I have to say having spent the last few days going back to more traditional methods of growing networks I've realised I'm more than happy to have been born in the digital age. How the hell did anybody get anything done back then with just a landline a pencil and a load of contact cards. Point in case is that if I had written this back then there would have already been 5 noticeable tipex marks on the page. (that’s a whole other subject, I'm sure the makers of tipex are struggling these days)
Which then got me thinking. How did the world work, how were multinational companies created, how did partnerships evolve, how were customers served. These days it’s all about doing something in the quickest time possible at the least cost.
I've been (and if you have been reading my blog) working now in growing our network in Spain. Traditionally companies in our IT world tend to rely on a partner in each country to deliver a service. We however have taken a different approach and made the decision to expand into Europe as we started delivering business. for instance Ireland and Poland have now been running for a while now, so Spain was always next.
Essentially we are building a network of skilled contractors (in some cases from the expat community, something I have an immense amount of time for) and this has meant digging around to try and find suitable companies.
Now, when you search for a Spade in Google it’s what you generally get with a few variations. However I don't think the island of Majorca has SEO optimisation as one of its key focus areas and as a result an innocent search can leave you spending hours trying to find somebody to call. To me although I am looking on the WWW its very much a "offline" activity - lots of research and plenty of patience. I enjoy doing it this way immensely even though it can be incredibly frustrating.
Compare this to the instant gratification of firing off a few tweets, hitting a few focused forums and posting for help on sites like ecademy, it’s the difference between night and day. Straight away you end up being pointed in the right direction or people jump in and offer assistance - Bloody brilliant.
I'll continue doing both for now, it will be interesting to see if the end product of all this was born from me thumbing through pages of information or sending a quick tweet!
So, tell me, have you had any experiences like this, or a tale of how it used to be?
