Over the past couple years, my team and I have been working on a very special project – one that would hopefully create magic for anybody who networks in-person. And since most authors need to get the word out about their works, being able to network effectively face-to-face is an important and effective tool.
The problem, we found, is that business relationships don’t die – they usually fade away from lack of attention and follow up. That’s right; given the right attention, your business relationships, corporate deals, speaking arrangements and other similar relationships could be so much better for you than they are today – if only you nurtured them better.
So we put our heads together to develop a way to make sure that people who network face-to-face can turn those encounters into a fully functional business relationship. At first, we went down the path of creating an electronic business card concept; but like so many introductory manuscripts that can’t be fleshed out into a book, we decided that we needed to do something better… that we needed to leapfrog the whole concept by creating something new.
We ended up creating what we call Confirmed Meet-&-Greet™, which allows in-person meetings to become more by removing the friction from the additional steps.
We start by letting the individual click a button on his phone to read a name badge that the other person typically wears at these types of events. The name badge doesn’t need to be pre-printed; it can be handwritten with a Sharpie. And it doesn’t need a QR code. Just a name.
Our system finds the person wearing the badge from a database of attendees and allows the person with the phone to invite them (typically by SMS text) to exchange info. Upon acceptance (which is a single click), both people have full info about the other – from LinkedIn profile to scheduler (any brand) to contact info. Then they can take notes about the conversation and if they have a CRM (customer relationship management, such as Salesforce, HubSpot or Pipedrive) system, sync it all into the CRM.
Already, the responses have ranged from “I really need that” to “It’s magic”. We’re so excited and have already been seeing growth in the number of users and how often it is used.
As both author and software developer, it occurred to me that creating a software product like that one is a lot like writing a book. Not only do you need to come up with a concept; but it’s got to be sellable. Then you need to make sure that it holds water from start to finish. In the case of an author, it needs to be a compelling read; for a software designer/developer, it needs to be easy to use and accomplish a task. In both, going from A to B to C needs to be comprehendible.
Our magic in our new product was that we combined new technology (AI) with traditional technology (OCR) in a unique way, much the way a good fiction or non-fiction piece is unique, although it may have many elements that are not entirely different.
Depending on when you read this, you might not find a single word about Confirmed Meet-&-Greet on our website; so If you’re interested in getting your hands on it, contact my assistant, Raquel. She can give you more detail and put you in a position to even get a discount (as my NAIWE colleague). And if you are part of a larger networking group, she can help you put it at the disposal of all your members or event attendees.
If you take us up on using Confirmed, I’d love to hear back from you as to whether we succeeded in being true to the main plotline: helping you get from intro to exchange to remember to follow up to success.