Business meetings: 5 tips for doing well

The time at a business meeting is short and the same for everyone. What you do with it decides whether you leave the room with forty cards or with five conversations under way. Those are very different outcomes.

These five practices produce the second one.

1. Treat networking as a process, not as luck

Networking has three stages, and most people only carry out the first.

Meeting is what the event solves for you. At tables of 6 seats over 8 rounds, you talk to 40 people, guaranteed, without depending on initiative.

Recording is the stage that separates whoever gets a result. One word on the back of the card about what the person is looking for. Without it, forty conversations become a fog in 48 hours.

Following up is where almost everyone gives up. A contact with no follow-up within a week goes back to being a stranger.

If you carry out all three, ten events a year build a network. If you only carry out the first, a hundred events build nothing.

2. Do not expect to close a deal on the day

The first event rarely produces a sale, and that is not a sign of failure. It is how the format works.

A commercial purchase goes through a process: quote, comparison, internal approval. What the matchmaking event does is shorten the hardest stage, which is access to whoever decides. The rest happens in the following weeks.

Whoever measures success by an order signed in the room always leaves frustrated and gives up before the third edition, which is usually exactly when the return appears. Go deeper in business matchmaking: results in 30 days.

3. Be remembered for something concrete

Being remembered is not being the friendliest. It is being associated with a specific problem you solve.

What works:

• Demonstrating, if it fits. A small sample that can be passed around is

worth more than three minutes of description. Confirm with the organisation first, because some events limit demonstrations so as not to delay the rounds.

• A gift with a use. What stays on the other person's desk is what makes

your name remembered. A decorative gift goes in a drawer.

• A concrete number in your pitch. "I deliver in 15 days while the market

delivers in 30" sticks better than any adjective.

4. Reveal the right amount

There is a legitimate question about how much to tell people about your own business. The practical rule: tell enough for the person to know whether you solve their problem, and nothing beyond that.

What is always worth saying: the problem you solve, for whom, and your verifiable difference.

What is not worth saying: process detail, margins, a client's name without permission and contract values. In a mixed room, a competitor might be two tables away.

And there is the opposite, equally damaging: saying so little that nobody understands what you do. If at the end of your turn someone asks "but what exactly do you do?", the pitch failed.

5. Prepare the pitch properly

You are going to repeat the same words eight or ten times. It is worth building them carefully.

A four-part structure, in 90 seconds:

1. The problem you solve, starting with the pain.
2. What you do, in plain language, with no sector acronyms.
3. For whom, with specificity.
4. The ask: what you are looking for in that room.

Item 4 is what generates referrals and is the one almost nobody includes. People want to help, they just do not know with what.

Time it. Almost everyone overruns on the first rehearsal. Details in how to present your idea well and in how to present a product or service.

What to take, in numbers

• Cards: count rounds times seats per table minus one. Over 8 rounds of 6

seats, that is 40 people. Take 50.

• A catalogue: one sheet, not a book. Thick material gets left on the table.
• A pen: for writing on the back of cards. It seems like a detail and it is

not.

• A sample: if it fits on the table and does not need installing.

Mistakes that waste the day

• Arriving late. You miss the explanation of the format and disrupt the

whole first round.

• Speaking beyond your time. It takes minutes from whoever comes next, and

the table notices.

• Selling to someone who does not buy. Half the table is not a customer, but

they can refer. Speak to both roles.

• Staying on your phone. It is the most noticed behaviour and the worst

judged.

• Not taking any notes.
• Not following up. It cancels out everything else you got right.

The seven days that follow

• Day 1: separate the cards into possible customer, possible supplier and

possible partner.

• Days 2 and 3: a short, personalised message to the first pile, citing

something specific from the conversation.

• Days 4 and 5: propose an objective conversation to whoever replied.
• Day 7: record everything in one place.

Continue with 7 mistakes to avoid at a matchmaking event, what you should never say at a matchmaking event and tips for strengthening relationships after the event.

Whoever does well at a business meeting is not whoever speaks best. It is whoever arrives with a clear ask, listens carefully and follows up within a week.