This is Steve – He has worked in the advertising industry for over 20 years. He’s one of life’s good guys, but quite frankly there’s a lot of stuff out there that annoys him. This is one of them…
Well that’s 2 hours I won’t get back. Speed meeting at a networking event; my expectations were very low. I said to myself “Surely it will be full of lawyers, accountants and bankers?!”
Well I wasn’t far wrong; no lawyers or bankers but financial advisers and growth helpers. Really I worry about the relevance of people who sell services to businesses presenting to each other. My expectations were low but it didn’t even reach that level!
The world of breakfasts, speed dating, networking etc. might have started out with good intentions, but is it really offering value for money to attendees, who after all are there hoping to strike up a new relationship that could turn into business? Instead you get a financial advisor talking to a growth specialist about WHAT exactly? Then you move on and meet an accountant and your heart slowly sinks as more and more irrelevant people come into view, and I wasn’t the only one who felt that way.
Now I can hear you shouting “you went to the wrong event, you should have done more research!” OK, maybe I should but I didn’t.
I have discussed these events with people who have been asked for hundreds of pounds a year to go; now, if the organisers could think about what businesses who buy services really want from these events, they might get some of those businesses actually coming along rather than a lot of service providers having pointless conversations with each other. That might make for a better gig.
But I guess the roundabout of endless networking at golf clubs, breakfasts and speed dating can’t be stopped. There is no time to actually think “is this really working?”
Surely I can’t be the only person on the planet who thinks that if nothing changes, this is a massive waste of everyone’s time? Every now and then a new person comes along who has the life sucked out of them as regulars circle round and round waiting for the next poor sap to venture down the path to damnation…
The bitter end.