Guerilla Networking – A No-no

About a year-and-a-half ago I stepped away from one of the roles I was serving in.  Hopefully I’ve even written a blog about that at some point.  Meaning, the idea of evaluating your commitments and seeing where you’re spending your time is a healthy exercise.  In my case I decided that the return on investment didn’t justify the time I was giving to that particular hat I was wearing.

Many people might find that they are spending a lot of time going to networking events.  Hopefully you are going to them for all the right reasons (meaning, not just to paper the place with business cards, or to see if they have free food).

Even still, you need to step back and review the list of networking events that you’re going to and decide if they’re worth the time you’re putting in to be there.  Include getting dressed in that time as well as the drive time to and from.  Plus, of course, if some of these are costing you to attend – be it a meeting room fee or a membership fee or some other related cost – weigh that too when evaluating if you’re getting enough return from going through it all.

The bottom line is, are you generating income by attending these events?

As an aside, I might mention that hopping from meeting to meeting as a guest is not an effective strategy.  As someone who has been a paying member of various referral groups, trust me when I say that no one remembers or thus gives business to somebody who stopped in once.  You just can’t make that kind of impact in one visit and everyone in the group is too focused on passing business to the others who do show up every week.

So the question remains, is there enough new business to substantiate going to all these get-togethers?  While you ponder that, I’m going to turn to something else that is tremendously important, especially if you want to be able to continue attending these types of mixers and not be blackballed.

Keep in mind that one goes to networking events to meet people and exchange business cards and learn about each other’s business and form the basis for a possible relationship.  So, on the flip side, that means that you don’t go in as a visitor/as a guest/as a first-time attendee and ask people for business on the spot, set up meetings, and do a hard sell right there and then where/when you’ve first made each other’s acquaintance.  This is a sure fire way to turn people off in a hurry.  Since professionals know the etiquette for networking, they will be very offended and possibly caught off guard if you swoop in with aggressive dialogue that backs them into a corner.  People can generally feel a sales pitch coming and will not be receptive to you trying yours on them.

Everyone knows why one another is there.  Of course the hope is to find new business and/or strategic alliance partners.  Coming in with some urgency, as though you’re under a quota or deadline, however, is not going to endear you to anyone and you’ll be remembered for all the wrong reasons.