The first business networking meetings I attended were a disaster.
I’m naturally an introvert and somewhat claustrophobic. Add being overweight at the time, and moving through a crowded room was its own particular experience. To say I was a hot mess would be an understatement.
I decided that if this was part of doing business, I’d have to work it out. And being a logical person — some of you are laughing, I can tell — I built myself a protocol.
The reframe that changed everything
Start here, because the tactics don’t work until this shifts.
I used to walk in thinking: what if they don’t like me? Sweaty palms. Which, at a networking event, is unhelpful in several directions at once.
Now I walk in thinking: lots of potential partners here — I wonder which ones are any good.
That’s the whole thing. You are not auditioning. You are interviewing.
You’re looking for people who could refer clients to you, and people you’d be confident referring clients to. That’s a selective exercise, and most of the room won’t qualify — which is fine, and takes all the pressure off.
The moment it stopped being about whether I’d be liked and started being about whether they were useful, the whole thing became manageable.
My actual protocol
I’m a rule follower. If I write my own rules, I’m fine. Here they are.
Target: three to five people, fifteen minutes. A couple of minutes of real conversation each. That’s a successful event. Bonus points for arranging one or more follow-up meetings.
Note what that isn’t. You do not have to speak to all fifty people, and you shouldn’t try. That was a genuine discovery for me and it sounds obvious written down.
Carry cards. Easy, and easily forgotten.
Have your introduction ready. A thirty-second version and a sixty-second one, practised out loud until they don’t wobble. You’ll use them dozens of times.
Arrive early. This one I’d add now. A room of twelve is infinitely easier to enter than a room of fifty, and the people already talking when you arrive are usually the organisers, who will introduce you to others.
How to leave a conversation
Switching between groups was the part I found most awkward, and it turns out there’s a straightforward solution nobody tells you.
You say: “It’s been really good to meet you — I’m going to carry on around the room, but let’s stay in touch.”
That’s it. Everyone understands it, nobody is offended, and it’s what the event is for. The awkwardness only exists if you believe leaving is rude — and standing with one person for forty minutes because you can’t work out how to exit is the actual failure mode.
The other reliable version: introduce them to someone else, then step away. You’ve done them a favour and freed yourself simultaneously.
Where to find groups
If you don’t know where to start: BNI and similar structured referral groups, SCORE, Meetup, chambers of commerce, and the business groups on whichever social platform your industry uses.
And don’t overlook the non-business ones. Alumni associations, church, community organisations, interest groups. If you sell to individuals rather than companies, these are frequently better than formal business networking — the relationships are warmer and there’s far less competition for attention.
Pick on two criteria: are the right people there, and can you actually attend every time? A group whose meetings you’ll miss half of is worse than no group at all, because networking works on repeated presence and nothing else.
The one-to-ones are where it happens
This is the practice that separates people who get business from networking and people who just attend things.
Meet every member of your group one to one, over time. Not to sell to them — to understand what they do, who their customers are, and what a good referral looks like for them.
Thirty seconds of small talk at a meeting will never produce enough trust for someone to put their reputation on you. An hour over coffee might. And you cannot refer work to someone whose business you don’t actually understand, which is the part most people skip.
Don’t sell anything in that first meeting. Ask questions. The business follows later, or it doesn’t, and either way you’ve learned who’s worth knowing.
The part that determines whether any of it works
Almost everyone fails here, and it isn’t at the event.
Follow up within two days. A short message referencing what you actually discussed. Most people collect cards and do nothing, which makes the entire evening worthless.
Then propose something specific. A coffee, a call, an introduction you can make for them. Vague “let’s stay in touch” produces nothing; “are you free for coffee on Tuesday” produces a meeting.
And keep a note of who they are. What they do, what they’re looking for, anything personal they mentioned. You’ll forget, and remembering six weeks later is disproportionately valuable.
The event is where you meet people. The follow-up is where the business happens, and it’s entirely unglamorous.
Choosing where to go
One more thing I’ve learned since.
Most networking is a poor use of time because people attend whatever’s nearest rather than wherever their buyers or referral partners actually are. One room with the right people beats four with the wrong ones, and it’s the same evening either way.
Before committing to a group, go twice and ask: are these the people who could send me work, or who I could send work to? If not, it’s a pleasant social evening being billed to your business.
For anyone who finds this hard
It does get easier, though possibly not in the way you’re hoping. I’m still an introvert. Large rooms still cost me something.
What changed is that I have a plan, a modest target, a way out of conversations, and a reason to be there that isn’t hoping to be liked. Those turn an ordeal into a task — and a task is something you can simply do, whether or not you feel like it.
More on doing uncomfortable things as an introvert and where else to be visible.
About the author
Haley Lynn Gray is the founder of Leadership Girl, of In2itive Biz Solutions, and of the Women’s Entrepreneur Network — a community of more than 77,000 women in business.
She writes here about what happens when running a business starts demanding that you lead one. More about Haley →
