One of the most important questions business owners and leaders who are looking to grow must ask is: am I in the right rooms?
By “rooms”, I’m referring to the organizations, activities, and groups of people with whom we spend our professional and networking time. These include all the usual civic and business organizations, networking groups, and various community events at which we might interact with clients, past clients, and prospective clients.
There are also the rooms we control: events we host, parties we throw, and meetings we schedule.
Our ability to control the first group of rooms is limited. We never know with certainty who will be there, when, and why, nor can we control how much time and in what environment we can visit with those guests.
The rooms we create give us more control, and thus, are usually more important. They allow us to invite the right combinations of people: those who can advocate for our businesses and those who need to hear about it. We can create the right setting where conversations of various levels of privacy can take place. And we can control the flow of the event.
The most fundamental question is whether the rooms we’re in help us advance our business outcomes. There’s an old saying that if you’re the smartest person in the room, you’re in the wrong room. Extrapolated to business development, the same statement holds true. If everyone in the room has already bought and sold your products and services, you’re in the wrong room.
Look at the rooms you’re in today. Where do you need to make some changes, and what rooms with whom do you need to be instead?
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