Mike Eagan and I attended the World Trade Day 2007 at Bryant University last Wednesday. We were there because On April 30th, I received the following email from Pete Caputa.

Rick,
This one is kindofa big deal.
http://whizspark.com/es/ViewEvent.aspx?eid=2117
Do you want to help me bring down a posse, so we can all network effectively there?
Pete

The plan was to bring a group of “self pronounced super networkers” from the Beechwood Forum, Seven Hills Group, BNI, and the chamber networking groups and leap frog through the 40+ exhibitors’ booths and the 600+ manufacturing company executives in attendance.

These super networkers are the same people that are shoving their business cards in the faces of disinterested attendees at the free or near free business after hours, breakfasts and expos. As a result of being at World Trade Day 2007, Mike Eagan has two appointments with $50+ million companies that want to talk about upgrading their salesforces. I have a conversation set up with a potential partner that is developing business in India and believes that both sides need to learn the other’s sales process. Pete has conversations set up with real companies with real budgets and a real desire to increase attendance at their events.

So, why don’t these “self pronounced super networkers” have similar results? They weren’t there!

Why weren’t they there? They might say that they don’t target companies that have sales in the millions. They might say that they don’t target companies that do business internationally (even though they’re based right here). They might say that they knew the weather was gonna be nice that day and they wanted to play golf. They might say that they wanted to make cold calls that day. (Yeah, right!) My guess is that they didn’t have the $125 admission fee, or they didn’t have enough confidence in their sales ability to get a return on their investment. (No call to action here. Just think about it.)

Super networkers?………Yeah, right!