Sunday, January 27, 2013

I Couldn't Make This Up



 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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