I had the opportunity to attend a presentation recently by Paula Frazier of the Referral Institute - Virginia Southwest and she made a brilliant point that bears repeating ... always have a goal when you attend a networking event. Specifically, she told the story of her husband who, when he attends a Mixer-type event, makes it his goal to meet at least 10 NEW people before cashing-in his drink ticket or grabbing a snack. Simple - elegant - and effective!
What's you goal when attending events?
It's a busy season now for many major Spring networking events. Now your plan doesn’t have to be too elaborate but it needs to be more than 'I’ll just go and see who I run into.' That's like just showing-up for a sales appointment and saying 'Let's see what happens' - let me know how that works for you!
Think about what you want to achieve. After all, you have chosen networking as part of your marketing strategy and it is an investment. Who do you want to meet and what are you going to say to them? Many networking events send out a list of all the people attending before the event (this is especially easy if the event comes through Facebook, LinkedIn, MeetUp, etc.). Study it and decide who you would like to meet and if you are not too confident about just going up to them and saying ‘Hello’ ask your host to introduce you.
Your plan could be even more straightforward. Meet three people you don’t already know, collect five business cards of people you can follow-up with later, find out something new about someone you already know that is also at the event.
But whatever your plan is, don’t make your objective ‘closing’ the sale. That's not networking - that's cold calling. Why? Because your aim at any ‘open’ networking event is to come away with contacts that you can start to build a referral relationship with.
And, if you would like to try a networking event where people are keen to help you and build really long-term, mutually rewarding relationships then try a referral organization, such as BNI.
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