Before you walk into a chamber event, know who you want to meet. Realtor Kathy Lehner learned this at her first meeting when someone asked her exactly that. Narrow it down: specific roles, industries, or people who can introduce you to the right contacts.
Number 5, you need to have a networking plan. Now this kind of goes back to asking the right questions, it kind of goes back to attending regularly, everything that we've talked about so far. Your networking plan needs to start with a question that I was asked almost 20 years ago when I attended my first chamber meeting. I was completely unprepared for it, and I'm gonna share it with you now. And I always like to plug the person who asked the question because she's just such a great contact. So Kathy Lehner, you're a realtor in Venice, Florida, and I want to make sure that people seek you out if they're looking for real estate in Venice. She's a great contact. Kathy Lehner, L-E-H-N-E-R. But Kathy, when I attended my first chamber meeting, walked up to me and she said, "Who do you need to meet?" And I had no idea. I hadn't thought about it. And the fact is that before you start attending these meetings, you want to know who are you hoping to meet? What, what type of person? If you can't identify the actual people, the CEO of this company or the marketing director of that company, or this person that's in this type of small business, you need to identify the types of people that you're looking to meet. So if you don't identify the exact CEO, maybe you're looking to meet CEOs meet CEOs, or if you don't identify the exact marketing manager, you're looking to meet marketing managers, or if you don't find the exact small business owner, maybe you're looking for business owners in this type of industry. You wanna make sure you have a narrow focus on who you're trying to meet because people will ask you in a number of different ways, who do you need to meet? They may not come out and ask that question, but they will ask that question, and you're gonna be much more successful networking when you know who you're looking to meet. So make sure you spend some time thinking about, if everything worked out perfectly, who would I want to meet at these events? Who would I want to connect with? Who are the ideal networking partners for me? Who are ideal referral partners for me? One of the things you might think about is, are there people who are calling on people that I need to call on that are in a different industry and perhaps they have access to those people? Great questions to ask. Make sure that you have a networking plan and you'll be very successful.
