Actual article date: Mar 11, 2013

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Going to events is one way of growing your business through acquiring hidden opportunities that would never have presented themselves before you in the comfort of your own office. It is often at these events where you meet new clients that you never knew existed, or learn of new complimentary businesses that may boost your own through collaboration.

Now the easy part comes when you meet that perfect match — someone who has an active interest in your business, and who is willing to continue this dialogue with you post-event. The thing is, the difficult part is meeting that relevant person at the event. It is like finding a needle in a haystack. And most of the time, even when you find someone who is relevant to you, turns out; you’re not relevant to that person.

So we want to help you maximize the way you network at events on your own. Think of an event as a marketplace. It is loud, confusing, bustling with activity and business transactions are taking place everywhere! Here are 6 simple tips on how you can navigate through all that to find your perfect match.

1) Learn about the event
Different events cater to different kinds of audiences. By learning about the event that you’re attending, you would roughly know the type of people who will be going to the event. This would help you position accordingly and would also help you narrow down to whom you would want to meet there.

2) Know your purpose
It fine-tunes your scope, filtering away anyone who does not fit into your purpose. Your purpose could be as focused as finding investors who are interested to invest in your venture, or as broad as getting gym goers to download your smart phone work out application.

3) Who do you want to meet?
You’ll save a lot of time! Since you know whom you want to meet, you can focus fully on looking out for that particular type of attendee. When in a group, you could even casually remark, “Hey, I’m looking to meet developers. Might you know any here that you could introduce me to?”

4) Prepare a one-liner
Always come prepared with a one-liner pitch about what you’re doing. This would give the person you’re talking to a first impression on how relevant you are to him.

5) Ask for their purpose
When you finally get down to talking to someone at the event. Casually ask what their purpose for attending the event is. Who knows, you may actually be talking to the caterers whose purpose is to clear the leftovers when tea break is over.

6) Follow up
Don’t be lazy! Follow up that very evening.