What is the appropriate way to introduce people in a business setting?
No one does business introductions today and it's because they don't know how. Indeed, if you're standing there with two people that you know, and you want to introduce them, there are a few things you have to know about that introduction. If you're introducing two people, you use the name of the more important person in the introduction first, as this is the appropriate way to introduce people in a business setting. Lets imagine that you're introducing the CEO of your company to your next door neighbour. You would use the name of the CEO first, and introduce your neighbour to the CEO. For example, "Jim, Id like you to meet my neighbour, Sarah." It's that simple. Or, because people really don't know what to do, people use "Sarah, Jim. Jim, Sarah". It makes it very easy and actually, that's OK as we're very casual in business today and people really don't want formal introductions. It's appropriate to just remember that one line, and I'm going to repeat it because I think it's that important. You use the person of most importance's name first in the introduction. So as your CEO, Jim, is more important, you'd say, "Jim, Id like you to meet my neighbour, Sarah." There's only a couple of exceptions to this rule. One of the exceptions is if a client comes on your campus, then the client's name trumps that of your CEO. So then it becomes, "Mary, Id like you to meet the CEO of our company, Jim." There's another exception which I should mention, and that is if someone has a dignitary title. They often will trump as a Senator, Mayor, Governor or President.
