I was unable to attend PM Forum’s first annual conference since the pandemic so I have been reading Kim Tasso’s excellent summary of some of the key messages.
My main takeaway was: it’s all about people.
Whether you are talking about selling services to large corporates or entrepreneurs, attracting and retaining great talent – it all comes down to remembering to be people orientated.
It seems such an obvious message but sometimes it gets lost in the noise generated by all organisations, legal or not, as they seek to stand out from the competition.
- Investing in your workforce will ensure that you have energetic support for existing initiatives, a pipeline of ideas to take the business forward and momentum to effect change. I am not talking about salaries here. I mean ensuring people feel valued and that your organisation has thought through and communicated its own values and, importantly, lives by them. This will cultivate trust internally and create a fostering environment which encourages debate and allows people to flourish. And this in turn will attract clients.
- Take time to relate to clients and potential clients as people. Find out their particular interests, business issues and pain points. Then make sure all your business activity – discussions on or offline, website material, general content, events, webinars etc – is orientated towards these. Your own experience will tell you that generic approaches are less effective than targeted and relevant ones.
This message was reinforced when I listened to an excellent podcast on the BBC Radio 4’s “The Spark” (recommended to all) in which the presenter, Helen Lewis, interviewed Emily Smith, a forensic psychologist. They were discussing how rapport can transform difficult personal interactions. I have now ordered Emily Smith’s book, “Rapport: the four ways to read people” as building rapport is the core of all we do – not just as marketers and business developers.
You don’t have to be a large organisation with huge resources to achieve all the above. Indeed in some ways it is easier for smaller organisations to be more agile.
If you put caring for people at the heart of your business, the results will speak for themselves.