How Can Networking Enhance Your Brand?

How Can Networking Enhance Your Brand?

Business networking and connecting can have a wider reach than we are aware of. Building contacts and creating a personal network is important, but often it’s the people your contacts know who can bring in business in unexpected ways. In this sense, networking is as much about brand-building and awareness-raising as it is about selling yourself directly.

Robert Taylor is Relationship Director at Royal Bank of Scotland (Future Williams & Glyn). He has developed, what is very much, a personal brand in pursuit of business development on behalf of the organisation he represents.  He expands on this, “Recently, I received an unknown caller, from out of the blue….”

 

Caller: Is that Rob?
Robert: Speaking
Caller: Rob from the bank?
Robert: Yes, it is
Caller: I believe that you are the guy that should be looking after my business accounts
Robert: I am
Caller: Can you come and see me?
Robert: I’ll be with you this afternoon

 

Robert explains further, “There was no beating around the bush. He knew of me and my work and he wanted to know when I could come and see him.  As result of a 90-minute meeting with him, he turned out to be a significant business customer for RBS.

“I didn’t know him and he wasn’t an active prospect”, explains Robert. “He had heard about me through things like our RBS Breakfast Meetings and the Business Connections events we hold regularly with M3 Media Publishing. These provide me with a platform to promote what I do at a very personal, interactive level”.

It is on this kind of platform that Robert has been able to launch and develop his personal brand. And the word about that brand has spread, to the extent that he’s receiving enquiries like the example above.

“Be proud of your brand,” Robert advises, “because if you’re personally involved in its success, the rewards can be very real”.

Business Aspects Magazine appreciates Robert Taylor‘s contribution to this article.