Event: Exit Strategies and Looking to the Future

We held our October event last night in TateHindle’s beautiful and unique headquarters in Smithfield Market. We’d like to say a big thank you to our host for a lovely event in such an inspiring setting and to all our guests.

Topic: Exiting a business.

Our hotseater was concerned with his planned departure from a business he established with a partner over twenty years ago. How should he manage that process? How can I be sure of leaving a business that will continue to thrive? The challenge for the exiting partners was to ensure an effective handover with the right people in place to take the business forward.

The discussion was wide ranging and passionate, covering everything from giving your people space to grow into larger roles, to how to delegate and manage working relationships so that your business continues to succeed after your departure.

Key insights included:

• People may learn better when you give them space to make mistakes – provide them with clear targets and guidance, rather than instruction.
• The ‘parent/child’ relationship needs to change. At the moment, the company is your baby. The aim should be to nurture ambition in those who are taking over so that you make it their baby.
• Create clear functional roles on the Executive Team so that they take responsibility for the future. And do it now!
• Identify the void you will leave and fill it before you go.

If you want to take part in a similar discussion or have an issue you would like to talk about, please join us at a future event or volunteer to be in the hotseat yourself. Please leave a comment below if you have any insights into this month’s topic!

Next Topic!

Join us at our next event, at Indigo Blue on 9th November, or sign up to our mailing list for more information. Our topic on 9th November will be 'Having established demand and support for our product what else should we do to ensure commercial viability?"

Our final event of the year will be at Devereux Chambers on 14th December. If you can’t make either of those dates our schedule for 2017 is already up on the website so take a look.

Event: Building Trust With Your Customers

This week was our first event of the Autumn term and was attended by a diverse range of London's business people from a multitude of different industries. We would like to thank Geri McAndrew and ButtleUK for hosting the event at their offices in Victoria.

This week's hotseat topic was building trust between a business and its customers in a unique way. For our hotseater, who runs his own, one-man financial consultancy, the core issue was whether there were different and more innovative ways with which to build trust with his customers.

Questions

In the exploratory section of the event (where the group asks questions in order to clarify the question and explore the issue) the questions included;

• How do you know when you have won a client’s trust?
• What is the profile of a typical client?
• What do you understand by the term 'trust'?
• Why do you do what you do?
• What separates you out from other financial advisers?

Ideas

Our attendees then discussed the issue and offered advice. Some of the highlights were:

• Identify your unique selling point – if you don't know what it is, then your clients won't be able to see it either.
• Your clients need to know that you care about them, that you understand their situation and that they come first.
• Genuinely listening to your clients is an essential tool to create trust.
• Get some really good feedback – what do clients think of you?
• Aim to show, not tell – this is what will ultimately drive trust between yourself and your customers.
• People don't buy what you do, they buy why you do it.

Conclusions

Our hotseater then reflected back to the group. His main conclusions were that he needed to focus on learning how to listen well and tell great stories in order to relate better to his clients.

The main takeaway from the event was that business is always about putting people first, no matter what industry you're in and that it is too easy to lose sight of that fact. When trying to build trust, it's important to be able to engage with your customers on a human level, to demonstrate that you can relate to and are interested in their unique circumstances.

An interesting outcome was that, in a discussion which looked like being about the ‘hard sell’ the group settled on the importance of selling the person, rather than the product. As one participant remarked “we succeed when we show who we are”.

Click here to see our membership packages or leave a comment below.

Our next event will be at TateHindle on 12th October. We hope to see you there!

How to Network Effectively (and Why)

Networking is a term that we throw around a lot in our working lives. It's one of those polarising things that people either really love or really hate. Or really love to hate. So what is networking and why is it important?

In the world of business, networking is essentially the process of connecting and interacting with others to exchange information and develop professional contacts. In other words, networking is about meeting and talking to people who you will be able to work with in the future, either collaboratively to create something new or to problem solve for one another.

If you want to be able to network effectively, you have to be able to ask your self not only “what can this person do for me?” but also “what can I do for them?” If you give as much as you take, then you can build up goodwill. It's up to you and your network to then keep that momentum going but asking 'what's next?”

A lot of people see networking as manipulative and as a necessary (perhaps even unnecessary) evil in the business world. This doesn't have to be the case. Good, effective networking is a symbiotic relationship; two or more parties connecting and creating genuine relationships to get things done.

Is all networking good networking?

It's a common misconception that all networking is worthwhile. Not only do you need to make sure that you aren't wasting someone else's time but also that they aren't wasting yours.

When it comes to joining networking groups, be discerning and never feel pressured to sign up. Some groups have a strong, solid purpose and others are scams, hitting up business owners for joining fees. If it feels right and you want to be a part of it, then jump right in. But if it doesn't, then it just isn't worth your time.

Making sure, going in, that you know exactly what you want and why you are networking in the first place. Don't do it just because you think you're supposed to; it's okay to break the 'rules' if they aren't going to be useful to your business.

Be a Connector

One of the best ways to build your network and to build your personal brand is to introduce people within that network to one another. Not only does this help to improve your relationship with those people – they feel valued and are far more likely to remember you – but it helps them to expand their own network. Often, those will be the people who will offer you work or help you out later down the line.

With this in mind, don't spend all our time in industry specific groups. Diversify the events you attend and the connections you make because you never know when you're going to want to diversify your brand or need that outside knowledge on a project.

Again, good networking isn't just about helping yourself, it's about helping others. Your experiences and knowledge should be as value to the people in your network as theirs are to you. Share you expertise, be nice to everyone and shelve your ego. When people see that you're interested in helping them, they're more likely to trust you and reciprocate.

Top Tips

1. Be authentic, genuine and trustworthy. Not only will this boost your reputation in the long run but people are more likely to work with you in the short term.

2. Consider what you can do for others as well as what they can do for you.

3. Know what your goals are and what you need to succeed.

4. Choose your networking groups carefully. If it doesn't feel supportive, then walk away.

5. Ask open-ended questions in networking meetings to open up the discussion and show members that you're interested in what they have to say.

More Information

How to network like you really mean it - http://www.inc.com/minda-zetlin/8-things-power-networkers-do-make-connections.html

How to network effectively - https://www.nytimes.com/ref/open/finance/OPEN-NETWORK-EFFECTIVELY.html

Create an effective networking strategy - http://www.marketingdonut.co.uk/marketing/sales/sales-lead-generation/create-an-effective-networking-strategy

How to Use Social Media Effectively in Your Business

Social media is no longer just the domain of high schoolers and hipsters posting about Sunday brunch. There over 3 billion internet users, over 2 billion of which have active social media accounts. Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn and even Snapchat have become vital to success in the business world, particularly for start-ups and those looking to extend brand awareness beyond their core audiences.

In 2011, Hiscox commissioned a study looking at business usage of social media with responses from 305 owners, partners and senior decision makers from UK SMEs with between 1- 249 employees. They found that 57% of small businesses use social media in their marketing with the most common purpose being to increase brand awareness and boost sales. Facebook was the most popular platform with 19% using it for business related activity, compared to 14% using LinkedIn. These figures have only increased in more recent years.

Social media is mostly free and can provide businesses with valuable metrics about their customers and the ways in which they engage with specific content. In fact, social media generates a massive amount of data about your customers and their online habits in real time, every day.

Engagement

Through daily active engagement and ‘social listening’, you can gather customer data and use that information to make smarter, better informed decisions about your business. This means directly interacting with customers to find out what they’re talking about, what they want and how they use your products. Respond to tweets, ask questions and follow hashtags.

There are many tools that you can utilise to make analysing the data collected by social media platforms easier, in order to gauge customer reactions to content, tap into conversations happening around your brand, and find out what works and what doesn’t. For example, Hootsuite Insights enables users to gather together information from across all their social media platforms in real time and in one place.

Social Media Listening

Basically, social listening means actively seeking out what is being said about a company, brand, topic or person on social media channels. This could mean anything from tracking mentions of your company on Facebook to keeping track of trends in your industry that competitors are posting about on Twitter and LinkedIn.

There are many ways to engage in social listening. You could set up Google Alerts to track keywords in your industry or use Social Mention to monitor over 100 sources to measure what people are saying about you and your business. TweetReach offers basic, easy to use listening tools and ViralHeat allows you to not only listen to conversations about your brand but also to ‘identify trends to drive insights around your social media performance’.

Social media listening can massively aid in customer care – if you are actively hearing what your customers are saying, you can jump in and solve problems or just engage with your happy, satisfied customers. In the same vein, it provides direct access to feedback and can generate higher converting leads, through solving problems and highlighting your great customer service to future customers.

Targeted Advertising

Advertising on social media can be targeted towards specific demographics, promoting your business and distributing content to the people who you most want to reach. And then you can track and measure the performance of those ads in real time, allowing you to measure whether your desired audience are responding well to the copy and design.

For example, an ad campaign on Facebook can be targeted by location, age, interests, behaviours and friends among many others, making your advertising more effective. So if your company sells, for example, textbooks to university students and is based in Cambridge, you can ask Facebook to show your ads to people who are students at Cambridge University or are based in Cambridge and have expressed an interest in higher education.

Top Tips

1. Build your channels early. Start as you mean to go on – become a resource for information and a trusted communicator right from the start.

2. Find your audience. Different audiences can be found on different platforms so figure out where your target market can be found and focus on those platforms. For example, younger audiences are more likely to be found on Snapchat and Instagram, whilst older demographics tend to favour Twitter and Facebook.

3. Discover and create relationships with influencers. It’s not just what you know, but who you know.

4. Be a part of the conversation. Know what people are talking about and actively interact with them – social media is all about community and the personal touch.

More Information

How to Use Social Media to Boost Business - https://www.theguardian.com/small-business-network/2013/aug/29/social-media-boost-business-tips

20 Social Media Marketing Tips from the Pros - http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/social-media-marketing-tips-pros/

The Top 10 Benefits of Social Media Marketing - http://www.forbes.com/sites/jaysondemers/2014/08/11/the-top-10-benefits-of-social-media-marketing/#2f67f83d2a4d

Welcome to the Brain Exchange!

About Us

Founded in October 2013, the Brain Exchange is an exclusive, diverse and high quality network for experienced business professionals. We are focused on solving problems and developing ideas through real, face-to-face connections and a passion for collaboration, learning and knowledge exchange. Busy, experienced business people come to our events to relax, reflect and review their situation honestly.

Join the Circle

No two meetings are the same – the participants, venue and topic change every time. Each group is comprised of a small, diverse group of people with a range of business skills and experiences to bring to the debate. With the benefit of professional moderation in a confidential, relaxing environment, the group focuses on a work-based issue presented by a member and as a team, participants analyse the issue and work towards a practicable solution.

By becoming a member, you gain access to a wealth of ideas and different perspectives on a range of business topics. Our events provide members with experiential learning about effective problem-solving and teamwork, as well as a new ideas for their business and their own professional development. We also offer regular interaction with the wider Brain Exchange community via an exclusive online forum and regular e-newsletters.

Our Blog

Every week we will be posting a variety of articles on our new blog from news round-ups to tips to interviews of high profile business people with something to say.

Mondays will be a profile of a business or person, Wednesdays will feature tips and advice for a successful business, and Fridays will be our weekly news round-up day. And look out for special Thursday posts after a meeting, where we offer a summary of what was discussed and any useful conclusions that the group reached.


Click here to see our membership packages or leave a comment below with any questions.

Our next event will be at Buttle UK on 14^th September. We hope to see you there!