Be Fearless. Become A Considered Self Promoter To Grow Your Business
I am infamous in Tokyo. I always ask the first question of the speaker at an event. “Oh Greg, you always ask the first question”, people say, as if it was a bad thing. They don’t get it. In my case, I have found that having an interesting question is one thing, but having the chance to get it answered is another. In the past I would be there with my hand dangling in the air to ask a question and the organizer would suddenly say, “We have no more time for further questions, please join me in thanking our speaker”. That was most annoying. I decided going first was a known thing, whereas who will be last was not, so to improve my odds, I decided I would try to go first.
Later I found there was another good reason for doing it. I attend a lot of presentations as part of my networking activities here in Japan and you see what works and what doesn’t over time. Before you start your question, the organisers always request you state your name and affiliation. Now I say my name and my company name slowly, precisely and clearly. So what?
Well reflect on your own experience. I think you will find that 99.9% of questioners you hear at events just rapidly mumble their own name and their company’s name. No one can understand the content of what they have just said, let alone remember who they were. Now, how about when it is your turn? Can people easily catch your name in that same situation or are you sxhyf xqtelpbqfrom vzqithmsfplcompany? I am guessing the latter!
As one way to promote myself and my business, I decided that there was an opening in the market here for considered self promotion (for a good cause though!). I decided I want to have the names “ Greg Story ” and “ Dale Carnegie Training ” penetrating the minds of all those in the audience at the event, as a form of subtle advertising. I can’t always be the speaker and lift my profile that way, but I can be a questioner at other people’s events and there are a lot more of those available to me.
Everyone understands the importance of the mantra: “know, like, trust” in order to grow your business. The “know” part can cost a lot of money to cement in the minds of potential clients. Being “top of mind” is what we all want in business so that they call us first, if they need something. We all spend huge amounts of effort and money trying to achieve that. We are hosting responsive websites, buying ad words, doing retargeting, posting content on social media, advertising and trying to bolster our SEO. Why?
We want to be top of mind for when the buyer is looking for our solution. At events, we have a golden opportunity to position ourselves as top of mind for no additional cost to the price of the ticket. All we have to do is raise our hand. Human psychology being what it is, most people are hesitant to go first in front of others, so we can usually get to ask the first question.
The other thing people say to me is , “Greg, that was a really good question”, as if that were a random accident. Folks, this is my personal brand out there, so the question has to be a really, really good one. While the event is underway, I am thinking about the question I want to ask and how I will ask it. It is being silently distilled in my mind during the proceedings, so that when I get up to speak, it sounds as fluent and smart as I can possibly make it. I want to impress.
We all know in advance who the speaker is going to be, so it doesn’t take a lot to research them a little, to be able to ask a more pointed question than what usually emerges from the hoi polloi. For example, the new President of All Nippon Airlines (ANA) was a speaker at the American Chamber in Tokyo. As usual, I had the first question.
I made the comment about how poorly people’s mistakes are handled by management in Japan and how this is an inhibitor to the messy process of innovation. I asked about the culture of dealing with mistakes at ANA? I then specifically noted that when he was the Head of Sales at ANA, his idea of providing first class passengers with individually ordered meals had become a big problem. The service had to be stopped, yet he made it to become President. So ANA must have a good way of encouraging innovation, without punishing people for mistakes in the process. Could he tell us about that? You could have heard a pin drop in the room after I laid that little baby out. By the way, he was delighted with the question, because he could brag about how great the culture at ANA was etc., etc.
People came up to me later, saying they were amazed by my question. Now all of this was readily available public information. They could all have asked the same question, if they had spent a few minutes searching out the background of the speaker. I relate this little episode just to demonstrate how you can enhance your personal brand by approaching mundane things like the Q&A, from a fresh angle.
It does take guts though to be the first questioner and to put yourself out there in front of everyone. If your question is not so good or not so well articulated, then that doesn’t add to your personal brand status and possibly drops it down quite a few notches. You also have to have a thick hide, because some people will take umbrage with you for having the gall to always ask the first question. Jealousy is a curse.
I usually find a strong correlation here with one aspect of these types of jealous people. They usually have zero personal brand power. I always think to myself, “It's a free country, if you want to ask the first question, knock yourself out”. The point is, there is always a vacuum when the Master of Ceremony calls for questions. The majority of people are shy to put themselves forward in front of a big crowd of their peers. If you have the guts, seize the day, seize the moment!
And you don’t have to always ask the first question. I do it because I want to promote my company, I want to have “Dale Carnegie Training Japan” top of mind, relative to my competitors. Ironically, if for some reason I don’t ask any questions, people will complain to me after the event. “What happened, you didn’t any questions today. I always like your questions”. So you can’t win either way. You may as well go for it!
Action steps
The Impromptu Talk
If you are called upon at an internal meeting with the big bosses, or during an external public event, to suddenly speak on a topic do you say, “whoopee, here is my time to shine” or do you find you are suffering from instant whiteout of the brain? Not being prepared at any time is bad. What about when all those beady eyes are focused on you and you are panicking? You don’t know what to say and here comes humiliation. You make a mess of it and your personal and professional brands just got sunk mid-ships.
Knowing your subject is one thing, being able to get up on your feet and speak about it with no warning is a completely different thing. “Oh, this would never happen to me”, you say. Big bosses can be very nasty people sometimes and they can rudely seek your opinion on the project or the idea. “Um, um, um, ah, ah, I, er, er, um,…” is not a brilliant response.
It could be at a public event, it might be a panel discussion and you are safely ensconced in your seat down the back, away from harm’s way. The moderator decides to call upon you for a comment, given you are an expert in your field. Some helpful functionary thrusts the hand microphone into your sweaty palm, you reluctantly stand up and offer “Um, um, um, ah, ah, I, er, er, um,….” Not a brilliant response.
Obviously the degree of difficulty of this type of talk is a lot harder than when the day has been set in advance, the notices have gone out, you are fully prepared and ready to go for your formal presentation. What can we do when impromptu speaker Armageddon beckons?
If you are an expert in an area under discussion, you can always mentally assume that you will called upon to speak. You are never caught cold in this case. You have ruminated a little on what you could say, were you forced to do so. That unwarranted jab with the hand microphone looks a lot less threatening when you have composed yourself beforehand.
One good practice is to always have a question ready for the speaker. Even if you don’t actually ask it, think of a very good question you could ask. If you are called upon to make a comment, you can then talk about a question you had and then answer it yourself. “Thank you for asking me to say a few words. A question I have been asking myself is…. Now, as far as I understand it, it seems that….”. This shows that you are tuned into the topic and that you have your own views on the subject. The answer doesn’t need to become your own full blown speech displacing the actual speaker, but it will allow you to make some well thought through comments. The audience will be impressed that you actually have expertise in this area and your personal brand gets elevated.
Another formula is using WHO, WHY, WHAT. The WHO refers to the people in the audience. If it is a business audience, we can say something like, “I was chatting with a few people before the talk and a common concern which surfaced was about XYZ. This is an important consideration and my own views on the subject are that….” Or we could say, “I guess one of the reasons we are all here today is to find out more about some of the key issues. One that interests me is about….”.
The WHY are our comments on the importance of the topic. We can put the topic in context with the current situation in the industry or the economy more broadly. “FinTech is occupying the minds of a lot of people in the banking industry. This is the age of disruption, as we have seen in many big industries already and this FinTech area has all the potential to be a big disruptor to the way we do business. My own feeling is…”.
The WHAT could be picking up something the speaker has said already and making a comment on that. “Our speaker mentioned that FinTech is only relevant in certain economies at the moment and I agree with that. What we have seen though with technologies like the mobile phone is certain nations have skipped the infrastructure investment in land lines stage and gone straight to mobile networks. FinTech could be a disrupter that puts access to credit into the hands of third world citizens, much faster than we currently think is possible”.
The secret is to be ready to go if called upon. It happens. I was comfortably seated next to my wife at a pleasant Ikebana International event in Osaka. At that time I was representing my country as the Consul General for Australia. Suddenly without a “bye your leave”, the speaker called me up to the stage to say a few words.
Naturally those few words would have to be in Japanese. The distance from my chair to the podium was about ten steps. I wasn’t prepared to say anything. It wasn’t an occasion I could ask the speaker a question, given the context and I had the distinct feeling my heart rate was racing at around 190 beats per minute.
I looked to my environment around me for salvation. What could I draw from that to say a few words. It had been raining earlier that day, so I tied that idea to the cut flowers coming into Osaka from Australia. I mentioned about these cut flowers arriving into the Osaka Flower Market earlier that morning, with the soil and water still in their stems from Australia. I told them how each flower was like an Ambassador to Japan from the land Downunder, bringing a little piece of Australian beauty to Osaka. I thanked everyone for supporting Australian flowers and got off that stage lickety-split.
That was a lucky escape. I realised I had dodged a bullet there and I had better be ready in future to be called upon to speak. So ever since then, I am always thinking of a question I can ask the speaker. I know I can either use it as a legitimate question or as a crutch, if I am called upon to say a few words. I also have the Who, Why, What formula at hand, ready to roll if need be. When its your turn will you be you ready to roll?