Speed Dating Mini Course

INTRODUCTION

On June 8, 2021, I held a live webinar to talk about consultant/economic developer speed networking, and how to make the most of those brief encounters.

Since then, a mini-course that broke down the content has lived behind the paywall at Kate McEnroe on Demand, but now I’m releasing it to you here.

Listening to almost an hour-long recording  of a webinar is a big ask.

Inside this course, I’ve broken down the content into smaller bites, and added some downloads of the kind of planning tools I recommend.

OH, and yes, the recording of the whole webinar is there as well!

Want to know how I work with communities to put these ideas into practice?  Click here

Whether a speed date is  virtual or in person, it’s only natural to be tempted to ease in with friendly chatter, but ten or fifteen minutes goes really fast, and is that the best use of our time?

Here are the three deadly sins, from my point of view

Nothing to Say

• In which there are crickets.
• Consultants are pretty good at filling dead air, so maybe you won’t notice, but sometimes if we’re tired or distracted enough, we’ll just leave you  hanging, so we’ll be the ones with nothing to say
•  Maybe you’ll fill the space by asking us to talk about our practice, but you won’t learn much about specific projects, general trends are generally discussed in group   sessions, and you probably already had the background data available to you, so that doesn’t work either

Too Much to Say

•  In which you pull out a sheet or a book with every possible bit of data about your community/region/etc. and nothing sticks.
• This is the time to remember that there are cheat sheets, which you should have in case you need to reference it to answer a question out of left field, and then   there is  presentation material, which should be designed to highlight something specific, not catalogue every single thing.

One Size Fits All

•   Sometimes you will meet with someone who has no idea who you are or who your community is
•   Sometimes you will meet with someone who has never met you, but might know your community as well or better than you do
•   Sometimes you will meet with someone who feels like an old friend, but knows nothing about your area
•   Sometimes you will meet with someone who feels like an old friend, but might know you community as well or better than you do
•   See what I mean, you just can’t have the same conversation with each of these people.  OK, you can, but it is a bad idea.

Anything sound familiar?

When you show up at a speed-networking event, you probably have already received a professional bio of each person you will meet, and maybe even a few nuggets of personal information to help you connect, but is that enough?

I think there is more you can do, that won’t take much time, to help you design the right message for each person.

Here are two documents you can download.

The PDF gives you some tips for how to answer the question of how well they know you and how well they know your place.

The Excel is a worksheet you can use to make notes about each person, how well they know you, and how well they know your place. Add row and make copies as needed. There is a place to record the name of the event and your name, so over time you and your team could share with one another more easily.

Of course we all want to use these networking opportunities to build relationships, but in my view, that’s not a plan that’s an objective. A plan, includes setting up your specific intention, and ideally even a separate intention suited to each person you will encounter, that will make you and your community memorable when time is short and your competition may be sitting right next to you.

You have a number of downloads with this lesson.

There is a paired PDF and Excel for each of the primary intentions: Feedback, Pitch, and Mitigate.

If you open each of the pairs, you can use the questions and tips in the PDF to fill in a worksheet in the Excel. Over time, if you save the Excel worksheets, you’ll build a knowledge base for yourself and for your organization.

This webinar was recorded live in June, 2021 in partnership with Consultant Connect’s America’s Jobs Team. It’s about an hour long.

Click here to download the slides I used