Why did you say that?

Off on the seminar trail this week and was thoroughly entertained by Iain Swanston who talked to the assembled masses about Balanced Scorecards. It was amazing to hear his story of how Tesco transformed itself from bit part player in the supermarket game to market leader with the help of the balanced scorecard. Simple and effective - the best things are!

I am not hear to talk Balanced Scorecards but rather asking questions at seminars.

I love a podcast and I listen to a great podcast called The Mentee - a story about a would be entrepreneur caught in medical sales and his journey to break away. His view on asking questions was to be the first to the mike, introduce yourself, tell the audience what you do and then pitch a question to the person giving the talk. The idea is that after the talk when you are networking everyone knows who you are and will be interested in your story so long as your introduction and pitch were of interest. In addition if you want to get to speak to the person who gave the key note then you have a perfect in. I thought that this was a bit gimmicky until I tried it a couple of times and it does work. I introduced myself as the host of the Bricks and Mortar Podcast, asked the question and had some positive feedback with people coming up to speak to me about the podcast. But best of all, it gave me an introduction to the key note speaker which has led to setting up an interview with him. Result!

It is important to ask the right question. Don't do what one guy did at the seminar and ask the following question -

"I see that you made a spelling error in one of the slides! Did you notice that?"

Why did you say that?