My Pinnacle Network

Grow Your Business Through Networking

networking group

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Before and after: The best part of a meeting?

This one is an oldie but goody for almost all networking groups:

photo of empty conference room for a networking group

Arrive 15 minutes early. Plan on staying at least 15 minutes after the meeting ends.

There are many benefits to this strategy. Here are a few:

  • Being one of the first gives you time to network with the meeting host or early attendees. The host will typically be a well-connected person.
  • Other people arriving early are also guests or people you might have not met before, each with an address book of names of people you may not yet know.
  • It establishes your commitment to the group. It’s human nature but people do notice who is usually early or just on time.
  • During somebody’s verbal brand/elevator pitch you may have thought of a possible lead or intro. Planning on staying late gives you time to follow up.
  • One-on-ones – Set them up at the meeting. Waiting to set up a one-on-one until your back in the office leaves opportunity for it to slide through the cracks.
  • Staying later gives you the opportunity to catch up to talk to people who may have showed up as meeting/event started.

The time before and after a networking event provides a rare window of opportunity to learn more about people, set up meetings and increase your exposure to like-minded B2B professionals. Sure, you can call, text or e-mail the people in your networking group in between meetings. But more often than not, you will get the most out of these folks when they are right in front you—either at the meeting or at a one-on-one.

The tip here is leave yourself enough time before and after the meeting—at least 15 minutes—so you have the best opportunity to optimize the real-time human resources you have in front of you.

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Listen: It’s not who you know, but what you hear

Think about the referrals you have passed. What was the genesis of that referral? It involved your listening skills more than anything else.

First, you probably heard a friend, colleague or peer talk about his or her business what their needs. If you were truly listening, that registered in your memory on a certain level.

Next, in your travels, be it at your place of business, networking group, coffee shop, etc., you heard somebody express a need for a certain product or service. You interject and say, “I know somebody who might be able to help you…”. And that is how a lead/referral is born.

So, if you’re in a networking group and you’re wondering why you have not received a referral, perhaps you’re not asking the right question. Maybe you should be asking, why have I not passed a referral?

While clearly there are exceptions to this rule, but when it comes to referrals you have to give to receive. And the only way you can give is to know what people want or need. That, you can only do by listening.

There’s probably not one of us who has paid attention to every single word every person has said at a networking meeting. We should, but we don’t. Fortunately, it’s an area where you can improve quite easily.

Make it a point to listen at your next networking meeting. Bring a notebook and be sure to write down at least one type of referral for each member as they give their elevator pitch. You would be surprised how much registers in your memory when you put it in writing. From there, all you really have to do is listen…

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Know your fellow networking group members better

Networking 101: the better you know members of your networking group, the easier it is to pass leads and referrals. One-on-ones are the key to that, but our monthly My Pinnacle Network meetings also can provide some insight. We try to move that along by asking members and guests to answer a question that might not have been part of their elevator pitch or verbal brand. For example:

What epiphany did you have on your summer vacation?

This question was the topic of a recent newsletter by our sister company PR Works. The answers revealed quite a bit about people and also provided more information about members.

For starters, many members have vacationed in the same location. Even the times spent at that spot did not overlap, it becomes a talking point and discussion starter and something people have in common.

As for the epiphanies, those too become talking points. At our My Pinnacle Network-Bourne meeting, this question revealed that many members had a similar epiphany: namely, that you have to commit to and actually take a scheduled vacation.

Other members shared some ideas for improving their business so they could get away more often. Some had thoughts about how to optimize content for multiple outlets (guess who had that one).

The point is, it’s great to know about a fellow member’s business. But how much you know about the person as well as the business can make a difference, too.