Imagine two people attending an event, sizing it up and drawing an imaginary line down the middle. They separate, each taking half the room. At the end of the event, they meet again to see who's collected the most business cards.
Have you met these people? Sure you have. We all have. What did they accomplish? They collected a lot of cards that will end up on a shelf, in a drawer, in the trash, or--worse yet--scanned into a computer so they can spam everyone they just met. Why? What does a business card represent? It's a piece of paper, with ink and images on it. No relationship has been formed. This networking strategy, by itself, isn't an effective use of time, money or energy.
How can anyone build relationships like this?
1 comment:
Very true Will !
What we have found however is that most people who have this behaviour don't do it because they really WANT to do this.
The reason is that they don't know how to do it differently.
Sometimes it is even worse when their boss told them to go to a networking event and come back with at least 10 business cards (and often don't want to go themselves), without telling them how to approach other people.
So it's good that their are people like you that teach people how to do it in a different way !
Have a great networking day!
Jan
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