Of course, when you first attend a networking meeting the likelihood is that you won’t know anyone there, especially if you’re new to the scene or area, so in that instance everyone there will be a new contact for you.
However, many, many business people fall into the same trap and get well and truly entrenched in their comfort zones at networking events and end up speaking to the same people at every meeting and not making the effort to go speak to someone new,
I know. I’ve done it myself.
Sometimes it’s just easier to chat with people you know and it’s super easy to justify it as ‘nurturing relationships’, but really you know that you ought to be making an effort to get to know the new faces at the meeting to really come away feeling you’ve spent your time effectively.
So just be conscious of your actions and when you see a new face at a meeting make a point of going to say hello. Not only will this mean you have made a new contact but also you’ll have most likely made them feel a whole lot more comfortable about their time there too as they haven’t had to make the first move. After all if they’re a new face to you then they probably don’t know many people there either.
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