Effortless Networking

A reader wrote to me once saying that making small talk was not a problem for her. Her challenge was transitioning from small talk to talking about business.

Do you share this challenge?

Do you feel awkward or uncomfortable talking about or promoting your business?

Well, I used to feel this way when I first started my business. (And no, I don’t feel that way anymore!)

In retrospect, I discovered that my discomfort was due to 3 “simple” things.

Once I solved these, I became quite comfortable and confident talking about and promoting my business.

So here are the 3 things:

1. Are you clear about what you do or offer?

   When I first started my business, I had the hardest time explaining what I did. As a result, I was always uncomfortable talking about my business, forget about promoting it!

   “I never had this problem in the corporate world”, I thought. “So what’s the difference?”

   The difference, I realized, was that I didn’t have a good sense of what I was offering.

   My services were too general, not focused and crisp like my job responsibilities when I worked at companies.

   So describing what I did was obviously difficult — and therefore, awkward.

2. Do you believe in your product or service?

   A family member once asked me whether I was interested in promoting a particular software product.

   After looking at it, I found myself quite excited about it. I could see the potential of this product, and I believed that it could be very useful for specific businesses.

   I started explaining it earnestly to my husband…

   And I remember stopping mid-stream and exclaiming: “Well now, why don’t I talk about my own business like this?”

   Well, it’s hard to believe in your product or service, and talk about it earnestly and passionately, if you don’t know what you’re offering!

3. Do you know who would find your product or service useful?

   In another similar situation, as I was listening to someone explain why his service was useful to certain people, I realized that I couldn’t do the same for my services.

   I didn’t have a good sense of the kinds of people who would find my service useful because — you guessed it — I wasn’t clear about what I was offering.

   So how could I know who would find it useful? And equally importantly, why they’d find it useful?

As a result, I’d always feel awkward about promoting my business, because I was never sure whether I was promoting it to the right people.

So if talking about your business is difficult for you, check out these three questions and see what comes up for you.

Till next week,
– Sri

This entry was posted on Sunday, October 1st, 2006 at 12:08 am and is filed under Networking Conversations, Building Confidence. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.