“[The] networking sessions are insightful, valuable and commercially focused and I always come away with new knowledge or thoughts on how to run my own business.” Susie M

Professional Development to Expand Your Knowledge

When considering your networking opportunities, it’s important to recognise the differences in groups you might visit, and how those differences fit with what you’re looking for. Here at Your Business Matters, we talk a lot about the added value we provide, and this post is going to look at what we mean by that.

Our feedback from visitors regularly emphasises the value they’ve gained from our meetings – not just in terms of new connections but in skills and learning too. Within each of our meetings, we’ll provide an opportunity for personal and professional development as our members share their knowledge and expertise – we call these the Added Value sections.

Your Business Matters is about more than just networking opportunities. We know that business growth isn’t all about finding clients, but also collaboration, sharing and learning – so we’ve included this in each of our meetings.

The Business Room

Our Business Room groups are membership groups where the focus is on providing a time-efficient and cost-effective way to build your contacts and grow your business. Each meeting is structured to ensure focus, with enough flexibility and scope to chat that you’ll be able to get exactly what you want from it. You can find out more here – Business Room Networking.

Within each meeting, time is allocated to an Adding Value slot where you will discuss a chosen topic or learn something from one of our members. Subjects can be anything of value to those in the room, either business insights or networking skills.

Discussion

Discussions are a great way to share the groups knowledge of certain subjects and hear different approaches to handle business situations. Topics up for discussion at Business Room meetings have been:

• Budgeting to aid profitability
• How to the most of your networking
• Making sure you get paid

Expert Presentation

At other times, the group will benefit from a presentation delivered by one of the expert members of the group. Topics presented within meetings include:

• The impact of colour in your branding
• Getting the best out of Google My Business
• How to avoid being hacked on social media

You’ll see these cover a range of subjects, members are encouraged to request a topic or offer up their knowledge to share. What would you like to explore?

The Connections Club

Connections Club groups are run slightly differently. With business owners and decision makers in the room, there are a limited number of slots per profession to avoid excessive competition while facilitating collaboration. There’s more information about The Connections Club here.

Members here are established businesses who enjoy the opportunity to explore professional and business development with peers. The Added Value sections in these meetings follow three formats:

Lessons Learnt

These are presentations from business leaders and experts not normally on the networking circuit. They share their experiences and lessons learnt from their business journey including:

• Lorraine Lewis of the Lewis Foundation and Kim Hughes of Goldings Communications on Effective Corporate Partnerships.
• Tracey Bovingdon, serial entrepreneur, business mentor and founder of Re:Set
• Phil Saxby from Saxby Cider

Skills Sharing

Our members share their skills and knowledge to help you in an area of your business. These sessions usually include a short presentation from the group’s expert, followed by an opportunity to discuss – around small tables – how we can use this learning within our own business. Topics recently presented are:

• How to prepare your business for sale
• How to use the voice of the customer insight to improve your customer experience
• What does your website need?

Hot Seat Challenge

This is an opportunity for a member of the group to ask for feedback on any area of their business. The individual will outline the scenario which prompted the question and give the group some areas for discussion. The groups then feed back to the presenter with the opportunity to develop those thoughts. Subjects covered have been:

• Should I change my business name?
• How should I market my business?
• Requesting feedback on a potential new service or product

Within our trusted groups, members can share their thoughts openly. Such a supportive environment is incredibly beneficial to learning.

Expanding your knowledge with professional development opportunities

Your Business Matters is about more than just networking, our commitment is to support your business growth – not just making sales.
The Added Value section of our meetings is a great opportunity to invest time in your business learning, giving you information and space for reflection – time for both personal and professional development.

If you’re looking for a networking group which gives you more, why don’t you see if Your Business Matters has the space for you.