If it weren’t so frustrating,
I would have laughed more, but the only way to handle the situation was to
chuckle as I drove back to my office.
Several days ago, I filled out
a form at a website so I could become a “member” of HARO, which stands for Help a Reporter Out. Basically, from what I understand, when people
are writing articles for publication and they need additional expert comments about
specific topics, they put out requests for information from experts.
Someone sent me a suggestion that I comment
on an article about “elevator speeches.”
While I did comment, I mentioned that probably I was NOT the person they
wanted to talk with because delivering an elevator speech as I define it, is truly
boorish behavior. But that is a
sidelight of this story.
The real focus
is that someone from the HARO hosting website called me, because I guess they
use HARO as a way to find prospects for providing marketing services,
specifically online marketing. So this
22 year old (I asked) could not wrap his mind around word-of-mouth marketing, in fact he had
never heard of it.
He asked, “Do you have tools
that your students use?” I replied that we had developed several tools that our
students used. “Does it help them with
online marketing?” was the next query. I
explained that our students probably used many online tools, but that our course
was really about face-to-face networking to support relationship building. And he said, “Oh, this isn’t about business networking,
then.” I realized at that
point that he didn’t know my language and I didn’t know his.
He asked if we could schedule a 20 minute
call next week, so he could tell me all about the ways he could help me. I declined, because while I am always ready
to learn, I figure if he can’t even understand what Connext Nation is about,
then how can he figure out ways to help?
Or maybe he was practicing his elevator speech?!?
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