Choosing a Business Network
A Guide to Networking Organisations and Business Clubs
Business breakfast clubs and other networking organisations can be excellent for generating new business, if you find the right one. This guide tells you the main types.
You may have heard about breakfast clubs and other business networking organisations and wondered if they would suit your business. They’re not for everyone, but if you are thinking about getting involved, here is a handy guide to the main types.
Breakfast Clubs
These are normally split into local chapters or groups with up to 25-30 businesses in each. A group will have only one representative from each business sector, so there will only ever be one graphic designer or printer, for example, allowed in a group at any one time.
Meetings are usually held fortnightly or weekly with each member standing up for around one minute to deliver a short speech on their business, explaining what they do, why it’s so good and, most importantly, their ideal customer.
The aim is to generate introductions to business contacts outside the group via other members. The theory is that if every member knew 30 other businesses then your message could be transmitted to 900 companies. Some of them would be your ideal customers and you would be introduced to them via a personal introduction.
This can be a very powerful form of word-of-mouth marketing but don’t expect immediate results – members have to develop trust in each other before they feel comfortable passing on the names of potential suppliers to their business associates.
Speed Networking
This is a variation on speed dating and can be an excellent way to promote your company to a large group of potential customers in a short period. Each visitor will be expected to deliver a short presentation of around 1-2 minutes to a single individual before receiving a presentation from them, after which everyone moves onto someone else in the group.
There may be 20-80 businesses in one session, so you’ll deliver your speech up to 20-80 times but also receive 20-80 different sales speeches in return.
General Networking
Many local business organisations, e.g. Chambers of Commerce, run regular networking meetings at breakfast, lunchtime or in the evening. These are gatherings of business-people (perhaps around 50-200 attendees) offering general networking opportunities without the pressure of sales pitches in given slots. There will usually be some sort of presentation or seminar associated with it to generate interest.
Online networking
This is like social networking for businesses. Imagine MySpace or Facebook but for businesses and you have the idea. However, rather than asking for ‘friends’, you ask for potential suppliers of products you may want, or review the profiles of companies you may be interested in doing business with.
Be careful of trying to overtly generate sales by, for example, spamming members or cold prospecting those who may look interesting or you may find yourself quickly removed. Better to use them as a general reference source or a community of like-minded people.
So that’s the different groups, but which is best for you? They may all sound great in principle, but if you don’t fancy the idea of standing up in front of 30 people at 7.00 am every week then the individual face-to-face events may be best, particularly those which meet at lunchtime or in the evening.
The types of business which can benefit most from using networking organisations can be found in Using Networking for your Business.
