I prefer to attend networking events where everybody is held accountable and where it is fostered to reply back to others who attempt to reach out with wanting to create a relationship and wanting to help.

Seriously, I wonder where has the golden rule gone of do unto others as you would want to yourselves when others do not reply back nor follow up after you reach out with interest and sincerity?

I pick the events which I like to attend. For me I like to go to Open Coffee events (that’s how they are called in the Netherlands). No signing up or other obligations, except to pay for your own coffee.

I made some great connections with people. 2 people helped me by reading my book and gave feedback what they (did not) liked. A 3rd who I will meet to see if we can help eachother out.

If you go to a networking event, first find one you like attending. Go there and bring your good spirit, an open mind and have fun.

The vast majority of them are a waste of a lot of time, not just because you could be doing something else, but a lot of people go to networking events for the reasons you outline. That doesn;t mean to say that all networking events are pointless, it very much depends where you are on your entrepreneurial journey. You should also choose to go to a much smaller number of events and choose them carefully.

I have a ‘density of quality’ theory about networking. It is better to be in a room of 30 people where 26 of them are ‘brilliant’ than to be in a room of 400 people where 100 of them are ‘brilliant’. ‘Brilliant’ defined loosely as interesting, experienced, bright, go-getting, successful, thoughtful, expert, helpful type people. Let’s assume all the brilliant people are brilliant to everyone else (we have the same definition of the people that we will like spending time with and get something useful from). This isn’t true in practice but for the sake of argument.

In the first case, you are guaranteed to bump into one ‘brilliant’ person if you just speak to 5 people. In the latter, you have to meet 301 people before you are guaranteed to achieve the same result.

The situation gets worse though.

In the first room, you are almost 90% likely to meet someone who is ‘brilliant’ whilst in the latter, the odds are just 1 in 4. The brilliant people have the same likelihood of bumping into each other, offering them a ‘good’ experience, just one in four interactions.

What tends to happen in the bigger room is:

Brilliant person 1 (let’s say a tech entrepreneur on their third big data company), bumps into non-brilliant person (let’s say someone that wants to sell them a lease on a fax machine).

Brilliant person 1, bumps into non-brilliant person 2 (a multi-level marketeer who wants them to join their network to sell cleaning products).

Brilliant person 1, bumps into brilliant person 2. Brilliant person 1 and 2 decide they have something to talk about but go elsewhere for a coffee, beer, dinner, anything, to get away from the pitchers.

Great networking events are worth attending. Look for ones that are well run and well thought out.

In my view they should:

Have a clear purpose and target audience.
Be respectful of people’s time.
Focus on bringing quality people to the room.
Circulate an attendee list beforehand and help facilitate follow ups.

I also typically charge people to attend and offer a no quibble money back guarantee to anyone that attends and doesn’t get value. This focuses us on delivering quality events and also adds a degree of thought to the process of accepting an invitation. There are too many meetups that don’t charge, think they have ‘sold out’, then have paltry attendance from people who are only there for the free beer.

Wrote a bit more in this here… https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/why-networking-events-usually-terrible-mark-littlewood

I’m over the moon – I had always just assumed that people would look at that kind of email as spam and hit delete, so a 42% response rate isn’t bad!

Nice! Thanks for sharing, Kirill 🙂