Mastering Measurable Networking: How to Track and Improve Your Business Relationships

[00:00:00] Amanda Webb: This week on That Analytics Podcast, I’m delighted to bring you Kam Chauhan. Am I saying your name right? I’ve just felt like I said it wrong.

Kam Chauhan: It’s Chauhan. Not Choo, hChauhan

Amanda Webb: who did an amazing presentation for Analytics Day about KPIs. And one of the things she said really resonated with me. So I wanted to bring her back to talk about that more in depth. Welcome to the show, Kam.

Kam Chauhan: Hi Amanda. Thanks for having me.

Amanda Webb: It’s fabulous to have you. And let’s start with at the beginning. Tell me, tell me a little bit about you and how you got into marketing.

Kam Chauhan: So I have got a very, strange, strange story. I used to be a primary school teacher, an inclusion manager working with children with special educational needs. And it’s quite typical in that I went back after having my son 11 years ago and realising very quickly that I wasn’t in the

[00:01:00] Kam Chauhan: right place anymore. So I stepped away from working, kept dipping my toes back into teaching and then very quickly realised that I didn’t want to be within that environment. One day, I clicked on a Facebook ad, not really understanding how Facebook ads worked, and it followed me around for about a year. And I took it as a sign of, oh, I should go off and do this course that teaches you how to do digital marketing. Once I started the course, I learned about Facebook ads and then I realised that the algorithm had picked me up. Prior to teaching, I actually had a background in business and marketing anyway, so I was working within sales before that. So, it was just something I fell into. I was doing this course while I was at home, while my son was at school, and then realised that I could, run a business and do something out of it.

Amanda Webb: And so what is the business that you run?

[00:02:00] Amanda Webb: Tell us about that.

Kam Chauhan: So I started off originally, managing social media accounts for small businesses, and like many people, I realized that my skills had completely evolved, have changed, have grown while I was growing my business. And I moved from just running social media accounts to becoming a marketing strategist, working with small business owners. My clients now tend to be lots of nonprofits, social enterprises, and organizations that want to make a difference, but it’s very varied. So I can go to one client and literally just create a marketing strategy for them. They go away and they’d keep it in house and run it themselves. There’s others where I am essentially the head of their marketing and I manage their team. And then you’ve got other clients where I just train them and mentor them to do their marketing for themselves.

Amanda Webb: Great. Sounds like a good business. And so you are a marketing queen, but the reason I have you on

[00:03:00] Amanda Webb: is you’re also a networking queen. So now people who know me know I’m not mad about networking. I did it back in the, I think we’ve all done it. And I, I think that you’re good at it. I think that after a little while, I just want to go and hide. The weird thing is I’m good at conferences, which is where we met. So there you go. Right. So tell me you, and the reason I wanted to have you on is you have a particular way of measuring the success of your networking. So tell me a little bit about that whole piece.

Kam Chauhan: So when I started up my business, and you’ve probably come across this, Amanda, when you first started up, People listening to this would have heard this. The first thing that people said to me was, you need to go network. I had no idea. I’ve come from an education background. I didn’t know what networking was. I didn’t understand the point of it, but I knew that I had to go and do this thing. I joined lots of lunchtime

[00:04:00] Kam Chauhan: women’s networking groups. Very quickly, I realized that I didn’t enjoy it. I didn’t, I, I didn’t, I didn’t know what I was doing there. I would start off by saying, or, well, I used to be a teacher and now I do this. And, I didn’t stop though, I carried on because I knew how to network. Now, off the back of it, in my early, early networking days, I secured some clients and I went, oh, this is working. But didn’t do anything else, I just carried on networking going, turning up weekly or monthly to these meetings and standing up saying my one minute thing, which was always, always the same thing and hoping that I would get some business. And it was only then during lockdown, I think it was, it feels like a lifetime ago now, but I think it was one of the second or third where we’d been told we can’t go out again. And I looked at the networking that I was

[00:05:00] Kam Chauhan: doing and I realized I made some really good friends from this networking group. It was all virtual. It was great. But when I looked at whether it’s bringing in any business, I realized it wasn’t, and I’ve been a part of this group for a year and a half, and I’d paid out more than actually what I’d made. What I didn’t consider at the time was my time. I didn’t consider the fact that actually by going to all of these networking meetings, it’s taking me away from actually doing the thing that I get paid to do. So it was 18 months of networking, and networking lots of different groups and realizing that actually, no, this isn’t working, I’m spending a lot of my time networking, I’m not getting anything back in terms of business,

[00:06:00] Kam Chauhan: and I realized I needed to find something else. Now, I’ve got a love hate relationship with networking. People always tell me they think I’m a brilliant networker, and you’ve just said it yourself, but I don’t think I am, because I still have this, when I walk into a room to network with this, and conferences and networking, they are a form of networking, conferences, networking events, all of these things. I still have this fear that builds up, and this dread as I’m driving along. But once I step through that door, I remember exactly why I’m there, and I, I, I’m able to just get on with it, and It’s fun. Once I’ve, once I’ve started it, it’s fun. So in terms of networking, I joined, a group and everyone’s got a, an opinion on this networking group. And I’m sure you can guess, I’m not going to say who they are, but

[00:07:00] Amanda Webb: do they have three letters in their name?

Kam Chauhan: They do have three letters, yes. I had heard lots of negative things about this organization. And And I decided that I was never going to join, I was never going to visit, it just wasn’t my thing. And when I started looking at other networking groups away from the ones that I was part of, this same one kept popping up. And it wasn’t one particular group, it was just the organisations. And I was working with a coach at the time and the coach talked about building relationships quickly. And that was a good way of doing it because they were meeting weekly. Anyway, I found a group, that was very unlike a lot of the others. And I was a member there for two years and did extremely well. But what that helped me do was to understand what I needed to measure in terms of networking and understand what I needed to do and the reason for that. Whether there’s a love or hate of networking or any of those type of groups,

[00:08:00] Kam Chauhan: what that taught me was that I need to be measuring everything I’m doing with regards to networking to see whether it makes a difference. So that one has got their targets. We’ve all got to hit targets. We’ve got to do these things, but actually When we go networking We should be doing these things naturally we should be going out there and thinking about the type of people that you want to connect with and people that you can introduce to the other people in the room so that they can grow their business

Amanda Webb: And you see, that’s why I call you a networking queen, because you know this. And just butting in because your story is so similar to mine, but I feel a little bit relieved because I thought I was making excuses. I was like, I don’t go network, I don’t like going networking because, oh, and it takes the time and I have to drive somewhere. So yeah, I was like, I was using my measurement skills to get

[00:09:00] Amanda Webb: out of doing something I didn’t like. And I haven’t joined that other organization, but I do think, you know, again, whatever you think of that organization, the fact that they’ve got goals and that it’s specifically set up so that you can do business with each other, it takes that little pain out of, you don’t want to be too pushy with your sales or when you’re, you’re at a networking meeting. So tell me, obviously now you’re translating what you did with, I’m trying not to say their name. I will mute it if I do. Everyone knows who we’re talking about, but I don’t know. Legal stuff, you know. How do you translate what you learn with that organization into your regular networking? And how did you, how did you start measuring the success of your other networking?

Kam Chauhan: Yeah. So, what I do now is I always, I always think it’s easier. We all talk about how. We don’t like to talk about ourselves. Nobody likes to play their own trumpet. So it’s always easier to sell someone else or to talk about someone else. And

[00:10:00] Kam Chauhan: I always start networking with a quick, we always start this whole conversation, tell me about yourself. They’ll tell you about themselves. And I never ask what it is that I need. I always ask that other person, what type of people would you be interested in meeting, who are good connections for you? And then actually, you as a business owner, if you don’t know that, there’s no point going networking. You need to know who is your ideal client. So the type of people you want to work with, those pain points that will come up in conversations. And then off the back of that, you also need to be aware of the type of, referral partners that are good for you. So people that are servicing the same sort of clients as you. and getting an introduction in. So now that is how I, all of my networking is done exactly the same way. I’ll always walk away with, a,

[00:11:00] Kam Chauhan: there’s always an introduction. I can always make an introduction to somebody. So it’s always starting with that. And quite often when you go in that way, that person will always reciprocate and go, well, what can I do to help you? So once you’ve got those things in place, it’s a lot easier to measure because if you’re not, if you haven’t got those. The only thing you’re then measuring is how much money you’re making. So in terms of KPIs, what I look at is, how much of my time is spent within that networking group. So it’s not just going to the meetings. It’s the one to ones that you’re having afterwards. It’s also the emails where you’re referring people and introducing people. That all comes in with that time. When you’re measuring time, you also need to be thinking about actually how much money is that time costing me? Is it worth my time doing it? So I always measure the amount of time I spend.

[00:12:00] Kam Chauhan: I then off the back of it, it’s a case of how many new contacts have I made? Now, when you go networking, very quickly you notice the hunters in the room. So they’re there, all they’re there to do is get business from you. They’re not, they’re never going to reciprocate. Then they don’t have. the want or the desire to help you. So those people are instantly crossed off my list. But actually, I look in the room, quite often you walk away with a sheet or you walk away with business cards. Business cards, I’ll always write on them. So if you’ve got something that can’t be written on, it makes it difficult, but I’ll always mark the ones that I know that are a good contact I need to get in touch with. If I can’t mark them, it tends to be in different pockets, but that’s how I do business cards. If you get given a sheet of delegates, again, you mark the ones that are relevant to you, you reach out and contact them. So I then look at, because we’ve talked about time, I look at the number of contacts I’ve

[00:13:00] Kam Chauhan: made, and then I track the, two parts. So I track potential referral partners. So people that I know, if I build a long term relationship with, they can refer business to me. And I also track the business that I’ve got directly from there, or just somebody that’s referred me. And what I look at is, I keep an eye on this. I don’t, I don’t, it’s not, I don’t sit there and look at it every week, it’s not something that I do. But I do periodically go back, so once a quarter, once a year, without a doubt, before your renewal is up, I’ll always go back and check it. But what you’ve also got to think about is that networking is a long term game. It’s not something where you can go in, get a bit of business and never go back again. It’s about building relationships. So you’ve got to give any networking group at least a year before you can sit there and say, this hasn’t worked

[00:14:00] Kam Chauhan: for me.

Amanda Webb: Okay. That makes total sense. And I had a few questions that I thought of as you were speaking. So firstly, I kind of go. I love that you’re bringing marketing in right at the beginning. So before someone even signs up to a marketing, to a networking group, they need to know who it is.

Kam Chauhan: Very.

Amanda Webb: And this is, I thought it’s so hard for some businesses. I mean, I found it hard in the past as well to really identify who your customers are going to be, or at least the ballpark.

Kam Chauhan: It does.

Amanda Webb: I get frustrated by really complex avatars, but it’s like, have a ballpark idea of who you’re going to target. Before you even go. So that would be one thing. Is there another thing that I should pull out there as well, before you’ve even started networking that you should know?

Kam Chauhan: Yeah, I would research people in the room. So for example, when you tend to go in, and I’ll always sit there and say, you don’t know who knows somebody in the room, you don’t know. But what you do know is if you are going to a networking group, that’s at

[00:15:00] Kam Chauhan: lunchtime. That’s predominantly filled with, and this is really stereotypical, and I apologise if you’re listening to this thinking, what’s Kam talking about? I have been to networking groups where it is just full of really small hobby business owners. Now, the type of business that I run and the type of clients that I have, they don’t have, none of those people in the room are ever going to be my clients, which is fine, but in terms of the contacts. It would have taken a long time to build deep enough relationships with these people for them to be able to refer me out. So very quickly, it’s a case of, well, no, that’s not for me. What I would also suggest is, I’d like to think everyone listening to this is on LinkedIn. I’m sure that people aren’t, but you should be.

Amanda Webb: It’s the best.

Kam Chauhan: Exactly. Get yourself on LinkedIn and see where your ideal clients are networking. What

[00:16:00] Kam Chauhan: groups are they going to? Who are the other people in the room? Because, like, at the moment, and if you go on it now, you’ll see that people are always posting about where they’re networking. Zoom in on pictures, see who’s been tagged, and have a look at, are they the type of people that you want to be in the room with? I will often go to networking events, and when I’m, if you’re asked to do a minute, if you’re asked to do a formal 60 seconds or 45 seconds, whatever it is, you Always give the, job title of an organization or talk about the organization you want introduction to, talk about the job title. But if you can go even further and look for a name. Is there a particular person that you could be interested, you could be introduced to? And that is all the pre work that you need to be doing. But you also need to be really clear with your messaging. Who is it that you want to be introduced to? And what is it that

[00:17:00] Kam Chauhan: you want to gain? Now, you should be doing that before you do any form of networking. But you should also be doing it before you join a networking group. What are your goals? And what are your targets?

Amanda Webb: So let’s talk about the goals a little bit, because I was going to come into that. So yeah, I want to get to the big, where your KPIs land. But firstly, how would I even set, if I’ve not been networking before, or if I have been networking, not for a very long time. So now I’m going in my head, maybe I should try networking again, what, where should I even start with my goals for a network, because it’s really hard if you haven’t been for a while to go. Well, I want to make this many new contacts, like where do I start with that?

Kam Chauhan: Start small. So don’t, the problem with networking is you get, people get overwhelmed really quickly and it’s really easy to go somewhere, get lots of business cards and go, great, I went networking. No. What you should do is before you’d even consider joining a group, go and visit a

[00:18:00] Kam Chauhan: group. But before you do that, come away from your, in your mind and go, okay, I want to meet three people. That’s it. Three people that would be a good contact for me would be, so for example, with me a marketer, a good contact for me would be, a web design person, someone that does branding and maybe a photographer. So they are the three, the three people that I would like to meet. Now, most networking groups have those already there. If not, if it’s a formal networking group, quite often they’ll list all of their members on the website. If it’s not a formal networking group and it’s a drop in, Just be really clear before you go in who it is. So setting your goals. Who your, what’s your minimum number? You of people you wanna speak to. Start with something small. Get yourself a buddy to go with you. It’s always easier. And then you are able to then walk away from that and go, okay, I would like set,

[00:19:00] Kam Chauhan: I’ve, I’ve known the three people that I’d want to speak to when your network and once you come back out again, go. Right. Okay. Did I meet those three people or did I meet one of those? Or were there two web design people in the room? Could I speak to both of them? So, it’s having an idea in your head of what the minimum number of people that you’re, you want to speak to is. Because it’s not just a case of speaking to them in the room. It’s then having the conversation outside of the room and being able to follow up. So if you go in with a big number of, oh, I’m going to network and I want to meet five people today, that’s great. But then that’s also five hours of your time following up one to ones afterwards.

Amanda Webb: So what’s the, just for anyone that’s not doing networking regularly, what is the follow on process? I’ve gone, cause I think this is maybe where I stumbled a lot. I go to the meetings. I, yeah, I was never a big fan of collecting business cards, you know, cause the organization you talked about used to have these recruitment events and they’d have a thing where you had to get as many business cards as you want. And I’d be like,

[00:20:00] Amanda Webb: I’m out. So, cause you just come home and put them in the bin. That’s somebody spent money on printing those and the environment and all that. So, yeah. But so I would meet a few people. I’m much better at that. So then I think I fell down I just kind of went met them at the next meeting and met them at the next meeting So what’s the process then of bringing it into a one to one and obviously that’s the goal as well out for those three people Would I expect to get one to ones with all three of those?

Kam Chauhan: Yes, so I would Reach out to them within 24 hours of going. So if you’re on the train, send an email while you’re on the train. It doesn’t need to be long. It literally needs to be a sentence of great to meet you today. Here’s my Calendly. Let’s jump on a one to one, but you want to get three one to ones out of it. Now, quite often you’ll find that people are busy. Sometimes it doesn’t happen, but ideally what you want to do is have a one to one before the next meeting. Because it fast tracks your relationship because, and I talk about this a lot and you do, every

[00:21:00] Kam Chauhan: marketer will say the same thing. It’s all about building trust. And the quickest way to build trust is to get to know each other. So if you’re only going to meetings once a month and you’re only meeting that person once a month, you’re not going to be at the forefront of their mind when they’re talking to a client or they’re talking to someone and they’re going, Oh, I need that service because I don’t know enough about you. So the follow up have a one to one with them within that first month. And then make sure that it’s not just a case of you’ve written some notes about what they want and that’s it. The best way to do it is have a conversation and during that one to one where I mentioned at the beginning, how can I help you? What is it that you can do? And go away and do it. So I will always sit there and these, again, in terms of time and make sure you do it, is do it as soon as you get off the call with them or as soon as you’ve had a meeting with them. Go away and make that introduction. Now,

[00:22:00] Kam Chauhan: you will find that everyone’s not your cup of tea, and you’ll have a one to one with someone and go, there’s no way I’d introduce them to anyone. Well, that’s fine, because you’re not going to, and it’s going to be, it’s going to be the same back, but if you say you’re going to do something, make sure you do it. And then that way, when you go into the next meeting, you’re going in already with a positive, you’ve had a one to one with a couple of people, you’ve already made an introduction, you’ve got off on the right foot, and suddenly you’re the person that people want to speak to.

Amanda Webb: Great, love it. Right, so we’ve got, you, you’ve prepared, you’ve done all your prep, you’ve gone to the meeting, you’ve found two or three people, whatever your goal was, Probably no more than three for your initial meeting, even that might be stretching it. You’ve got your one to ones with those people. So all of these you can put into a spread, do you use a spreadsheet?

Kam Chauhan: So this is something people talk about all these fancy things, all these fancy CRMs and all these different ways to track things.

[00:23:00] Kam Chauhan: You can get overwhelmed with all the tech that’s out there. And you, I don’t know about you, but sometimes I spend more time looking for the tool to do the job than actually doing the job. So just put it on a spreadsheet. It’s there. It’s quick. It’s easy. And you’re not procrastinating over it.

Amanda Webb: I think definitely for service based businesses, because we don’t have a ton of clients, I’ve tried other things and it’s just, I always end up back in a spreadsheet because if I was like e commerce, I’d probably need a CRM to be honest, to manage all that. And there’s lots of other things that go into that, but yeah, definitely for a service based business. So you put all those into your CRM. We’ve got the, how much you’ve spent. We’ve got. We’ve got the hours that you’ve taken and what that’s worth in money wise to you, that you could be working for someone else. We’ve got, the number of contacts that you make. That was, and then would

[00:24:00] Amanda Webb: a contact be that you’ve just met them or you’ve had the one to one?

Kam Chauhan: I would take it as the two parts actually, because it would be, I would have two columns. I’d have the one to ones and then I’d have the contacts that I’ve made because actually you could have a conversation with someone. But right now, you don’t, like I said, you don’t overwhelm yourself, you can’t do more than three a month. So, you would do the three, but then the following month you might go, actually, let me connect back with them. But you’ll soon start seeing within that group the correlation of, so for example, if you’ve got 30 members within the group, by the end of the year, in theory, you should have had a one to one with all of them. You’ll also find that 50 percent of that group, probably more than that, you’ll never get a referral from, you’ll never refer them. And that is why I always sit there and say, it’s got to be a year because you’ve got to go through Pretty much all of them to find the people that gel with you and find the ones that will make a difference to your business.

Amanda Webb: See, in

[00:25:00] Amanda Webb: my head, I’m getting excited about all the things I could measure here, , and going one-to-one. How many of those one-to-ones were with good people? And how many of them sent me a referral and how many of them was a referral turned into a business? And yeah, so you’ve got a long list of things that you could measure by.

Kam Chauhan: There’s long list. Yeah. And it’s also thinking about the, so I talked about the business, the referral part. In terms of the money side of it, what you need to consider is how much has come directly from the members. So, quite often, and sometimes you get lucky, right? I joined a networking group, a few months ago. And the first meeting, I had a one to one, and then I got a client out of it. And that was lucky. It wasn’t somebody that really knew me. But then there’s others where you’re there for six months or a year. But essentially, what you need to do is track how much business has come from inside the room in terms of clients, and then track how much business has come from outside the room. Because outside of the

[00:26:00] Kam Chauhan: room is more important than inside the room. Because if you’re the type of business, might slightly different. Well, it depends on what you’re looking for. Quite often, you want people to be referring you on, and if that’s not happening, you’ve got the clients who are in the room, well why are you still there week after week?

Amanda Webb: Yes, that makes sense. There’s only going to be a certain number of people in the room. Okay. Do you have, because I’m getting all excited about the data, so I’m kind of putting this in, so if you don’t have this, this is cool, but may I suggest that you do, do you have like some sort of like metric where you measure the number of hours that you spend in a networking group, for the amount of revenue that you got from their networking group? Like an hourly

Kam Chauhan: So I used to, this is the thing, so I, it’s how I used to, I haven’t done it with the new group that I’ve just joined. But yeah, so, because you don’t know. If you don’t do it, if you don’t work it out,

[00:27:00] Kam Chauhan: you don’t work out what your revenue is, how do you know whether it’s working? And, uh, this is a complete flip on its head as well, but you’ve also got to think about what your, when we talked about the goals at the beginning, what is your goals for that? Is it, it could be a case of the revenue is not an issue for you, that’s not what you’re there for. You could be there to learn off other people and to make, relationships within the community. Well, that’s fine. That’s just a different measurement, but you’ve got to, until you’ve set your goals at the beginning to understand what you’re networking for, you can’t measure, you can’t backdate it. So definitely working out your hourly rate, because at one point I remember I realized that one of the networking groups, and this is what’s made me start measuring it because I was losing a lot of money by going. I was, I lost a lot of money. And all you, all most people think about is, Oh, it costs me a thousand pounds for the year. Yeah. But it costs you a lot more than that

[00:28:00] Kam Chauhan: because it’s all about that time. Yeah.

Amanda Webb: Yeah. And the time. And I do think you made a good point there. I mean, there are obviously other benefits to networking, particularly when I was doing it and I’d started my business, just like having a network of other people to talk to. that would have similar problems is a really good thing. It’s always good to talk to other business owners. So there is always that aspect. It’s not always about the money, but obviously money does need to come into it somewhere because you could spend your entire life bouncing from one network to another network to just meet people and actually never turn it into anything. And we are in business at the end of the day. So, yeah, definitely.

Kam Chauhan: And if we think about conferences as well, because I know that you obviously, you go to conferences, it’s exactly the same thing. Going, you should be tracking what you do now with conferences, it’s slightly different because you’re looking at the learning aspect. If that, if you’re going to learn something new, it’s the learning aspect, but you should still be grading it and thinking about actually, did I learn anything new? Have I implemented

[00:29:00] Kam Chauhan: anything that I’ve learned? And this is a big issue that again, it’s the same thing as networking with conferences and training sessions.

Amanda Webb: And I used to, I used to be a course junkie. I would take every course going, did I implement anything? No, because I didn’t have enough time.

Kam Chauhan: Well, it worked out the first time because that’s why you’re in business, right? Because you’re after that Facebook ad, but maybe not after that.

Amanda Webb: That’s the thing. I think we’ve.

Kam Chauhan: You should be measuring everything, but people don’t, they just measure the numbers that they can see on their social media or the numbers that they can see elsewhere. They don’t think about the numbers that they can’t see.

Amanda Webb: Great. I think that this has been really, you know what, you’ve almost, I’m going to say almost, because the idea of me getting in my car and driving somewhere to go to a networking meeting, it’s pretty much out of the question. But you’ve all, if I found an online, networking group. You’ve almost inspired me. Yeah, I think I might give it another go. Right, one more question before we get on to the quickfire ones. You briefly talked about business cards. I

[00:30:00] Amanda Webb: recently analyzed, I have a business card with a QR code on it. I did an analysis on it recently using Google Analytics. There’s a video up on YouTube, if anyone wants to see it, where I realized that nobody ever scanned my QR code. Like out of hundreds of business cards I’d given out, I think there were like four, four scans ever. So I’m rethinking my business. It’s not I’m going to get rid of the QR code, but maybe I’ll just make it a small thing. It’s got a picture of me because I think that’s important for people remembering who I am. Any other particular advice for business cards and paper versus digital as well. There’s another thing you said about having space.

Kam Chauhan: It is. I’m going to admit this. You’re going to laugh. So I’ve been in business for, for coming up to five years. I’ve never had a business card until now. So my, now that with my designer at the moment, because I’ve just been posted to me, because I always went with a thing of, well, we’re all on LinkedIn. Business cards end up in the bin. And

[00:31:00] Kam Chauhan: you’ll remember me if I’m memorable enough at networking. Now, people, again, people don’t want to go networking because I have a business card, but that shouldn’t put you off. Go, as long as you’ve got a LinkedIn account, go with it. Now, I’ve now got business cards, because I feel like I need them now. I’m not sure, see, fine, I’m like, that’s another measurement. How many I give out, as opposed to how much work I get. But Even with business cards, you need to think about things, right? So my biggest thing is a touch, you’ve got to think about the feel of it. And it’s a whole other ballgame. Business cards, there are a place for it. I have a digital one, one of those things that you tap on the tap your phones and you get, but again, something like that, they’ve got to go looking for you afterwards. So physical business cards, you get home, they’ll empty your handbag or your pockets. And that image of you will come out and remind them that actually, Yeah, I’m at this person. Yeah,

[00:32:00] Kam Chauhan: I’m so my new business cards have got my face on them and I always feel really guilty by throwing business cards away. So it’s got someone’s face on it I think twice and it sits there for longer as opposed to a business card that like I said, I tend to mark mine and Otherwise it tends to go in a bin, but don’t with business cards don’t just offer them out It’s only if somebody asks for them. And the same for you, ask for them if you want them, don’t ask for them for the sake of it because it’s just a waste.

Amanda Webb: Yeah, and I think you’re on to something with LinkedIn because that’s what I tend to do now as long as people are on LinkedIn I also have Instagram, but I so rarely use Instagram. It’s a bit of a waste to connect with me on Instagram But yeah, because you’ve got that function. You see the thing is with those digital business cards. Yeah out of politeness I’ll scan it never looking. It’s like and I feel it’s the same with my QR code, right? That’s the That’s, that’s kind of, that’s a lesson I’ve learned from that, so that’s why I’ve never gone digital. But you can

[00:33:00] Amanda Webb: scan your QR code in LinkedIn. You can just bring that up and connect with people instantly and then send them a message instantly to say, you can’t do it with your connection requests because you’ve only got like five a month or something, but you can, once you’ve connected, send them a message say it was great to meet you just now at, because then you’ve always got that memory of where you met them. I think that’s very smart. Okay. Quickfire question time. I’m grabbing my iPad. People who are watching on YouTube may see that. Right. Data, data, or data?

Kam Chauhan: Data.

Amanda Webb: Data. Thank you. Thank you. That’s what I would expect. Data, data is like American and there is a guy who’s got a great YouTube channel called Loves Data. I’m trying to work out where he’s from, but there are three ways. Okay. Cookies. When you see a cookie banner, do you dunk it or delete it?

Kam Chauhan: Dunk it Yes.

[00:34:00] Kam Chauhan: Yeah. I tend to say yes if I’m on their site. Sometimes I don’t see them. So, but I tend to say yes, but I thought everyone did, right? I thought everyone said yes.

Amanda Webb: But once you start getting your stats back, if you use a tool for, managing your cookies, a lot of like 60, 70%, no. It’s mad, although mine’s improving. Make it, if this is my tip to people completely off topic, make a big ugly cookie banner because then they won’t forget to click it. You want them to do something they want them to accept or decline because otherwise it just sits there and you’re not collecting data. So there’s a little tip or data or data. not saying that. That’s Where do we Data . Data . Okay. Third one, ai. Yay or nay.

Kam Chauhan: Yay.

Amanda Webb: Yay. I think for all of us marketers we’d be stupid not to, but I do understand people’s concerns. It’s been fabulous having you on the show. Tell us where. Where if we can’t meet you in person at a networking meeting, where should we find you online?

[00:35:00] Kam Chauhan: LinkedIn. Kam Chauhan, you’ll find me on there. I’m there. I am on Instagram, but I’m not as visible as I should be. But LinkedIn is my place at the moment.

Amanda Webb: Great stuff. So yeah, you can find me. Come and say hi. Say hi. Start networking. Move it on to a one to one. You never know, you might do business with each other. Thanks so much for being on the show. It’s been fabulous having you and we’ll see you again.

Kam Chauhan: Thanks, Amanda.