Here’s a question from Planning 101: Why do people come to meetings?
Answer: For education and networking. Y
et while much ink in industry publications has been devoted to the first reason, precious little has been spent on the second. And we thought our readers might appreciate a little help in this area—after all, people go to meetings to meet, right?
So Successful Meetings sought the advice of a bevy of master networkers—canny connectors, top hobnobbers, and sultans of schmooze. Here’s their best advice. Share ’em with attendees, use ’em yourself—and watch your network grow.
Tip #1: Cast a wide net. In 2004, Trish Rubin moved to Manhattan, where she didn’t know a soul; two years later, she had built a database of over a thousand people. How’d she do it? By starting with the doorman in her apartment building, who helped connect her to a variety of professional associations. She eventually networked her way to sports stars Cedric Jones (formerly of the New England Patriots), who wrote the foreword to one of her books, and Hideki Matsui of the New York Yankees, who spoke pro bono at one of her events.
Tip #2: Know Your Group. Again, Planning 101: “Know who your attendees are and plan accordingly,” says Trish Rubin, author of event-networking guide Trish Rubin’s New York Minute. What are their backgrounds? Organizations? Demographics? Ages? Younger attendees expect a very different meeting experience than workforce veterans; by the time the current generation of young adults graduates from college, notes Rubin, between TV and computers, they’ll have watched the equivalent of 18,000 hours of programming on screen. (For more on generational differences, see Successful Meetings’ January cover story, at www.MiMegasite.com. Click on “Articles by Topic,” then “Logistics Management,” and then read “The New Age.”
Tip #3: Make it Meaningful. This relates to the other reason for attending meetings: to learn. To get attendees and other stakeholders to buy into your meeting, you need to create solid content. Rubin suggests stretching your mind with the social sciences—in particular, Daniel Goleman’s Social Intelligence: The New Science of Human Relationships. “It’s all about how people create bridges with one another. Every planner ought to have that book—it gives you a lot of content to work from.”
Tip #4: Begin with the end. Whether your group is 12 or 12,000, what’s the one thing you’d want an attendee to say after the meeting if someone asked her what the best thing about it was? Identify that, then plan backwards.
Tip #5: Move to the Music. Music makes attendees feel instantly comfortable and induces a chemical buzz not unlike falling in love. But whether your group prefers the Platters or Big Pun (see Tip #1: “Know Your Group”), make sure you obtain the proper licenses beforehand or you could be fined up to $10,000, warns event planner and music-licensing guru LeAnne Grillo of Generon Consulting in Cambridge, MA. For a basic primer,read SM’s Meetings Law column from July 2006, at www.MiMegasite.com. Click on “Articles by Topic,” then “Contracts/Legal,” and then read “Pay to Play.” Better yet, hire the services of a professional music consultant to take care of everything for you (Rubin recommends Michael Smith Event Music, www.smitheventmusic.com).
Tip #6: Sinatra Switcheroo. Try the following warmup exercise, courtesy of Trish Rubin: Put on a Sinatra song and ask who in the audience recognizes it, then give a CD with that song on it to the first person to correctly name that tune. Now, change things up a bit: Ask who didn’t recognize the song, and tell the CD winner to walk over and give the disc to the first person to raise his or her hand. “Networking is all about, ‘What don’t I know about what you know?’ ” explains Rubin. These two people can now exchange business cards and have something to follow up on later—the giver can send the recipient an e-mail asking, “How’d you like the Sinatra CD?”
Tip #7: Make It About Them. Networking is about giving first, says Andrea Nierenberg, author of Million Dollar Networking and Nonstop Networking. Make sure your attendees feel valued—which will have the added benefit of keeping the “buzz” going after your meeting is over. Here are some ideas:
• Gather people’s business cards as they arrive, then announce at the end that you’ll be e-mailing everyone an article relevant to the meeting topic.
• Send everyone a copy of a CD with the music you used at the event.
• Pull a couple of business cards and announce that those people have won copies of your keynote speaker’s most recent book. Or just say that you, as the organizer, will follow up with them, because you want to learn more about them.
Tip #8: Get Feedback. Follow up with a few attendees to ask them what they thought of your meeting. If you’ve got cash to flash, you might even set up a camera to capture attendees’ opinions as they walk out of the meeting room: “Ask people for a sound bite about what their best experience was—their ‘aha’ moment,” suggests Rubin. In exchange for their testimony, offer them tickets to your next event, or a private online session with one of your speakers.
Tip #9: Carry a networking toolkit. Nierenberg recommends having the following items with you whenever you go to an event:
• A small notebook for jotting down conversation starters (current events and the like), info on the meeting organization or group, and notes on people you meet. (Don’t write on business cards, she warns; in some cultures—particularly in Asia—it’s considered rude.)
• Two business card cases—one for your cards and one for those you collect from others. That way, you never get them mixed up.
• A nice pen. It reflects positively on you and your organization, plus it gives you something reliable to write with. Nierenberg recounts a story from an investment banker who was meeting with higher-ups: “When he needed to jot some information down, he pulled out some pen from Burger King!” she recalls. Needless to say, he didn’t make the right impression.
• Breath mints. Whatever you just ate or drank might not be so appetizing to the next person you speak to.
• Hand sanitizer. It helps you feel totally refreshed—especially if your hands tend to sweat a little from nervousness.
• A highlighter. Nierenberg uses it to highlight her name on her nametag. “It’s a conversation starter,” she says.
• Thank-you notes—complete with stamps. In an age when few of us even return phone calls, make yourself stand out by sending handwritten thank-you notes to people you network with. Nierenberg makes doing this easy by slipping a few pre-stamped thank-you notes into her bag before going out; that way she can mail them the same day.
Tip #10: Do your Homework. Before going to a meeting, research the meeting organization and the attendees so you can decide beforehand whom you want to approach. Very few people take the time to even do a Google search beforehand, say experts, so even a few minutes of research will put you well ahead of the game.
Tip #11: Set a goal. Based on Tip #10, decide what you want to get out of the meeting. It could be something as simple as, “I will learn something new about X,” or “I will make two new contacts and follow up afterwards.”
Tip #12: Follow the rule of three. Introduce yourself to at least three people you don’t know—a junior person, a senior person, and someone standing alone. The last one is important because it’s nice for that person, plus it pushes you outside of your comfort zone.
Tip #13: Think different. Here’s another quick meeting warmup from Rubin: Challenge attendees to walk up to someone who’s different from them—if you’re a woman, go up to a man; if you’re a young person, go up to someone not around your age; if you’re white, go up to someone who isn’t, and so on. Then find something you both have in common—maybe a hobby, a place you’ve visited, or even your profession. “Many times, it can take just 20 seconds to find a commonality,” says Rubin (who’s been known to climb up on a ladder and watch while attendees do this), “and it’s fun!”
Tip #14: Have an exit strategy. Even if you get into a really good conversation with someone, remember that that person is there to meet other people too. After a few minutes, say something like, “It was great hearing about your business. Now I’ll give you a chance to chat with some other folks.”
Tip #15: Be Selective. Even if you’re at an event with a thousand attendees, don’t pass out more than three to five business cards, says Rubin: “If you run around giving your card to everyone, you’ll look like an octopus on roller skates.” (Also see Tip #19: “Be in the Moment.”)
Tip #16: Stand out from the crowd. “If attendees know who the organizer is, that’s at least one person they can talk to and start networking from there,” says Pulitzer. Try a signature look: Laurel Touby, a journalist who launched a series of cocktail parties in 1993 for Manhattan’s media folks and built it into a database of 4,000 professionals, is today the founder and CEO of Mediabistro.com. But she can still be found hosting cocktail parties from coast to coast—always wearing her trademark pink feather boa and red eyeglasses.
Tip #17: Play matchmaker. As the planner, make a point of being present and facilitating introductions. Nye and Pulitzer admit to having “computer-like” memories (their techie background no doubt is partly to blame) that enable them to see who “fits together”—who would be good to meet whom. Even if it’s a meeting of thousands, you can at least facilitate introductions for your VIPs. And if you can’t stay for the whole time, be there for the first hour or half-hour, says Pulitzer. “That’s part of your job—to make sure your meeting is running smoothly and guests are having a good time, so they’ll want to come back.”
Tip #18: Spend extra on nametags. “If you can find a really well-made nametag, spend a few extra cents to buy it,” suggests Courtney Pulitzer, who started Cocktails with Courtney in 1998 as a way for people working in Manhattan’s Silicon Alley to connect socially, and was soon hosting events in 16 cities in the U.S. and abroad. Pulitzer’s nametag no-nos:
• Lanyards. They nametags tend to flip over without the attendee noticing, so they can’t be read.
• Small print. “You don’t want people squinting!” she says.
A name on a badge should be easily readable from at least three feet.
• Not listing people’s organizations. On the other hand, having people’s first names in bigger print than their company names is a nice touch: “That way you focus on the person instead of just discounting them because of where they work,” Pulitzer explains. “Networking is about building contacts over the long term, not just for today. You never know who might be useful to you down the road.”
Tip #19: Be in the moment. Besides your networking toolkit (see Tip #9), you should also bring the following “intangibles” with you, says Nierenberg: good body language (relaxed and open, mirroring the posture of the person you’re talking to), awareness of your surroundings, readiness to listen and learn.
Nierenberg describes the classic “Negative Networker” seen all too often at meetings: someone who stomps around, cell phone and BlackBerry switched on, grabbing business cards (see Tip #15), looking past people (or staring at their nametags) instead of at them while talking. Always be aware of the impression you’re making: A banker once told Nierenberg the story of someone who asked for his card at an event—then stood there for several minutes while he used it to clean his teeth.
Tip #20: Create a “playground experience.” Trish Rubin networked her way to being CEO of her own company, but she never forgets that she started out as a schoolteacher. Her experiences helping children connect in the classroom and especially in the schoolyard have strongly influenced how she approaches networking.
“I’ve seen the new kid on the playground who wants to talk to the other kids, but is too shy,” she says. “It’s painful. And you see the same thing at meetings—people who want to talk to other people and be accepted, but feel they can’t. As the planner, it’s your job to draw that person in.”
Tip #21: Jive in the john. Trish Rubin calls it the “networking bathroom boogie break”: Get an iPod shuffle and load it with music that makes you feel good. The next time you’re nervous before a meeting, go into the bathroom, stand in a stall with your ankles together—it’s called a “mountain pose” in yoga—crank up the tunes, and move your upper body for about 30 to 60 seconds. “No one can see you, and this quick pit stop will make you feel awesome and appear confident, connected, and powerful,” Rubin promises.
Tip #22: See eye to eye. Another exercise that will make the room buzz: Have everyone in your group stand and make eye contact with someone who’s at least three feet away. “Have them nod and smile at that person, then hold up their business card,” says Rubin. “It’s subtle, but it builds bridges, which is what people want.”
Tip #23: Change the scenery. A different and surprising room setup will get people’s attention and raise the energy level in the room. Try a circular layout, or even quadrants with chairs facing each other so that people are face-to-face. Or get rid of chairs altogether. Better yet—don’t have any chairs, says Brad Nye, founder of the Venice Interactive Community, a 3,000-member trade association for Southern California’s technology industry: “I never put people at tables. I make them stand up.” Nye, now executive director of ArtSFest, a San Francisco, nonprofit, brings the arts and business communities together based on mutual needs: “Businesspeople need creativity, and creatives need money.”