5.45am for a business network event… here’s why

I have just come back from my first business networking event for a while… and despite my initial scepticism I came out feeling very positive.

These kind of things aren’t normally my cup of tea; the idea of standing in a corner of a room that’s full of people who I don’t know doesn’t appeal. I inevitably get caught in a conversation with the guy who pressure washes drives… who isn’t interested in spending money on a website. But after a gentle push from a friend, I got a handful of business cards and off I went.

What struck me was the positive atmosphere that they have engendered. They genuinely seemed to want to help each other succeed.

The idea is that there are 12-15 people, who meet every week with the goal of getting as many referrals for the other members as they can. I can’t remember what the phrase they used was, but it was basically ‘treat others how you want to be treated’. If you want business, you try and get other people business.

At first glance you wonder how many leads you can get from 12 people. But of course, it’s not just 12 people. It’s the 100 people that those people know. And it’s the 100 people they know.

So a conversation that you think is going nowhere, could just end up with a business lead. All you need to do is be friendly, ask questions about their line of work, explain your services and you never know.

Maybe the guy who pressure washes drives might be worth talking too. I wonder what his client list is…

This entry was posted on Friday, May 8th, 2009 at 11:52 am and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.