branding – Pertinent Observations

Networking events and positions of strength

This replicates some of the stuff I wrote in a recent blog post, but I put this on LinkedIn and wanted a copy here for posterity

Having moved my consulting business to London earlier this year, I’ve had a problem with marketing. The basic problem is that while my network and brand is fairly strong in India, I’ve had to start from scratch in the UK.

The lack of branding has meant that I have often had to talk or negotiate from a position of weakness (check out my recent blog post on branding as creating a position of strength). The lack of network has meant that I try to go to networking events where I can meet people and try to improve my network. Except that the lack of branding means that I have to network from a position of weakness and hence not make an impact.

A few months back I came across this set of tweets by AngelList founder Naval Ravikant, in which he talked about productivity hacks.

– Delete emails w/o responding or flinching.
– Don’t set up voicemail.
– Don’t travel purely for business.
– Don’t go to conferences unless speaking.
– Eat dinner with friends or family.
– Use blocks of open time to create, make good decisions, & focus on important over urgent.

— Naval (@naval) August 14, 2018

One that caught my eye, which I try to practice but have not always been able to practice, is on not going to conferences if you are not speaking. However, now that I think about it from the point of view of branding and positions of strength, what he says makes total sense.

In conferences and networking events, there is usually a sort of unspoken hierarchy, where speakers are generally “superior” to those in the audience. This flows from the assumption that the audience has come to gather pearls of wisdom from the speakers. And this has an impact on the networking around the event – if you are speaking, people will start with the prior of your being a superior being, compared to you going as an audience member (especially if it is a paid event).

This is not a strict rule – when there are other people at the event who you know, it is possible that their introductions can elevate you even if you are not speaking. However, if you are at an event where you don’t know anyone else, you surely start on higher ground (no pun intended) in case you are speaking.

There is another advantage that speaking offers – you can use your speech itself to build your brand, which will be fresh in your counterparties’s minds in the networking immediately afterward. Audience members have no such brand-building ability, apart from the possibility of tarnishing their own brands through inappropriate or rambling questions.

So unless you see value in what the speaker(s) say, don’t go to conferences. Putting it another way, don’t go to conferences for networking alone, unless you are speaking. Extending this, don’t go to networking events unless you either know some of the other people who are coming there (whose links you can then tap) or if there is an opportunity for you to elevate your brand at the event (by speaking, for example).

PS: Some of Naval’s other points such as having “meeting days” and scheduling meetings for later in the day are pertinent as well, and I’ve found them to be incredibly useful.

Triangle marketing

This blog post is based more on how I have bought rather than how I have sold. The basic concept is that when you hear about a product or service from two or more independent sources, you are more likely to buy it.

The threshold varies by the kind of product you are looking at. When it is a low touch item like a book, two independent recommendations are enough. When it involves higher cost and has higher impact, like a phone, it might be five recommendations. For something life changing like a keto diet, it might be ten (I must mention I tried keto for half a day and gave up, not least because I figured I don’t really need it – I’m barely 3-4 kg overweight).

The important point to note is that the recommendations need to come from independent sources – if two people who you didn’t expect to have a similar taste in books were to recommend the same book, the second of these recommendations is likely to create an “aha moment” (ok I’m getting into consultant-speak now), and that is likely to drive a purchase (or at least trying a Kindle sample).

In some ways, exposure to the same product through independent sources is likely to create a feeling of a self-fulfilling prophecy. “Alice is also using this. Bob is also using this” will soon go into “everybody seems to be using it. I should also use it”.

So what does this mean to you if you are a seller? Basically you need to hit your target audience through various channels. I had mentioned in my post earlier this week about how branding creates a “position of strength“, and how direct sales is normally hard because it is done through a position of weakness.

The idea is that before you hit your audience with a direct sale, you need to “warm them up” with your brand, and you need to do this through various channels. Your brand needs to impact on your audience through multiple independent channels, so that it has become a self-fulfilling prophecy before you approach to make the sale.

What these precise channels are depends on your business and the product that you’re trying to sell, but the important thing is that they are independent. So for example, putting advertisements in various places won’t help since the target will treat all of them as coming from the same source.

Finally, where is the “triangle” in this marketing? It is in the idea that you complete the branding and sales by means of “triangulation”. You send out vectors in seemingly random directions trying to build your brand, and they will get reflected till a time when they intersect, or “triangulate”. Ok I know my maths here is messy ant not up to my usual standard, but I guess you know what I’m getting at!

Branding and positions of strength

I had an invitation to attend a data science networking event today. I had accepted the free pass for option value, but decided today to not exercise the option. Given I was not going to speak at the event, I realised that the value of the conversations at the event for me would be limited.

One of the internet gurus (it might be Naval Ravikant, but I’m unable to locate the source) has this principle that you shouldn’t go to networking events unless you’re speaking. Now, if everyone applied this principle events would look very different, with speakers speaking to one another (like in NED Talks!).

Thinking about it, though, I see clear value in this maxim. Basically when you go to a networking event and speak, you can network from a position of strength, especially after you’ve spoken. This is assuming you’ve done a good job of your speech, of course, but apart from elevating your status as a “speaker”, speaking at the event allows potential counterparties in conversations to have prior information about you before they talk to you.

So there is context in the conversation, and since you know they know something about you, you can speak from a position of strength, and hopefully make a greater impact.

It is not just about speaking and events. For a long time, a lot of my consulting business came from readers of this blog (yes, really!). This was because these people had been reading me, and knew me, and so when I spoke to them, there was already a “prior” on which I could base my sale. Of late, I’ve been putting out a lot of work-related content here and on LinkedIn, and that has sparked several conversations, which I have been able to navigate from a position of strength.

A possibly simpler word to describe this is “branding”. By speaking at an event or putting out content or indulging in other activities that let people know about you and what you do, you are building a brand. And then when the conversation happens, the brand you have thus built puts you in a position of strength which makes the sale far easier than if you didn’t have the brand.

You need to remember that position of strength as I’ve described here is not relative. It is not always necessary for the brand to elevate you to a level higher than the counterparty. All that is necessary is for it to put you at a high enough level that you don’t need to talk from a position of weakness. And if you think about it, cold calling and door to door sales is basically selling from a position of weakness – while it might have worked occasionally (which makes for fantastic stories), it is on the most part not successful.

And in some way, this concept of branding and positions of strength is well correlated to what I recently described as “the secret of my happiness“. By being really good at what you are good at, you are essentially putting yourself in a position of strength, so that people have no choice but to tolerate your inadequacies in other areas. Putting it another way, being really good at what you are good at is another exercise in brand building!

Brand building efforts can sometimes fail. There are times when I have given talks and got few questions – clearly indicating it was a wasted talk (either I didn’t talk well, or the audience didn’t get it). I have put out content that has just sank without a trace or any feedback. The important thing to know is that somewhere it all adds up – that these small efforts in branding can come together at some point in time, and make it work for you.