Visible, Digital and Collegiate

To be visible in today’s world, you must know where your target audience is likely to be and be seen there. In last week’s article, we looked at LinkedIn, the enormous job board used by many professionals as a networking platform.

In this week’s article, we go beyond LinkedIn to create a digital footprint which says who you are and what you do for your clients. In next week’s article, we will go beyond our organisation to reach the contacts and clients of our contacts - strategic business development.

Professionals to be seen by others on LinkedIn need to have an up-to-date profile, with past jobs, skill sets, and current position carefully completed, and their identity verified. 

They then need to draw attention to themselves.

Good strategies include following others, commenting on their posts, writing thought-leadership articles, and posting snippets that other professionals may find interesting. They may also attend TEAMS meetings or face-to-face events to broaden their network.  They share their business card and brochures and hope for work to come in. 

Some enterprising professionals will form strategic alliances with people they have worked with before and who they know are engaged by similar types of clients. They will then try to meet regularly to stay top of mind, and they may share common interests, such as rugby, cricket, lunch or coffee. However, this activity is not easy to scale and is time-consuming.

We live in a digital world from the moment we wake up to our mobile phone alarm to the moment we go to bed with a last-minute scroll through our emails or WhatsApp messages. We are dependent on our digital devices, yet most professionals do not know how to go digital in business development. This is where Caroline’s Club can be of assistance.

Professionals need to be known for who they are and what they do for their clients. And here is the rub - most professionals do not care what other professionals do for their clients, because the facts as are shared on LinkedIn such as their skill set, career history, past posts -are boring. Facts, psychologists tell us, engage the right brain, which triggers the logical response, to which the instant response is ‘so what’ or ‘I can’t be bothered’. 

However, human stories trigger the left brain and create interest, especially if the response is ‘I never knew you did that’. 

But it is not just the story which is engaging. Many organisations include stories in their brochures, but they are rarely read. This is because a brochure is perceived psychologically as ‘product push’, which always results in resistance.

This is why podcasts where the interviewer is an independent podcast host is much more engaging. Furthermore, the podcast recording is a digital link. It tells the story of who the professional is and what they do for their clients, with some human elements that explain why they got to where they are and what inspired them, making it more engaging.

Digital links should not be hidden in a brochure. They need to be readily available and easily accessible so they can be shared with contacts, colleagues and clients.

Having a digital business card with links to your podcasts is a way to introduce yourself and what you do for your clients. We have made the cards to that you can brand them with your colours and logo. As part of your email signature, they can easily be shared by sending an email. It takes just two minutes to create a digital business card which we will walk you through when you join Caroline’s Club.

But uploading a digital business card with a link to your podcast is only one-third of the story. 

I learned from my experience as a professional in the City of London law firm Simmons & Simmons that there were clients of mine for whom other professionals in the firm would like to work for and vice versa. But even professionals from within the same firm are bored by the facts of the skill set of their colleagues, and as a result have insufficient knowledge of what other professionals in the same firm do for their clients. 

This is where award-winning client mapping comes in. Professionals need to look beyond their skill set to the benefits they can provide for their clients. Professionals from different disciplines need to brainstorm a fictitious scenario in which they can each use their skills and expertise to help resolve it. Caroline’s Club will assist in this exercise and in recording a digital link called a ‘Cluster’. This link can also be added to your business profile and business card.

When I first started ‘Client Mapping’, it was before lockdown and the format of the meeting was a face-to-face panel discussion. Although the debate was 650% more memorable, it was lost in time. During lockdown, I knew what was needed was a digital platform with libraries of content, such as podcasts and case studies, which could then be accessed and shared digitally. Given that my web developer was in Japan I built it myself and linked it to my account software program and numerous other bits and pieces needed to get what I wanted.

Digital recordings of responses to a fictitious client situation are also much more versatile than a panel discussion at an event. They can be used time and time again to raise awareness across the firm via links to presentations on away days. They can also be linked to each professional's digital profile and business card to share with their contacts and clients by appending the link to their digital profile, business card, and email signature and sending an email.

Through the consistent use of digital links to recorded Clusters, each professional is getting their services and skills in a highly engaging manner, directly to the contacts and clients of their colleagues. 

An additional benefit is that by sending the link to their clients, they are providing them with valuable information about some of the problems they may encounter and directing them to the colleagues who can help resolve them.

Next week, we will see how, although Clusters of responses are good for cross-selling and client retention, Pods, which are the recorded responses of professionals from different organisations, are strategically better.