Business development: Networking groups?

This morning, I reconnected with a massage therapist I did some Thai training with back in 2005. She contacted me a week ago with info about a course and suggested we meet up for an exchange, but there was clearly an ulterior motive: she’s moving abroad in a few months and wants to sell her client book. I actually prevented that conversation from even starting, which made for a less awkward conversation in the long run. But still, I wouldn’t have bought it…I mean, there’s absolutely no guarantee that a single one of those clients would make the switch. When you’re using an independent massage therapist like me or her, the need for someone whose disposition/personality/etc makes you comfortable is a lot more important than when you go to a spa. She’s a spiritual vegetarian with maroon hair and funky hats, I’m a plain-jane carnivorous wiseass.

However, she did mention that for over 3 years, she has belonged to a Business Networking Int’l group, which has 40 chapters in Manhattan. I know a few people who do this sort of thing, and they swear by it. You attend a weekly breakfast meeting and give a one-minute speech about your business (what’s new, etc). One person per meeting gets the floor for a 10-minute presentation, and it’s “non-compete”, which means only one person per profession. And once you’ve been attending a while, you actually get pop-quizzed about other members (“What do they do? What’s their tag line?”) to make sure you don’t tune out. She says it represents about 30% of her business, and it works really well for personal service professions (personal trainers, hairdressers, etc) because they’re small-ticket items compared to estate lawyers and interior designers. She offered to bring me along to her next one as her guest, and I have to admit, it makes me nervous. The only people who invite you along to their “thing”, in my experience, are either born-again christians or pyramid schemers (aka network-selling like Mary Kay and Amway). What I would like to do is “dip my toe”, so to speak, since you’re only allowed a very limited number of absences before they kick you out, though you can send a substitute. I’d like to be her substitute. Heck, I’d even reimburse her that portion of her membership fee (wish I knew what that was!) to be that substitute just so that I could find out if it was worthwhile without making a pricey commitment. I can’t afford to make a mistake. And since she’s going to be moving away in a few months, there will be an opening for a massage therapist at a chapter that meets in my neighborhood (that can’t hurt!).

Another thing to come out of our catch-up chat…she’s doing the same number of massages per week that I am, and it’s unsustainably scary. We talked about requests from new clients for lower rates and other things that are really hard to discuss with anyone who doesn’t work like we do – neither one of us is willing to back down on our pricing, my argument being that I’d have to cut mine by about 30% in order to generate more business, and rates that low are guaranteed to attract men who think I’m leaving room to upsell them to the naughty stuff. I’m already at the low end of the Manhattan scale – she’s got room to negotiate though, because she’s closer to the top. Anyway, I appreciated her input a lot, because I doubt it’s tainted with fear of “competition” – she’s winding things down, leaving both the city and the profession, and in any case works out of two offices in neighborhoods that don’t overlap with mine.

Sorry for rambling… but I really would like to know if any of my readers have any info to share about experiences (first or second-hand) with organized networking groups. I’m completely out of my depth with this.