I went to a local business networking meeting the other day. I hadn’t been to such an event before, but I wanted to see what all the fuss was about. One of the first things that happened after I entered the room instantly reminded me of this video by fellow voiceoverist Philip Banks:
While I wasn’t exactly pelted by business cards, my first few interactions with people at this event were fairly shallow. Could I have done better from my end? Sure. However, it’s a little hard to keep a conversation going when the person who just handed me their card has walked away after discovering that I have no card to give them.
This happened several times within just a few minutes of entering the room, but then something happened that was even more memorable. I noticed a lady who was walking around the room with a collection of personalized faux-cloth bags hanging on her arm by their carry-handles, each one folded up nice and flat. She approached me and said something to the effect of, “Hi! I’ve got a bag for you!” After handing me the bag (which contained a collection of promotional trinkets for her business), she immediately moved on to find the next bagless person in the room. No small-talk. No mention of her name (that I can recall). No effort to see if I even wanted a bag.
Want to leave a lasting impression? Do something memorable.
Want to leave a lasting BAD impression? Do something memorable that says (essentially) that you care more about spreading the word about your business than you do about developing a real relationship with someone.
Networking isn’t about tagging as many people as possible with something that has your business name on it. It’s about building relationships of trust. Do you really think that I’m going to trust you with my business — or the business of someone I know who is looking for your services — if all that you did in an attempt to earn my trust was hand me a card, a pen, a bag, or anything else? That only says that you care about you. As the saying goes, “They won’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.” To expand that in a business context, a potential customer won’t care how much you know (about insurance, real estate, auto repair, etc.) until I know how much you care about them.
Now, I don’t claim to be perfect. I’ve made plenty of mistakes, and I’m not proud of any of them. However, I know for a fact that I will never make certain mistakes again, especially after having seen them play out in a slightly different form at this recent meeting, and the careless “shotgun” approach is one of them. Thankfully I haven’t sent many “Here’s my demo! Give me a call if you need anything!”-emails, but sadly there have been a few. Not any more, though. I’ve got a bright pink promotional keychain to help me remember that lesson.