Networking Events – The Meat Market of the Business World

Have you ever been to a networking event? Chances are most of you have. As a new small business owner, I’ve attended a handful so far. I’m still getting used to them and the best way I can describe them is that they are the meat market of the business world. What do I mean by this, you ask?

The mission of attendees of these events is to meet like minded people who can be business prospects. Hot sales leads. People who can make you money. In a perfect world, your target market. Networkers attend events where guest speakers present, all people in attendance wear name tags and you are encouraged to speak to as many people as you can to make connections. Don’t get me wrong; I see the value in this completely. It makes perfect sense. However, I can’t get past the contrived feeling of these experiences.

Consider this: I recently attended an event for small business owners. As a newbie to this group, I arrived solo and didn’t have the luxury of seeing a familiar face in the crowd. As I looked around the room, I saw people catching up, recognizing someone across the room and making their way to each other to exchange a genuine “Hi! How are you? Great to see you!” I admit to having a flashback to being the new kid on the first day of school. I’m not shy but do struggle with marching up to a stranger, reading their name tag, extending my hand for a handshake and blurting out the classic opening line of all networking events: “Hi Susan, what do you do?” Translation “Hi Susan, can YOUR business help grow MY business?”

As a home stager at these events, it’s interesting to see the reaction of people when I tell them what I do. The responses range from “Cool! What an interesting job. How did you get into that?” to “What exactly IS home staging?” all the way to the dreaded “Mmm” quickly followed up by their eyes glazing over. Ah yes, the classic glazing over of eyes. Nobody wants that reaction when you tell someone what you live and breathe everyday but I can take it.

Cue ‘speed networking’. At the last event I attended, the emcee happily announced that the best part of the night was about to start. It was explained that each of us (approximately 100 people) were to try and chat with as many people as we could; we were to talk to someone new for 3 minutes until the bell rang which meant we were to turn to the next person and introduce ourselves, tell them what we do and share a personal fact. Confession: my heart rate went through the roof. “Hi, I’m Heather and I’m a home stager. I like dogs and my favourite colour is green”  The bell rang and the games began. The first person I met was a realtor. He gave me his opening line and I fired mine back. Enter eye glaze. His interest in our conversation plummeted. Even as a rookie at networking, I know the drill. You don’t give a sales pitch about your company right off the bat; you keep it light and casual. Well this poor guy was expecting the worst, clearly. He was praying for the bell to ring, which I found hilarious. So I had fun with it and continued to ask him questions to keep the conversation going and to alleviate the awkwardness that he had created. Hence my meat market comparison. He was playing the role of the girl who was being hit on but didn’t have the guts to tell the talkative drunk guy (played by me) that he wasn’t interested. The eternal 3 minutes finally ended with the sweet, sweet sound of the bell ringing. We went our separate ways with a shared sigh of relief. This continued for an hour, yes, SIXTY minutes, meaning I met 20 people. I’m pleased to say I met some incredibly nice people despite the rough start.

Thanks to my gene pool, I can see the humour in everything. Will I continue attending these events? I must. Will I continue to find something funny about every event? Definitely. Thanks to the speed meeting, I now have some familiar faces to look for and potential partners in crime to share some laughs with. I can’t be the only one who finds these events somewhat painful & funny all at once, can I?