In this YouTube video, two speakers share practical advice for getting the most out of Chamber of Commerce after‑hours mixers. Speaker A recounts his own experience, emphasizing the goal of having a few high‑quality conversations rather than indiscriminately handing out cards, and describes tactics such as arriving early, parking his van in a visible spot, staying late to meet more relaxed attendees, and even winning a prize that boosted his visibility. Speaker B provides a step‑by‑step etiquette guide: keep business cards in the left pocket, only give a card when asked, collect others in the right pocket, approach people who aren’t already engaged, ask open‑ended work‑related questions, wear a name badge, avoid over‑eating, and prepare a concise 30‑second self‑introduction that clearly states your ideal customer. Together, the speakers illustrate how strategic positioning, disciplined card handling, purposeful conversation starters, and timing can turn a casual mixer into a valuable networking and lead‑generation opportunity.
Chapters
Tonight, one of the local Chambers of Commerce that I'm a member of is having their business after-hours. You might have heard it called a mixer or after-hours, something like that. Every chamber has them, usually once a month, usually on the same night. They get together and you can have a few drinks and have a couple of appetizers and meet a lot of people. The purpose behind a business after-hours, if you're going to attend one, is not to spray your business cards everywhere. You want to make sure you have plenty of business business cards. But really what you want to do is have 3 to 5 quality conversations with people that could either get into your network and help you, and you could help them. You know, on the rare chance you actually run into somebody after you've been to a lot of events where you run into somebody who's been meaning to do business with you and they just haven't yet, and this is a good chance to get them to say, "Yeah, I'm ready." Sometimes you'll come to these events and it'll be your first time and you'll get tons of new customers and that's just because you picked somebody else's fruit. Everybody else has abandoned. They went and they went and they went. They didn't get any new customers, and so they ended up leaving. And then you walked in and all the audience was ready at that point, and so you kind of picked their fruit. It happens a lot of times in chambers because people think that they go to these events and they say, well, you see the same people all the time. You're not out prospecting at a Chamber of Commerce event like you would going into new events where you're just trying to meet new people and possibly fill your pipeline. You're trying to make yourself known, liked, trusted, and reliable. And the best way to do that is see people over and over and start to be familiar with them, them familiar with you, and they'll be happy to do business with you. I did get here early. I'll show you when I get out of the van where I've actually decided to park and the reason that I did so. We'll go inside, we'll see what happens tonight. Hopefully we'll have a good time and reconnect with some people and find those 2 or 3, maybe 5 people that we'll have some meaningful conversations with. So you can see everybody has to come down this road in order to enter this restaurant where our after-hours is, and I've parked right here on the end, so everyone who comes in has to see my van both when they come in and when they leave the restaurant. So pretty good parking spot, I think. I'm happy with it.
I suggest you keep your business cards in your left-hand pocket That way you can shake hands with your right hand. I also suggest that you never give a card unless somebody asks for your card, and then you can also ask for their card, place it in the right-hand pocket. This avoids the embarrassing thing of giving somebody else's card to someone you just met. I always suggest that you find somebody that's not talking to someone and just crack the ice. Perhaps the easiest way to get started in a conversation is just to ask questions. Ask people about their work. Ask them what they do, how long they've been doing it, how they got into it. They'll be grateful. You'll find that it's easy to talk to somebody who isn't already talking to somebody, and that way you'll feel more comfortable and it just loosens things up. Of course, you want to make sure you have a name badge. When it comes to eating, you want to make sure that, uh, you don't overindulge. And most importantly, just have fun. Make sure that you loosen up, that you realize that this is a time when people are going to start relaxing. They're going to be more open to hearing from you. Sometimes they'll even ask you questions and you need to be prepared for those, uh, questions. The one question I was asked at a mixer that I was totally unprepared for— I've talked about this before— is the question of, who do you need to meet? So make sure that you have a clear idea of your ideal customer, and you might even want to make sure that you have a concise 30-second self-intro.
So there is a little bit of a lesson to be learned on these after-hours events, and that is that they will reward you for staying later, not only in just the event itself, but also the people that stay later, you know, they're more loosened up and they're willing to talk to you and you're able to make some better contacts that way. And then on top of that, of course, they hold the drawings at the end of the event. So walking out of the event, and as you can see, my van is out there fully in view for everyone, and I had a couple of people mention to me that they had seen it and I made a couple of good contacts. And I won an iPad, so that was pretty cool. All in all, a good night.
