· Ensure that your company is only represented at the events by senior decision-makers; people who hold the authority to both buy and sell; people who can effectively promote your company and what it does; people who know the products and services that need sourcing or re-sourcing that will improve your business.
· Ensure you come with a buying as well as selling attitude. Ask yourself, who is there in the room who is in a position to help my company?
· Bring plenty of business cards – at least 20.
· Prepare your three minute presentation, focusing on the benefits or solutions your company provides.
· Be there at 12 noon. Seek out people you don’t know. Listen to them and be interested. See how they can help your company and how you can help their business. Have a polite disengaging line if in a group, or introduce an individual to someone who you feel may be of relevance, to enable you to move on. Always leave your business card.
· Smile at the table. Shake hands with everybody. Remember their first names.
· Listen intently during each 3 minute presentation. Ask yourself during it:
° Can this person help my company?
° Can I help this company?
° Do I know anybody who could use this company?
° How am I going to build their presentation into mine? How can I refer to it?
° If I have spoken already, what question can I ask when they have finished, or at the end of the presentation session?
· During the event refer to the full list of attendees and see if there is anybody else you wish to meet on other tables.
· Once back at the office, get out and review the business cards from around the table, and ask yourself:
° Who shall I write to and say how good it was to meet them?
° Who shall I ring and make an appointment to see?
° Who am I going to tell in my organisation about somebody I met today that could help him or her?
° Who else on my contact list could benefit from an introduction to one of the people I met today?
· Always keep in mind the members of The Business Network, and always be on the lookout for any way in which you can pass on leads.
© 2008 The Business Network (North)
