So international business and global businesses at the heart of what we do, I'm a facilitator,
my role, my team, we facilitate connections as well.
I think it's working like you're an alumnae of some university.
You don't know each other, but you graduated from the same university and then you have
already this trust.
People buy from people.
We want to know each other, we want to have relationships with you, we want to have trust.
Unless you have something so unique that is not existing in the whole world.
Behind the role there is a human with all universe inside of this person.
Hi, I am Dmytro Shvets, your host at the Start Global Insights, where I interview experts
in different countries about local business secrets and international expansion experience.
Local business communities like business associations or chambers of commerce are often advised
as one of the sources for exporters.
In some cases they can be just formal organizations that are not worth spending your time on,
but some of them may serve as gates to the local markets.
And after the conversation with the London Chamber of Commerce and Industry, I must admit
that this is exactly the last case.
My guest today is Nick Charles, the head of community and member relationships at the
London Chamber of Commerce.
And we will talk about the possibilities of cooperation with this organization for companies
looking to sell to the UK markets.
Hi, Nick.
Welcome to the show.
Good afternoon.
Thank you for having me.
Nick, could you tell a bit more about your experience and what do you do?
Yes, of course.
So my job title is head of community and member relationships at the London Chamber of Commerce.
I've worked at the London Chamber of Commerce for 11 years now within the membership department
of the London Chamber.
Quite a bit of time.
A lot of time.
It's gone so quickly.
And we have a saying in England that time flies when you're having fun.
And my whole experience at the London Chamber has been a fun and enjoyable one, particularly
because of the huge amount of interest in individuals and businesses that you meet on
a daily basis and fantastic entrepreneurs, innovators, and also the ability to be able
to help people and provide support.
So my role at the London Chamber of Commerce, the London Chamber of Commerce is presently
on a real journey of growing and growing its outreach and growing its business community.
At the moment, the London Chamber of Commerce business community totals in between 6,500
and 7,000 businesses.
It's a really good number prior to the start of the COVID pandemic.
That number was only around 2,000.
So we are growing significantly through a number of initiatives that we've launched that seem
to be working really well.
But we are London.
When you look at the amount of businesses there are in London, we are a global city.
People from all around the world want to come and do business in London.
So we need to grow and we need to be able to provide services and the function that
give support to the wider-out businesses that want to be part of the London business community.
So my role itself, I look after a membership team.
So our role is threefold.
It's growing the business community, so bringing more businesses on board to become members
of the London Chamber of Commerce, to join the London Chamber of Community Network.
It's being able to deliver services and benefits to those businesses to ensure that they're
getting the support that they need to grow and develop.
Most businesses join the London Chamber of Commerce for three reasons.
It's to connect, it's to raise profile, and it's to get business support.
So connections will come in the form of events and networking.
Prior raising will come in the form of being able to advertise on our website, being able
to feature in our London Business Matters magazine.
You'll be able to join or take part in the London Chamber of Commerce Digital Community
App.
We've had that up and running for over two years now.
And business support comes in many different ways.
We're very, very lucky as a not-for-profit organisation to have fantastic facilities
in the city of London.
There's workspace solutions and members lounge and private meeting room facilities that businesses
are able to use.
So if you are a business who is based overseas in Ukraine or France or Germany, but we want
to visit London throughout the year to do business, to meet people, by joining an organisation
like the London Chamber of Commerce, you have what we call home from home.
When you're in London and you're away from your office, you can base yourself on work
at the London Chamber of Commerce.
You can respond to emails.
You can have meetings there.
You can invite clients and contacts to come and meet in your space at the London Chamber
of Commerce.
So it's like a representative office overseas, yeah?
It is.
And it's about giving them support.
So hopefully every year, people look back, businesses look back and say, yes, we got
what we needed from the London Chamber of Commerce.
We got the vital support.
We got the connections.
We got the profile raising opportunities that we needed.
So we're trying hard to do that.
It's never perfect.
Because not everyone is able to get what they need out of it.
But the feedback we are receiving is overwhelmingly very positive.
So we're definitely doing the right thing at the moment.
Nick, and you said that you mentioned that actually not only companies from London and
not only companies from Britain are joining the Chamber of Commerce.
So is it common that companies from abroad are also on the members?
Absolutely.
So what did you have?
Prior to the COVID pandemic, we had an international business team.
We ran trade missions around the world every year.
We did events on how to do business in overseas markets at the London Chamber of Commerce.
I'll also mention as well, I won't go into too much detail because I'm not a specialist,
but we issue a lot of expert documentation.
So we're one of the biggest issuers of expert documentation in the UK.
So international business and global business is at the heart of what we do.
By documentation, you mean some reports and researchers?
No.
If you are an exporter, again, I'll speak in very basic terms, but if you need to move
or send goods all around the world, you need paperwork and documentation to do that.
And many businesses get that paperwork through there.
But yeah, people around the world, international business is very big for us and we are in
a position.
We are in the process of forming relationships with cities and chambers of commerce from
around the world again at the moment.
We are open to everyone.
Anyone around the world, a registered business can go to our website, they can speak to us,
say we want to come to London, we want to win business in London, we want to make connections
in London.
How do we do it?
The London Chamber of Commerce can give you the help and support that you need to ensure
it's a success.
So in fact, if you are becoming a member of the Chamber of Commerce of London, then you
are becoming a member of this community and then you can actually use the benefits of
going overseas from London with the help of your Chamber of Commerce.
100%.
That's an interesting pivot.
Yeah, so it is.
I mean, anyone who joins the London Chamber of Commerce now gets access to the business
community automatically of well over six and a half thousand businesses that's growing.
It's companies of all shapes and sizes, different sectors, different industries.
It's a real mix.
We represent everyone with a voice of London business.
It's a very good point and people are interested.
I suppose if you are based overseas in a certain country, you want to come to London to do
business, then you realize by being in London, there are other countries and industries
you would like to embark upon, would like an introduction to, the London Chamber of
Commerce can indeed help.
Yeah, great idea.
I just didn't think about that in that way.
So I was always thinking about the chambers of commerce in other countries as an entry
point to this country, but not like a hub to go in other countries represented already
by the, for example, UK.
Yeah, absolutely.
So you are like going to United States trade mission with UK Chamber of Commerce or London
Chamber of Commerce and being from Ukraine, for example.
Yeah, so you're like in the mission, but from the UK side, but being at the same time, the
company from other country.
Again, without being an expert on any paperwork and documentation that's needed as well from
overseas travel.
But yes, the business, if you join, if you're based overseas, in Ukraine, but you come into
London and for example, the London Chamber of Commerce, we're looking to run a trade
mission to the USA or Canada or anywhere else around the world.
Absolutely.
It's a great opportunity to become part of that.
And our role will be to make connections and opportunities for those businesses.
You said that you are dealing with members.
Yeah.
So you are like building relationships with them and talking to them.
And you actually said why they are joining the Chamber of Commerce.
But you know, there is also always this kind of a deeper insight of the value that people
are getting.
And when you are talking to them, what are the most things that they are using while
being the members?
That's a very good point.
It's a very, very good question.
And it's something we work and analyze on a regular basis.
I can tell a story from a few years ago.
So in there was a commercial cleaning company based in London, the southeast of England,
who came to us and said, Dick, we're based in London.
We've got a fantastic retail client.
They're just about to open two flagship stores in major European cities.
And they've invited us to work there.
They're interested in us going there to work, for example.
We'd love to, but we've never had any experience at all in doing business overseas.
What can we do?
How can we do this?
Through our international business team and contacts, this was a good number of years
ago, we were able to support that commercial cleaning company and put them in touch with
fellow companies in these European cities when they were able to work together, subcontract
the work.
And it was a really, really successful project.
So that's a really key good example.
Other parts were very big.
We've been very big and successful over the years within the property construction arena.
So construction companies, residential commercial development, that type of thing.
We've had companies who have been to our events members, construction companies or consultancies,
who have been to a networking event and said, Nick, based on that event you held, there
was a connection I made there, off of one that connection, we can trace and we can say
we've got 70 or 70 million pounds worth of business out of it.
So there's some really fantastic stories we're able, we don't measure them all the time,
but the more we speak to members in terms of conversation and understand more about
their businesses success, we just realized just how powerful our networking events are.
That ability, a really simple forum to get people together with relevant partners and
contacts in the room really does build tremendous results.
It's a whole thing, networking connections in our role as a chamber of commerce.
By being able to bring people together, which we do very well, we have a networking program
of around 200 events a year.
I think it's working like you are an alumnae of some university.
So you don't know each other, but you graduated from the same university and then you have
already this trust issue together.
So the same thing as with your members.
I think that's a really interesting point actually, that people get to know each other.
People and other reason why businesses, I guess it's a particular point for any businesses
overseas, looking to join the London Chamber of Commerce, they want to feel part of, they
want to feel recognized as part of the London business community.
They want to be able to go to the venue.
You're another London Chamber of Commerce member.
I'm a member of the London Chamber of Commerce.
So a little benefit we do is if you join the London Chamber of Commerce, you can use the
proud to be a member of the London Chamber of Commerce logo on your website, email signatures,
other marketing material and people like that because it makes them feel part of the business
community as it were.
Yeah, I think this is a very, very strong psychological thing.
So you don't need to build this trust for a long period of time because you are borrowing
the trust of the umbrella community that you're in.
Absolutely.
And I think the thing I've come to realize is that everyone's different.
And bear in mind my role, obviously in the London Chamber, I'm a facilitator.
My role, my team, we facilitate connections as well.
So what we tend to stress to members of businesses is about relationships, it's about getting
to know each other.
That's what people want.
It's not what we call a hard sell.
So what I'm really enjoying doing with businesses, if they're interested in similar areas, there's
potential synergy of them working together to partner, look at shared opportunities.
I think it's very easy to bring people together and say, guys, I'd like to connect you for
a social conversation just as if it's any synergy altogether.
Nothing about one company sending the service specifically to others.
That does happen.
It's about getting to know each other, conversation.
Oh, I want to know you.
Tell me about your business.
How can we work together?
How can we look for shared opportunities together?
And that ethos works very well.
Just coming back to your story about the networking and conversation between companies, probably
it is different between the regions.
So the business culture in London may be a bit different from the business culture in
Glasgow.
But in general, from your opinion and feeling, how open British people are to such conversations
and relationships and just talking to a stranger about something?
I think the whole point of joining an organization like the London Chamber of Commerce or another
Chamber of Commerce in the UK is because you're willing to speak to other businesses.
Obviously, there will be some organizations that aren't as open or willing to connect
as others, but overwhelmingly, from my experience at London Chamber of Commerce, businesses
want to meet people.
They want to speak.
They want to get to know you.
They want to exchange details.
They want to see if they can help.
They want to see if you can help them.
The side that we've been working in Shardland Swims is that we actually need to be the Chamber
of Commerce of the 21st century.
So what we launched two and a half years ago was the London Chamber of Commerce digital
app.
So if you are a business all around the world now, if you're in Ukraine, if you're anywhere
in the world, you can register for the London Chamber of Commerce digital app.
And whoever else around the world, part of the Chamber of Commerce business community
is registered in the app, you can start conversations.
You can connect them.
You can raise your profile.
They can go on the various groups on the app, a business owners group, an international
trade group, a connected live in London group, a hospitality, leisure and tourism group.
They can go on there, raise their profile and connect with an audience they'd like
to connect with in London.
And how do you sell?
So you are selling your services yet to London companies.
What is your approach to get these clients?
It's a really good point.
Selling the London Chamber of Commerce isn't about selling it.
It's just about being open and making people aware of the opportunities.
I would say understanding if a business has reached out to us or we've reached out to
businesses in the campaign, say we are here to help London Chamber of Commerce with what
to speak to you.
I think we use social media a lot to promote what the London Chamber of Commerce are doing
and encourage businesses to get in touch.
You're creating the funnel, the incoming funnel of leads.
They are coming to your website.
It's a very interesting point that in the modern age, it's very digital and very remote
and technological base and people still value the conversation.
I want to speak to you over the phone.
I want to speak to you on Teams.
I want to have a coffee with you.
I want to tell you about my business.
I want to see how you can help me.
How can the London Chamber of Commerce help my business support and grow?
Apart from incoming leads that you are generating?
Apart from incoming leads, we go out at trade shows and exhibitions is a big thing for us.
If you can get an exhibition that attracts thousands of businesses over a two to three
day period, we'd like to be there.
Say here, we're the London Chamber of Commerce.
It seems when you are at a place and you are here and other businesses are there, they
want to speak to you.
They want to speak to you.
We don't like going out and say, we want to sell London Chamber of Commerce to you.
It's about letting businesses and people know that the London Chamber of Commerce is here.
When people speak to us as well, it's just being able to understand what are they looking
for?
Some business, particularly if you're a small business and particularly if you're a business
overseas as well, all of our members get free legal and HR advice.
Another key bit of advice that we launched two years ago as a service that we created
the Ask the Expert service.
Basically, in all key business areas, legal issues, financial issues, sales and marketing
issues, IT and cyber issues, well-being issues as well, sustainability issues is another
one amongst others.
We went out to our members and said, look, we're looking to provide an advisory service
where members can come to us and say, I would like advice in certain areas.
Would you as a member, you're an expert in finance, for example, you're an expert in
sales and marketing, would you be willing to give some free advice to fellow members
who want to use the service?
That's worked really well.
Members can go to us now, whether they're based in London or overseas and say, look,
I'd like to sell more effectively or market myself more effectively to UK London businesses.
How can I do that?
We've got members who are experts as part of this service.
They'll be happy to give you an hour's worth of free advice to help you on your way.
That's very valuable.
And again, that's our role as business support.
But again, we're bringing people together to get the support that they need.
And for our experts as well, they're actually able to speak to an audience who are actually
interested in their services.
Yeah, and actually promote their services as well.
You were talking about the social media advertising, yes, to get incoming funnel of leads.
What are the social media that are popular within business community?
It's really good.
I'm not the expert.
I'm not a social media expert, but I've got a good understanding leading.
Obviously, most of our members, for me being at London Chamber of Commerce, I've got a
network and connections of several thousand on LinkedIn.
And I don't use LinkedIn proactively all the time.
There are colleagues who use LinkedIn on a regular basis to a great degree.
So LinkedIn is a fantastic way to connect with colleagues.
Twitter, the London Chamber of Commerce is very successful on Twitter.
We've got a really good funnel of Twitter to go out there as well.
I just noticed from speaking to businesses, many small business owners I've spoken to,
Twitter is one of those things that if you are to embark on Twitter to promote your business
and engage, it's something you need to keep doing on a regular basis.
When you are working and communicating with members from overseas and they are entering
Britain like a market, do you see or from your experience, you can say about some usual
mistakes that they do or what they are doing not correct?
I think it's linked to what we were talking about is the approach to businesses.
I think if you're just going to reach out to someone to do a very quick sale, my experience
at the London Chamber of Commerce is that won't be terrifically well received by a number
of businesses.
So I would say that that's definitely a mistake.
I think people need to realise they need to join an organisation and get to know each
other to have to be patient, to build relationships, to understand the business environment, to
understand who their target market is, who in membership, where can I build connections,
who can help me, how can I help them, how can it reciprocate each other.
So that would be my recommendation.
The biggest mistake is not to think in long term, not to build this long term approach.
Absolutely.
And with that, I think a strategy needs to be made.
Let me speak to organisations where they can help and guide me.
If I'm going to launch a marketing business development strategy, where I'm going to
email businesses in London, the UK, what would be the best way to do that?
What are the key topics I should mention?
What would be the best way to reach out and buy email?
For example, another key service that we give is business development support.
So members all over the world can come to us and say to our business information team,
we would like a list of contacts, we'd like to reach out to people to engage.
How can we do that?
So great, we can help them contacts, we can do that for businesses.
However, there's no point in reaching out to people if you haven't got a coherent strategy,
if you haven't given support to who your target audience is, who in these organisations are
the best people to speak to as well.
My approach, if you are entering the country, then the first thing that you should do is
to just talk to your potential clients, not sell.
In no way to sell because you don't know the paints, you don't know what they are looking
for and you don't know what you give them as a value because I'm sure that they are
like bombarded by emails from all over the world, especially if they are some big distributors.
Well, it's a very good point.
If you're a finance director and organisation procurement manager, you're going to be getting
far too many emails, even me, keeping up on emails and giving enough attention to emails
is a really difficult task.
So I think that's a very good point.
Understanding businesses, let me meet, okay, these are the people potentially down the
line I want to sell to, they're the people I want to do business with.
Let me spend some time meeting them, get to know them, who are they, let me understand
them, what are their needs, what are their challenges?
How can I help?
How can I combine business with its services and what it does?
What's the advantage that I can provide to the business?
How can I be as useful as possible?
And yeah, that's my recommendation.
I think that this is the problem of perception of your potential client as just a client
or transactional point, but not as a partner.
And if you're going overseas or abroad, then your client becomes your partner because it
will take you a lot of time to build this relationship, to understand the pains and
gains and then to deliver their value to them to grow it further.
Because if you're just selling like a transaction, then what's the point?
Unless you have something so unique that is not existing in the whole world.
Yes, and that happens.
It really does happen sometimes.
Good luck to these people.
People buy from people.
I know it's a cliche, we say it all the time, but here in the UK, people buy from people.
We want to know each other.
We want to have relationships with you.
We want to have trust.
We want to have appreciation as well.
At the same time, we still want to be able to deliver an excellent service and receive
an excellent product, but I want to trust and have a good relationship with the person
I'm engaging with.
Does that make sense?
That makes totally sense because just recently I made, as you know, I also teach in business
school.
We have the course for sales and I have this type of exercise called the empathy map.
You are learning how you can understand other people's feelings and what is inside of them.
After that, afterwards, I was talking to two participants and they were salespeople from
an organization.
What are your insights?
I asked and then they said, you know, it was the first time in my life that I saw a human
behind the client.
It's remarkable how we forget that behind the role, there is a human, human being with
all the universe inside of this person, with all these relationships and relatives and
problems and life events and just trying to sell them the functional stuff that they need
in their jobs.
But in their job role, there is a person that feels.
100%.
We've got feels and emotions and we all react to certain things differently from one day
to the next.
It's part of being human.
But I still think overwhelmingly the power of getting to know the individual, that person
and having empathy, like you said, empathy is so important and it's so critical and
so valuable.
Yeah, because if you are thinking about like we always thought about British people, England,
Queen, Kingdom, ladies and gentlemen.
Yeah, so all that very posh and very like high level hierarchical structures and you
cannot even look different from what you are expected to.
And then when I start doing business or talking to British people, it appeared that you are
just ordinary people from flesh and blood.
It's very true.
I mean, London, London is a very diverse city as well.
I mean, there's huge progress is being made as well.
I believe that I think some over 40 or so percent of the London population are from
different ethnic minority backgrounds, I think, for example.
I think it's significant.
So the London Chamber is really promoting inclusivity as well.
So something we've done in recent years, we've had for a number of years now, really active
Asian Business Association because of the number of businesses in London that come from Asian
owned backgrounds.
Something we launched around two and a half years ago was the first London Chamber's first
ever black business association that's been really successful, do some great work on dealing
with the issues that many black owned businesses in London are facing, access to finance, for
example.
Although we've done it in recent years, there was a stop we've launched this year, a brand
new women in business program and initiative to help female business people, female entrepreneurs
as well.
It's great.
So if you come to a London Chamber of Commerce event, now most events you sit down, look
at the audience and it's a really diverse mix of gender, ethnic backgrounds, for example,
that's far more start to represent what the London community as a whole looks like.
Does that make sense?
Okay, clear.
Nick, I think that we are a bit running of time already.
As I said before, time flies when you're having fun, that time went quickly.
It was fun to talk to you and I would talk much more because it is really interesting
to understand the country, the culture, the opportunities that you have there.
Thank you.
I hope what little input I've been able to make has been useful for people listening.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.