Meeting with German companies gives insight how your company is viewed

From Potsdam and Berlin Aug09

Meeting with a group of German IT companies in Potsdam in preparation
for the marketing assistance programme to the UK, I was again struck by
the diversity and ingenuity of their ideas. As part of the afternoon
they were supposed to fill in company information forms, ostensibly to
assist with our market researchers. Like forms everywhere, my fear was
that they would inexplicably lack the company's vibrant USPs, so
essential for our market researchers to understand if they were to
successfully find interested UK contacts. Having been up since 4 in the
morning that same day, the silence of studious form filling was also
likely to be highly soporific!
So we tried something different!
Pairing up, one of the pairs would describe their company, its goals
and ambitions, which the other partner would then interpret and use to
fill in the form. The roles were then reversed. At the end, each
company gave a presentation. In fact, we've We even had one company
brave enough to give the presentation of their partners in English to
general applause!
The background hubub and engagement was
stimulating, the presentations informative. The companies gained useful
insights and practice in honing their pitch in a safe environment. Even
better, there was also a bit of networking afterwards! An application
for a XING group has been initiated.
My suggestion is therfore to use a future networking meeting to try this with a trusted partner.
1. Describe your company, ethos and offers briefly
2. then see what your partner understood and reflects back to you
3. Of course, you can return the favour!