The Time Zone Test: Business Development Tips for Keynote Speakers
One of the biggest mistakes I see in networking is deceptively simple: when people write an email or send a calendar invite, they refer to their availability in their time zone only.
Effective Connecting for Keynote Speakers
When you’re doing your own business development, there are certain things that pop up over time, especially as you start to deal with different cultures and time zones: making it about the other person is a big opportunity. While it’s certainly understandable not to do this, it’s really a rookie mistake to not position this in an easy way for your reader.
The advantage of showing deference on something simple like this demonstrates a number of positive traits:
1. Your brain is on, and you’re focused on this person. This conveys a high degree of credibility to the person you’re trying to approach.
2. It removes psychological friction. One of the big challenges with anything (no matter what you’re doing) is when someone has to think harder than they should about something. For instance, I recently was coordinating a couple of calls with people in Australia, and for me, that’s normally a 13-hour difference. It’s not exactly easy, whereas if I look at something on the North American continent, the biggest difference I have to worry about is a 4-hour difference to Pacific Time.
When you remove the friction of them having to get on Google to figure out what time converter to use, or if you can remove them from having to translate that in their head, just do it. Put the proposed meeting time in their time zone.
3. It shows you care. When you’re willing to take an extra step to make life easier for someone, it demonstrates a positive psychology towards them and can certainly create opportunities for reciprocity. It’s subtle, but it’s there. “That was so easy!” can mean a lot.
When you’re developing opportunities and ecosystems across the world so you can grow your business as a professional speaker, this is such an easy thing to do, but you’d be surprised at just how much of a difference it can make when you are someone that is “easy to deal with” in business.
It Goes Beyond Time Zones
Of course, you can parlay this into other areas as well. For instance, if I’m speaking with someone who is British and we’re talking about clothes, I’m probably not going to talk about pants. I’m going to talk about trousers, because while in Canada “pants” is a catch-all term for dress pants, jeans, and even sweatpants, in the U.K., pants means something quite different: underwear.
You can imagine how awkward it would be to enthusiastically say “let’s see those pants!” in a meeting with the wrong cross section of people.
For me, when people correctly understand where I’m from, it makes a big difference: some people think that Canada consists of Toronto or Vancouver, and I’m a long way from those locations. It’s not pejorative, of course: I understand that some people have only been to those cities.
However, when someone is able to relate that they’ve been to my city or have been through the Atlantic region, it connects more meaningfully.
I’ve had a number of those conversations this year where people mention how beautiful the area is and how kind the people are. When someone references Atlantic Canada or the Maritimes, it shows they understand a little bit of my identity: the culture, the food, how people are. That’s certainly very different than when someone has no idea, or just assumes I’m in Toronto (nothing against Toronto, of course!).
Even in terms of preparation for a meeting, my location is listed on my LinkedIn profile. It’s above the fold and it’s really easy to find. I always encourage clients to at minimum look at someone’s LinkedIn profile and their website to gain a better understanding of who this person is, because the cultural elements and artifacts they provide do offer instructive guidance in terms of how you can build bridges and create meaningful connections.
The Practical Side
When I’m coordinating a time, I often mention what time zone I’m in. One mistake I frequently see is when someone just puts in a time with no time zone, and then you have to go back and figure out what that actually means. Because most people in North America are familiar with Eastern Time, I usually explain that Atlantic Time is EST plus one, so they can understand more readily.
Now, booking tools like Calendly can make this infinitely easier: you click and have a time that works for you in 30 seconds. But, I recognize that some people find these tools psychologically dismissive (which is interesting in and of itself).
I think there’s an element where people feel like you’re offloading the responsibility onto them. My issue with that thinking is that it’s actually meant to save you time and effort. I’m always grateful when someone shares a calendar so I can quickly book rather than trading five or six emails to make it work. Not everyone has an executive assistant to do this coordination, and as someone who really values my time, I’m grateful to people who just share their booking link.
I also recognize that I’m not everyone. This comes back to knowing people and what they prefer in terms of how to approach them successfully.
My quick tip: “I’ll share my calendar link here for you, or, please feel free to indicate some windows of time that might work for you.”
That provides both people types of the option and it isn’t likely to anger someone that doesn’t like calendar platforms.
Getting in front of this
camera means you focused
on building a compounding
business.
Keynote speakers benefit from focus.
The Bottom Line
By approaching a conversation where you demonstrate cultural literacy, cultural competency, and respect, you make it easier to do business with you: you create more opportunities to build a sustainable and prosperous keynote speaking business.
It’s not a guarantee, of course, but if you create better opportunities for meaningful connection, you’ll have a healthier business.
Don’t just act like you’re at home: understand the person who is on the other side of the call or the other side of the table.
When was the last time someone approached you without considering your context: how did it make you feel about working with them?
I welcome your feedback and thoughts. Have some ideas for topics you’d like to see? Let me know! Thank you for reading!