SJN Group staffers attend a lot of networking events: Annual professional meetings, roundtables, and industry trade shows. On behalf of our clients, we meet, greet, and tread the carpets roughly 100 times a year. Today's 4 Tips present our hard-earned recommendations for getting good value from hours and dollars spent on industry events and conventions.
1) Choose your events carefully. You know your specialty, your clients, and your competition for the most profitable accounts (if this is not true for you, please click on 'Services' at our site, sjnsales.com--and we can help you to figure it out). "We've always gone to _________" is no reason to continue investing in a particular event or meeting if there are no sales flowing from it. The exception, of course is attendance at annual meetings that are important elements of continuing professional education or peer-level-training.
If it's a new event for you, find options to present your knowledge about a timely topic in a lecture, panel or workshop. In giving away value to attendees, you build your credibility and build awareness of your practices areas of expertise and build brand awareness among the audience present and those who may review program presentations without ever leaving their offices.
2) Have a game plan for the event.
-Set an agenda for each contact your staff make. If you have a new service package or offering since last year, make sure all your people know to mention it. If the event is a general networking event in your community, have a planned 15 second introduction that will allow you and others at the event to quickly determine whether spending time getting acquainted will be valuable to either of you. "Hi, I'm Martin Gabriel. I'm in Encino and specialize in business litigation," will quickly rule out long-winded time spent with someone interested only in locating new clients for their weight loss shakes.
If you are at an industry or professional meeting that includes shopping for goods, staff, or services as well as new client prospects, separate those contacts as you receive them. Carrying a tote bag through a big meeting is a fine way to sort your shopping prospects and their give-away gizmos immediately. At local or networking events, a discreet zip-top sandwich bag in a pocket does the same job.
Focus on a warm and quick goodbye to a networking prospect who is currently not qualified, then make sure you move away and repeat the process with another event participant. It's okay to disqualify quickly during the mingle minutes--there is no cheaper time to find out that the person nearest you just wants to pitch their product or is looking for a lead to a good auto mechanic. Don't let collecting business cards become a substitute for sorting the room into qualified prospects and everyone else.
3) Efficiently handle all the data you gathered.
Have a plan for how you're going to sort the business cards you are handed. Left pocket for qualified conversations, right pocket for no-need-to-follow-up works for me. Yes, for these events we like real paper business cards. Ideally, this plan avoids the current vogue of putting every contact straight into your phone, or offering that convenience to your new prospect. Think through the staffing, hours and data collection tools you're using from a high level. Decide whether you need to pre-set your electronics to sort prospects quickly and easily when you leave the event and suddenly can't remember whether the hot prospect is the one with the 313 area code.
When I'm faced with a prospect who insists on "bumping phones" to trade contact information, I immediately make a note on the back of one of my cards and file it in the proper pocket so I can track the electronic treasure and trash just as easily, later.
4) Follow-up in 48. Hours not days. If you've done the work of qualifying real prospects and sorting all contact data as you receive it, you should have a call list ready to go the day after any event. If you find yourself procrastinating or don't immediately know what you'll say to your hard-won prospects, make one call to us at SJN Group--we'll do the calls for you.
Of course, sometimes we get to put these strategies to work firsthand, when our clients need support on-site at events. If you'd like to know more, we can do that. Call for a conversation about how our training can build your skills and create return on investment for your hours of networking.
Author Resource:
Jordan Miller has distributed over 10,000 business cards since 1985. At SJN Group , we listen to Jordan--who never confuses the action of handing off that printed card with a sales call or a followup.
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