When you’re at a conference, you’re not just looking for sessions that can help you build your business. You’re also there to meet people whose ideas and knowledge can help you solve problems and improve your practice.

“Assigning solutions to problems comes from wisdom,” says Allison Graham, the London, Ont.-based author of From Business Cards to Business Relationships: Personal Branding and Profitable Networking Made Easy. “And wisdom only comes from people.”

A conference is an excellent chance to meet many people who share your interests and have faced business challenges similar to yours. Here are three ways to take advantage of this networking opportunity:

1. Look for people who can help you
“Where are the holes in your business?” Graham asks. “What are the skill sets that you as an individual don’t necessarily possess right now?”

Once you have answered those questions, Graham says, search for the people who can help fill those gaps and are aligned with your approach to business.

For example, if you are a senior advisor who works with retiring baby boomers, you might not benefit from what a new advisor has to say about marketing to young professionals through social media. Instead, look for advisors who are successful at serving an older demographic.

When you do find advisors or subject experts who can help you, don’t just ask one question and then never see them again, says Sara Gilbert, founder of Strategist in Montreal. Look for contacts with whom you can build mutually beneficial relationships — such as potential centres of influence or individuals who can be a part of a peer-based advisory group. You may meet advisors who will provide various points of view and who run practices you would like to emulate.

Says Gilbert: “You can gain a lot by exchanging and leveraging knowledge.”

2. Engage in “situational dialogue”
Because you are among people who share a common interest, you won’t have to “break the ice” before engaging a stranger in conversation.

Instead, Graham says, you can use “situational dialogue,” which involves asking questions and commenting on what’s happening directly around you.

Examples of good questions to ask include:

  • “How are you enjoying the conference?”
  • “What sessions are you attending today?”
  • “What is your most memorable session so far?”

Whether the conversation goes further depends on the other person’s response. Quite often, he or she will answer your questions and ask some of their own, in which case you may have made a connection.

3. Present your business card properly
Remember to keep your own business cards, which you intend to distribute, separate from those you receive. You would hate to give out someone else’s card to an important potential contact.

Also, make sure to present your card with your name and contact information facing up. This will help the person receiving it to connect your face to the name on your card.

When you get a card, take a second to look down at the name and mentally connect it to the face in front of you. This exercise will help you remember that person in the future.

“We all forget people’s names,” Graham says. “And the ‘cheat sheet’ is right in our hand.”

This is the third instalment in a four-part series on conferences.

Next: Following up after the conference.