I was asked to do a short input to a group of potential investment bankers at UBS, London, a few weeks ago. I think it went rather well and I enjoyed it immensely. The event was organised by my friends at ‘Greenlight‘ the specialist arm of Stafford Long and Partners the fabulously creative London agency…
In previous posts I have suggested that-Your network will save your business, given the chance and cared for. And I suggested 3 thoughts that will help turn you into brilliant networkers. The three things to think about were- Generosity– people are lovely when they realise you only want to help them. So look for opportunities…
I do a lot of work to help professional people, in very large firms, to become more comfortable with ‘networking’. They talk to me about the difficulties they find in cultivating new ‘prospects’. Times are tough, and they have tough targets to achieve for new business, and business development. And what they used to do,…
Imagine the scene. You’ve spent days preparing a major presentation to a new client, and you’re coming to the end of the pitch. You’ve moved from what they need, to what you can do for them, how you will proceed, the costs carefully explained in context of the results to be delivered. Now is…
Fabio Capello is the Italian Manager of the English international football team. He’s very Italian. And when he started the job there was no doubt that his English wasn’t up to the job. Now he’s been doing the job for four years, he’s a little better, but caused a furore this week by suggesting that…
Sometimes it’s much easier to pitch with almost no hope of actually winning because you can be. Er… honest. I was involved in a pitch a couple of years ago, right at the hard start of the bad times, where we were asked to take part in the process as an afterthought, to make up…
I read an article a few years ago about travelling preachers in 19th Century America. There were hundreds of the faithful fellows, literally wandering from town to town, all through the thousands of empty miles of the mid-west. They made their living, or their dinner, by being good, because they knew that if they weren’t…
There’s a word for it. It’s called ‘a tell’. It’s when a speaker ‘tells’ the audience about something without saying anything. There are congruent tells, where the subtle message reinforces the real one, like smiling sincerely and saying ‘I’m really happy to be here’; and such congruence makes for a powerful message. Then there’s the…
I’ve got a friend called Quentin. He’s an actor and a good one too with a long track record of theatre, stage & screen roles behind him. Actors can sometimes be a bit full of themselves but not Quenty, he’s a no-nonsense kind of bloke and when he says something to me with that special look…