Connect For Lunch
Since you're going to have lunch anyway, spend time building relationships with other Chamber members at local Chamber restaurants. Each week.Learn more
An Exciting New Approach to Networking
ConnectForLunch to grow your influence
As you know, the strongest referrals are from personal connections. And it’s your personal business connections that help you have more influence in your business community.
When another businessperson has time to get to know you personally, he or she has the confidence to refer you to the important people in his or her life — close friends, neighbors, colleagues, a brother-in-law, etc. And as the savviest of businesspeople know, getting those referrals and developing those personal relationships is often a matter of getting better acquainted with people in your professional network.
That’s why the Chattanooga Chamber is introducing a new program called ConnectForLunch.
Each week, ConnectForLunch will enable you to spend an hour or more at lunch with two or three different Chamber members. During lunch, you’ll have the time to make personal connections with these members, build trust, swap referrals and learn about each other’s businesses. Over the course of a year, you’ll be able to make personal connections with as many as 100 different Chamber members.
Here’s how the ConnectForLunch program works:
Each Tuesday, you’ll get an e-mail asking if you’d like to go to lunch on a specific day the following week. If you click “yes” in the e-mail, the following Friday you’ll be notified of the name and address of the restaurant where you’ll be dining and the names of the three Chamber members you’ll be meeting.
When you click on the names of each of your lunch partners, you’ll get to read all about them and their businesses. They’ll also be reading about you, as all ConnectForLunch participants create brief personal and business profiles beforehand through their own private ConnectForLunch accounts.
On the day of your lunch, all you have to do is show up at the restaurant. The reservation will have already been made for you, and your two or three lunch partners will be waiting to meet you.
When you all sit down together, you won’t spend valuable time going around the table introducing yourselves. Because you have read about each other beforehand, you’ll be able to get right down to business, making the powerful personal connections that make this program so valuable.
When you return to the office after lunch, you can log in to your online ConnectForLunch account and type in whatever you want to remember from lunch in your Contact Manager. Your Contact Manager preserves the history of every lunch with the names of all your lunch partners, the restaurants, the dates of your lunches, etc. This is available to you 24/7 from anywhere you have an internet connection.
Very shortly, Chattanooga Chamber members will be able to try out ConnectForLunch for a six-week introductory period, compliments of the Chamber. During that six weeks, you’ll have three opportunities to try ConnectForLunch without paying the regular monthly membership fee (you only pay for your meals).
At the end of the six weeks or after you’ve gone to three lunches, you can continue for the nominal fee of $11.95 for two lunches a month.
To get started now, visit www.ConnectForLunch.com/ChattanoogaChamber.
