24.04.2023 Report on NEBA’s April Business networking
26.04.2023

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NEBA organizes these small group events with a limited number of attendees in order to enable our members and guests more intimate conditions in which to engage with organizers of NEBA activities, and to develop a better understanding on what we are trying to accomplish.

NEBA-network’s April Business networking took place on Monday, April 24th, 2023 at 18.30 at Singh’s Restaurant, Pulkveža Brieža iela 2 (https://singhs.lv/). These informal gatherings are intended as an opportunity to connect or re-connect in person and discuss relevant issues.

Interesting discussions evolved around the subject of “How to get to clients using the NEBA network”.

1. Quality over Quantity:

One of the participants explained his approach to acquiring clients with the theme “quality over quantity”. It comes down to two questions:

1.      what does the client need?
2.      can the service provider deliver?

It could very be that the client really can’t use or doesn’t need his services, so it is important to define requirements. By extrapolation, we recognized that this principle also applies to NEBA, and we discussed how this applies to both NEBA acquiring new members and to the NEBA-network providing services. This has been recently discussed within NEBA where the conclusions were that:

1.      each NEBA member is a separate business unit promoting services through NEBA,
2.      the preferred approach is person-to-person referrals using the NEBA platform.

2. Communication

This comes down to who are you addressing? Could this be a company decision maker, or a company representative.

Then we need to consider who we dealing with: “baby boomers”, “gen X”, “gen Y” or “gen Z” (see  https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/articles/zf8j92p.)

We recognized that it is important to reach the decision makers, but it is difficult to reach decision makers in multinational companies since they are shielded by their regional representatives who could be quite apathetic to even consider changes.

The method of communication is also critical depending on the generation of the person we are talking to. We at NEBA have recognized this to be a real challenge and have tentatively concluded that FB and LinkedIn would be the primary social medial platforms we would use, and the NEBA web site would serve as the information library. This evening the consensus was that LinkedIn is more appropriate for the business community, and some people have allergies to some of the other social medial platforms, but we need to recognize that social media is a powerful tool. We’d certainly like to hear from our readers on this subject.

3. Events

It was suggested that events should be scheduled a year in advance. This is certainly an objective that needs to be achieved.  We reviewed the instruments NEBA considers using, including:

1.      In-person, informal networking events (NEBA network events)
2.      In-person events with guest speakers, with video conferencing for remote attendance
3.      NEBA’s Visit programs
4.      DMC program
5.      NEBA Talks events, with video conferencing connection for remote attendance
6.      Show & Tell events, with video conferencing connection for remote attendance

Since NEBA activities must be member driven, we will be looking for input from members as to their preferences since doing everything is a resource issue.

Overall, it was an evening of good food and informative conversation. Thanks to all participants.

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