In the writing of my Work the Room presentations, I have visited many different networking groups, and probably will discover and meet many more in the future. I have therefore been attending breakfasts and other meetings of very differing qualities. So, how do you assess the merits for your business?
There are actually very few bad meetings. The law of the networking jungle takes care of that. Simply a badly organised meeting with members not doing the business will go one of three ways.
- It will whither as people stop attending and eventually close
- The core members will just turn in on themselves and no longer welcome new members
- The meeting may limp on within a larger group till the management pull the plug.
When you look at larger groups that have multiple meetings, it is possible to find a meeting that is not working. Now when you have groups where attendance is NOT mandatory, there are going to be times when some people do not attend. So you can be unfortunate to visit one the week when the main stalwarts of that meeting are otherwise engaged. This does not mean that the next week will be the same. Indeed it can also work the other way. A good speaker can liven an otherwise dull meeting.
So when you are hunting for new groups to work with, I suggest you consider these points.
- Attend ALL the meeting you can find in your area, or within reasonable traveling, even where they may belong to the same group. You do need to take note that if you join the meeting you will be making the trip on a regular basis.
- Try and find out how long the group has been established and how long your local meeting has been going. It is good to join an evolving and growing group, but not before they have momentum.
- Do not assume that one bad meeting tarnishes that locality for all meetings and do not project that view onto an entire group, go to another meeting of the same group at a different location to compare.
- If a meeting is lifted by a good speaker or other key person. Consider what it would have been like without them. Or go back again and see for yourself.