prepared with a meaningful question you’d like to ask. Just saying thank you may not get you remembered; trying for an elevator pitch right after their presentation is unlikely to work either. This is an opportunity to smile, quickly but meaningfully connect by showing appreciation and interest, and then respectfully leaving them space to meet other audience members. You can follow up successfully later after leaving a great first impression like this!

Your staff may not intuitively know how to connect with target contacts – having a clear plan for their communication by talking it through ahead of time will greatly support their success.

3. Building relationships is better than ‘selling’.

There are good reasons to have a business stand at the expo, but this should be planned with great care to get your money’s worth (for example, you should have confident, well-trained staff running the booth and ensure that you have more than one person available, in order to have the freedom to move around the room and not be ‘stuck’ behind the table).

Sometimes, you are best off being free to network and engage with conference activities, rather than to try selling from a booth. After all, the best business relationships start with personal interaction – the person you sit next to at the keynote, or work with in the breakout activities… the person you bump into over coffee, or meet at the networking drinks – these are the golden moments, if you are prepared with great ice-breaker questions, a confident smile, and a simple, positioned introduction to explain what you do, when meeting someone new.

Are your staff equipped with the language and skills to make the most of these golden moments at the conference?

4. How can the conference enrich your business, team and personal brands… long after the event is over?

A conference is an opportunity to step away from the day-to-day and think outside the box, as you engage with new ideas and get informed about trends in your industry. But what do you and your staff do with this thinking once you are back in the office?

“…what do you and your staff do with this thinking once you are back in the office?”

Make it a practice to set aside reflection and sharing time with your attending team members at the end of each day of the conference – what did we discover today, how can we use this? How will we share it with the rest of the team?

If attending alone or sending one staff member, have them set aside personal reflection and note-taking time during the conference to consolidate their notes and action them into something useful for the rest of the team.

Finally, build your new learnings into your brand communication and thought leadership – turn your notes into articles, videos or newsletters that demonstrate to your audiences that you stay up-to-date with your professional space. Equip your team members with the skills or collaborations to do this – or you’ll only have a bunch of selfies on Instagram to show for their time at the conference!

What message are your staff sending when they fade into the background, instead of truly engaging at your company events?

I recently had a great experience co-hosting an event where executives from both organisations attended, represented their brands and networked with each other.

At so many events I’ve observed, however, companies fail to leverage their advantageous position as event hosts… because their staff aren’t truly engaging.

If you’ve ever attended a corporate-hosted event and seen the branding but not much of the staff, you know what I’m talking about: Team members are not a ‘real presence’ at the event, but fade into the background instead! They arrive late, leave early, chat to the one client they know, or huddle in a corner talking to each other and eating the food. I have seen this even at senior executive level in professional firms, when attempts to ‘network’ are limited because of a lack of strategy, skill or confidence. 

Do your staff know:

• How to enter the room with confidence?
• How to circulate, introduce themselves, and connect people?
• How to be a visible, felt, positive presence in the room?
• How to talk about their work with clarity, without sounding like they are giving a sales pitch?

When your staff attend your company event, they need to make themselves known for who they are and what they do, and network as peers (no matter what their role) with your important guests.

Don’t rely on your corporate banner to bring in business! Tips to help your staff feel prepared and confident at your next event:

• Staff should arrive early and leave late. Why? When you are there before the room fills up, you get your bearings and settle in, rather than walk into an intimidating crowd! Leave after the guests leave, because it shows your commitment to being the host and to the organisation you represent. Don’t allow your staff to ‘pop in’; if they can’t be truly present, they should attend the next event instead.
• Being a ‘host’ means meeting everyone and connecting people – making sure no-one is standing alone, introducing your colleagues to the people you meet etc. – hosting is not just providing the food and drinks! It helps to talk this through with staff and even practise scenarios ahead of time.
• Senior staff should mix not just in networking but in sitting with guests during the presentation or dining experience – really connecting and being part of the conversation. Sometimes the best conversations are with the person you are seated next to!
• Upskill junior or support staff early so they are not just ‘invisible’, serving drinks or managing registrations. They can make a great impression too!
• Have a well-thought-out intro, welcome speech or presentation that truly positions you and your point of difference as a firm, and makes it clear who you work with, how, and to achieve what results… in a succinct and clear statement!
• Your presenter needs to position as an expert and share this expertise. This means adding value –something like a recent client anecdote, observation or insight will be interesting and memorable to your audience – and will give them something they can’t read online!
• Equip your key relationship-building staff with a specific plan to connect further in a follow-up conversation, and to stay top of mind for the future.

Having worked with hundreds of businesses and thousands of employees from C-Suite to just starting out, I firmly believe that confidence and effectiveness in networking and business communication come from first being very clear on the brand you represent. Have you given staff adequate opportunities to engage with your brand? To own the brand through building team identities? To align through their personal brands? Almost without exception, I find that organisations have not done this anywhere near as effectively as they could.

The number 1 thing holding professionals back in business development (and how to overcome it)

In my April webinar for FINSIA on ‘Network-building plans for finance professionals in the new normal’, I outlined the key problems I see professional advisors stumble on when it comes to their business and relationship development. Some of the stumbling blocks I hear all the time from financial advisors, bankers, accountants, lawyers and other professionals include:

• It’s hard to connect and build trust when so much of what we are doing is online
• I/my team lack confidence in positioning and introducing what we do and ‘why us’
• Networking events are hit-and-miss
• Coffee meetings lack purpose and there’s no follow through
• It’s hard to stay top of mind and be referred often, even by happy clients
• It’s hard to stay focused on business development and networking activities when we are so busy doing the work

While many resonate with these and more, there is one thing that holds professionals back in business development more than anything… and this was reflected in the poll results during our webinar, when we asked 130+ participants what they were struggling with most – and found that for the majority, it was the lack of a clear plan.

Even where many responded that a lack of commitment and accountability from staff was a factor – the vast majority cited the lack of a clear plan as the main problem – and in fact, this lack of planning has a flow-on effect to a lack of confidence in business development and networking, which manifests in a lack of commitment and accountability from staff.

What does a clear BD plan look like for professional services?

There is so much information out there about how professional advisors should network, do sales, use LinkedIn… but this can lead to overwhelm and lack of clarity about what really makes sense for your ‘trusted advisor’ brand, and what really moves the needle in your business. That’s why it’s important to seek advice from specialists who have deep experience with clients in professional services – because the approach is specific to them – and can even vary considerably between different sectors, such as between accounting and finance, for example.

“There is so much information out there about how professional advisors should network, do sales, use LinkedIn… but this can lead to overwhelm and lack of clarity about what really makes sense for your ‘trusted advisor’ brand…”

Here’s a snapshot of the planning format I offered to FINSIA members in the webinar (and you can watch the full recording below for templates and examples).

Step 1. Be clear on exact business development goals (e.g. 3 new clients worth $X in the next month; 1 new key referral partner in the next two months). Once you have your targets, think about how you have achieved similar targets in the past – how many conversations or touchpoints were needed to build that trusted relationship? If you know exactly how many and what kinds of conversations you need to have to get those new clients, you then know what work needs to be done, by when, to reach your goals.

Step 2. Plot your relationship-building flow chart. How do you guide people from first contact (such as a LinkedIn connection or meeting at a networking event) through to working relationship? Brainstorm the key steps and what activities need to be completed at each step. You should also be thinking about creating a suite of resources to support these steps, such as email templates for introductions and a meeting planner with key questions you need to ask. These resources should be informed by what you know makes sense and works with your clients/contacts, and what aligns with your brand.

Step 3. Be strategic in choosing supporting networking activities. With limited time, your networking activities should be focused and well-planned, to get the most out of a few key actions. Be clear who you want to network with and where they are, and choose meaningful events and experiences that move you towards those all-important 1-on-1 conversations. Ensure you have action steps in place before, during and after networking activities/events, in order to leverage them fully.

WATCH THE WEBINAR BELOW: