WHY ENGLAND’S WORLD CUP PROGRESS IS GOOD FOR BUSINESS

Wednesday July 4 went down in the diary as a very good day. I spent most of it at the Kingston Business Expo, an excellent annual event showcasing the best of our thriving business community in this corner of south-west London.

The atmosphere was buoyant, bubbly, buzzing. The venue, at Kingston University’s Business School, hummed from the start with the sound of busy chatter.

Now, I’ve been to enough business events to know that everybody puts on their best face for a day of meeting new and future contacts. Everything’s going great, things are looking up, come and do business with me.

But this was different. There was an extra spring in the step, an extra song in the heart, of a significant proportion of the throng of attendees.

Because on Tuesday July 3, England won a World Cup penalty shoot-out against Colombia to advance to the quarter-finals of football’s premier tournament.

Before you say it, I know that plenty of you remain utterly impervious to the charms of the world’s leading sport, even to sport in general. The fate of Gareth Southgate’s team the night before will have been a matter of supreme indifference to you.

But for enough of us, the excitement of a World Cup – especially one where England have progressed farther than many thought they might – pervades almost every waking moment.

There really aren’t many occasions when you feel part of a collective excitement that colours your mood in all situations, commercial or domestic.

So the question is, how would the Expo have been if the penalty shoot-out the evening before had gone the wrong way?

The venue would still have been busy, exhibitors and visitors would still have enjoyed a busy day of networking. There would, however, have been a whiff of anti-climax in the air. The smiles would have been that little bit more forced, conversations that little bit more stilted.

Which brings me to the point. All business is about relationships. All of it. People buy from people, they engage most readily with individuals they like and trust and get along with.

Those relationships would have been less effervescent on Wednesday had Gareth and his boys been on the retreat from Moscow. Not just at the Kingston Business Expo, but right across the country.

With the result that fewer relationships would have been cemented, fewer deals done.

So, for the sake of my business and yours, and businesses across England and the UK, it was great that England won. It’s great that they are, at the time of writing, still in with a chance of winning the World Cup.

I’m not saying it’s coming home (although I can’t stop humming it). But there are sound business reasons for hoping the dream lasts as long as possible.

If you would like to talk about the football – or even, dare I say it, how my copywriting services might help you or your business – please get in touch at info@leboomedia.com