If you’ve gone to leads groups or Chamber events, you’ve probably noticed that you can’t learn very much about someone in 30 seconds. Also, a roomful of strangers trying to sell you stuff you don’t need isn’t usually the most conducive environment to building real business relationships. If you’re a classic introvert, you might even find this setup somewhat intimidating.

If you’ve been attending business networking groups for awhile, you may have heard of a “one-on-one.” The basic idea is that you meet for coffee with another business owner for 30 to 60 minutes and get to know each other’s businesses a little better. This has value to an extent. You can build relationships this way if you meet with the right people. One obvious drawback: you can’t meet with everybody one-on-one.

The “think tank” is a middle-of-the-road option. The basic idea: get 3 to 7 people together for 2 to 3 hours and brainstorm about how to help each other more proactively. I’ve done this now a few times, and I’ve learned some things about how to do them effectively.

1. Pick the right people.

2. Make sure it’s the right combination of people. Pair up people who are most likely to be glad they met.

3. Send out one-line e-mails introducing the participants to each other beforehand.

4. Summarize your findings and send them out to everyone in an e-mail after the fact.

As I develop this model, I will be sharing what I learn. I’ve already found that it’s an easy way to get introverts talking and start stimulating team thinking.

I’ve made a point of getting involved with the Inside919 Business Network over the last couple of weeks.  I think that this sort of site is where the future of business networking is heading.  Recently, I made a new contact over this site, and we got to talking about traditional networking groups.  We’re basically on the same page about these groups, in that they’re going downhill.  It’s just not worth people’s time to go to a coffee shop and listen to 30-second commercials for an hour every week any more.

It looks like the successful groups are doing other activities like brainstorming and giving each other advice on their businesses, in smaller, more committed circles.  I tried to get a few groups like that off the ground, but so far, I haven’t been successful.  I’m not giving up, though.

So, what I’m doing now is taking a look at what kind of networking we can do in the online arena – and then the question becomes, at what point would be rather be face to face?  What is the limit to what can be accomplished online?  Because I think in some cases, not everyone needs to meet face to face at all.  We’ll see, though.  I’ll be posting on this as I figure out more.