Networking that Works

Anna-Vija McClain, CEO of Piccolo Marketing (Nashville, TN), serves as President of Nashville's chapter of Women in Digital and spoke at HubSpot's Inbound 2018 (Boston, MA) on using relationships to grow your business. Her Inbound presentation, "Networking That Works: The Proven Formula for Sales Follow-up," covers personal branding, the "give value to get value" principle, selecting and building quality relationships with the right people, and guidelines for follow-up frequency. Anna-Vija attends networking events based on the potential for meeting either customers or partners, and recommends volunteering immediately to gain visibility. The presentation is available online at annavija.com, as is a link to "Build Your Damn Business," her online group learning community.

Anna-Vija's company, Piccolo Marketing, functions as outsourced marketing department for small businesses with marketing budgets, but without sufficient resources for dedicated in-house marketing directors. Piccolo utilizes full time employees and small "pods" of contractors to provide personalized core services—with the objective of building lead funnels—and adds other promotional services as clients' needs grow.

Anna-Vija does not hire to fill "slots." She believes in hiring good people passionate about helping small businesses. She does not post jobs, but hires contractors recommended by her referral network, finds out what they are good at, trains them with the systems and training processes the company has developed, and puts them to work according to their strengths. After these contractors gain familiarity with Piccolo's operations, they are onboarded—promoted to W-2 positions.

In this interview Anna-Vija discusses how people can find work they really love, how to make networking profitable, sexual harassment in the workplace, the necessity of providing a roadmap for your team, and "what is really working now in digital marketing."

Anna-Vija can be reached on her company website at: Piccolomarketing.com or on her personal site at: http://annavija.com.