Make Lunchtime Profitable, but Let Us do the Work

Greater Fort Wayne Inc. is pleased to provide you with yet another chance to meet other business people in a way that’s different from any other opportunity you may have experienced.

This is an exclusive benefit for our member-investors and its called ConnectForLunch, and it’s not about collecting and passing out business cards. It’s about connecting and building business relationships with other business people in a relaxed setting, and forging professional relationships in a person-to-person way.

Handing someone a business card at a “networking” event isn’t the same thing as a face-to-face meeting with another businessperson. Networking is really about building trust with other businesspeople; it has to be personal, and it takes time.

In a typical networking event with other businesspeople, you’re the one who has to go up to someone you don’t know on your own and introduce yourself. Then if you get their business card, it’s up to you to follow up later to get the next meeting. Getting that face-to-face meeting often requires additional phone calls, voice mails, scheduling a convenient meeting time, and in many cases paying for someone else’s lunch in addition to your own.

ConnectForLunch skips all those steps, and directly provides you with face-to-face meetings with other Chamber member-investors right away. You just click “yes” to an email invitation on Tuesday, and the following week you’ll be sitting down to lunch with two or three other businesspeople. It’s as easy as that no more handing out business cards, no more introducing yourself to strangers, no more phone tag. And you pay only for your own lunch.

You won’t be seated at lunch with a competitor. ConnectForLunch also won’t sit you with “target clients.” Their view is that looking for specific “target clients” is not really networking to establish business relationships; it’s selling. They practice the philosophy that a sale will feed you for a day, but a strong business relationship will feed you for a lifetime.