Attending business events is an important aspect of boosting your business’s profile. Business events give you the opportunity to meet potential customers, clients, partners and more. It’s important to keep in mind how to get the most out of business events as you choose the events to attend.
* Remember Why – It’s important to remember why you are attending business events. Knowing why you are attending will go far in helping you choose the right events to attend. Not all events will be right for your goals.
* Don’t Be Cheap – Take business cards that accurately reflect your business. It’s not the time to get the free cards or to be cheap. Once you leave that event, all the people you make contact with will have to remember you from that card.
* Be Prepared – Practice your 30-second elevator speech so that you can accurately, and on the spot, tell people what you do such that they understand what it is that you do. If you can come up with a memorable way to explain your business, all the better.
* Take Control – They say that the person in the power position is the one who is going to put out their hand first and meet people. Not only that, it’s important that you be the one to ask open-ended questions to the people that you meet. The more you let people talk about themselves, the more they will remember you.
* Make Meetings Purposeful – Meeting fewer people is better than meeting a bunch of people that you won’t remember. Try taking some notes on the back of each business card that you receive so that you can use that later to jog your memory.
* Dress the Part – Each event has its own style, so it’s important to do a little recon to find out how people normally dress. If this is an often-repeated event you can likely find photographs of others who have attended. For the most part, business attire is expected at business events. Dress to make an impression.
* Be a Resource – One of the best ways to ingratiate yourself to those that you meet is to become a resource for them. If you can recommend another person to do a job for them, even if you can’t do it yourself, they’ll call you again.
* Follow Up – After each event, always follow up with an email, note or card. Find them on LinkedIn.com, or other business-related social media. Googling people you meet is not stalking; it’s going to help you learn more about them so that you can know how to approach them when it comes to getting business.
* Evaluate Yourself – After each event, look back on your performance and write down what went right and what could have been better. This is an important component of any business event because it will make you better.
You cannot understand the value of attending business events unless you can understand the value of networking. You also need to understand the market you are in and the value that the people within that market place on business meetings.
There are so many different business events today to choose from, so be sure to do your homework before attending just any meeting. Find out if your target audience is there, or if there are people there who offer complementary products or services to your same audience before you bother wasting money on attending. If you do all that, you’ll be successful at every business event you attend.