Dave Sherman, who coaches businesspeople on networking, told the 26 people gathered for speed networking that the essential question they should be asking themselves was, "How can I help the person sitting across from me?"
As guest speaker at the Arizona Jewish Business Alliance (AZJBA) event on Oct. 20, Sherman had been called upon to remind his lunchtime audience of the goal of speed networking - that it's about starting conversations and not about closing deals.
"This gets back to the old idea that you only get one chance to make a first impression," Bob Reichard, AZJBA's executive director and one of the event's moderators, told Jewish News, as the first round of networking got under way.
In speed networking, people sit across a table from one another and introduce themselves and their business to another businessperson. They are timed, and when the timer goes off, people rotate so that they are sitting across from another person to make a similar introduction.
Sherman had pointed out that if they were rotating in one-minute increments, then each individual had 30 seconds to make that first impression on the person opposite them and to allow that person to make a first impression on them. Variations on the theme were definitely allowed, as one of the attendees, who worked in massage therapy, stood behind his new contacts and gave them a complimentary neck rub.
Clearly, the "speed" in speed networking forces participants to talk one-on-one with a large number of contacts, but speed networking is as much about the quality of the networking as it is about the quantity, said Allan Himmelstein, a business adviser with The Alternative Board in Scottsdale and an advocate of speed networking.
"At first it seems a bit disorganized and loud, but this is better than typical networking (meetings) because they get to talk with people one on one," he told Jewish News.
In the typical networking meeting, individuals stand up to address the whole group with a "commercial" about themselves and their businesses, he said. By talking directly, individuals can better understand one another's business, begin to build trust with one another and make better-qualified referrals, he said.
AZJBA has been presenting Speed Networking events on the third Tuesday of each month since July. The last one of the year will be held Nov. 17 (see details box), and will again feature Sherman as guest speaker.
Reichard, managing partner of Dreim (Diversified Real Estate Investments and Mortgages), is a firm believer in the usefulness of speed networking.
"It's something we should have been doing all along" during the recession, he said.
