Killing a bunch of birds with one stone is an unbelievable temptation for business owners and executives.  You know this is going to happen, when you hear sentences beginning with and including, "As long as . . . we might as well . . ." 

And it's downhill from there.
 

Consider your existing client/customer base and envision it in the middle of a circle.  Then think of growing your business, practice or non-profit in ever-increasing concentric circles from that center.

This means you pay attention to your clients/customers first and sprinkle in no more than two or three prospects at a time, as you begin to branch out. 

Here are the benefits for planning your events this way:
 

1. You have opportunities to schmooze with your clients and the few prospects who are there.
    
2. You have the chance to introduce clients and the few prospects to one another.
    
3. The prospects ascertain quickly what sterling company they're in.
    
4. There's no dropping of the other shoe with a sales pitch; it's a pure networking function (with perhaps some bona fide education thrown in).
    
5. Your closure rate goes way up.

Several years ago I consulted with a woman in the financial services sector in Boulder.  She'd been running cooking classes with great closing results until recently.  All of a sudden the attendance had dropped off; so had her closing rate.

We discussed the make-up of the attendees.  After only a question or two, what emerged was that the home office of her Fortune 100 company was sending out consistent emails, urging their franchisees to invite as many prospects as possible.  When the clients saw their cooking classes being diluted with too many people they didn't know, they stopped attending.  Worse, with a greater number of prospects in the room, "Sally" couldn't really spend time with most of them; so they just left after class, and her follow-up was rather unrewarding.

As soon as I mentioned changing the proportion of clients to guests, Sally's face lit up.  "Of course.  Why didn't I think of that?  My home office has been sending me down the garden path.  They're obsessive about volumes of people."

Banks, mortgage lenders, financial planners, insurance agents, realtors - their executives still believe that success is based on the number of people you meet.  Wrong.  Your closing rate is based on the number of appropriate people with whom you come into contact and your ability to build in them the necessary confidence, comfort level and trust to work with you.  Marketing isn't based on quantity; it's based on quality and continuity.

So here's the big question.  Would you rather close two out of one hundred or two out of ten?  In other words are you working hard, or are you working smart?