A Great Networking Idea from the Bellevue/Seattle eWomenNetwork

By Lori Richardson
Northwest Bureau Chief
(Montana, Wyoming, Idaho, Washington, Oregon, Alaska)

By the time this article is published, I will have attended the eWomenNetwork International Conference in Dallas.

As it turns out, nearly 50 local women from the local eWomenNetwork chapter in the Pacific Northwest are making this trek to the annual, 2,500-attendee event with top speakers, great opportunities, and much fun.

One of our members came up with such a brilliant idea that I wanted to pass this along as it works for our group and it may very well work in other ways.

First of all, we have met twice before the big event in mid July. As many of us who could attend did, and we discussed the event for first-time attendees. Last year I was a first-time attendee and I really didn't know any of these women so I pretty much stayed to myself. That doesn't mean that it was boring - quite the contrary. This year, though, I am being more of a "local chapter member" and interacting with my local group.

Here is the idea that Alexis, owner of ZookHooks presented to our group: put together a small business card file for each of our local attendees. At our next meeting, we would all attend with 100 business cards so that each woman would get two of our business cards - one to keep and one to give away, should the opportunity arise.

We met up last week. Alexis and I purchased these great business card binders, which are small, and were $7-$8 each. Everyone bought one and we began an "assembly line", where we passed around each of our books, and so every time a new book came to you, you put in your two business cards together in one of the holder slots. It worked really well.

Now we are armed with not just contact information for all of our counterparts, but the knowledge of what each of us does, and can easily hand out a card when the opportunity strikes.

This is just one more way to be what I call a "master connector" - you can't help someone with something specific, but you know who can.

I will bet that this will be the best conference yet - if anything really exciting happens I'll post a follow up next month.

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Lori Richardson of Score More Sales is a speaker, trainer, facilitator, and writer on sales effectiveness. She is participating in Sales ShebangTop Sales Experts and Business Expert Webinars. Contact her at lori@scoremorsales.com for women sellers in September, and is a member of the