Particularly agree about Business South West. However, I did come away with a ticket for Like Minds courtesy of Dave Thomas (Bluegrass IT) who was presenting on the Friday morning. So it wasn’t all bad. Just a lot of it!

Having delivered a seminar at the Business SouthWest exhibition last week I was thinking about people’s reasons for being there. There were very few exhibitors who had exhibited last year, or in 2007 and I think part of the reason for that may be that they had not developed their strategy for attending.

Exhibiting at a Business to Business event is, to my mind at the start of the marketing process – awareness raising and, most importantly, starting conversations. Walking around the exhibition it was sometimes difficult to actually engage the stand personnel in a conversation. At other times it was difficult to walk past without being accosted with discount offers or sales pitches.

I also think that the fundamental mistake people make when networking is to see it as a sales opportunity – it is not. It is a conversation opportunity, an opportunity to build relationships and increase your creativity by talking to other people from other organisations – who may not have a need for your product/service. I have often been approached by people at networking events who, after a brief conversation and having realised that I am not about to buy their product wander off to someone else they’ve targeted. What a missed opportunity for understanding, relationship building and ideas generation.

I had at least 2 good ideas listening to Lloyd Davis last night which were certainly not linked to the tuttle club, or even Social Media which I almost certainly would not have had if I hadn’t been at the Social Media Cafe.

Get out there and chat! it’s not wasted time, it could be the most important random conversation you ever have and if you’re attempting to calculate ROI of all your conversations, you’re not thinking creatively enough.