What Is a Business Leads Group?

Put simply, a business leads group consists of local professionals who value the opportunity to share their connections in the community to bring each other business.

Leads groups thrive when their members regularly attend, allowing the members to get to know each other on both a professional and personal level. Leads groups thrive when members make a consistent commitment to attend meetings and provide leads on a regular basis.

As a general rule, leads groups limit members to one representative per business category. This prevents conflict of interest within the group and encourages members to highlight each other's services. 

What Is a Lead?

There are two main types of leads: general leads and referrals. Both are valuable in their own way.

• A general lead may provide information about potential business in the community but does not include a personal introduction. For example, a new store opening up in town could potentially provide an opportunity to one or more members in the leads group. It's typically the responsibility of the recipient of the general lead to make first contact. This is often called a cool lead because there is no established relationship with the potential client.
• A direct referral occurs when a group member has already made contact with the business or individual and gets permission to share that contact's information with another leads group member. For example, an insurance agent in the group discovers that the person she is working with needs a plumber to fix a leaky pipe. The insurance agent recommends the plumber in the leads group as a solution and gets permission to share that client's information with the plumber. This is the strongest type of lead because the need has already been identified and the lead giver has permission to share their information.

What Makes Our Leads Group Different?

As a diverse group of local business professionals, we recognize the importance of face-to-face networking and word-of-mouth marketing to build a referral base and strong book of business. While some of us have been members of other business networking groups, we recognize that sometimes clients need to come first. We also strongly believe that business networking groups should be affordable to everyone. As a result, we've developed a model that maintains a steady, consistent environment for meeting as a group without becoming overly obsessive about rules, procedures and attendance. We've also kept membership costs to a minimum.

• We charge a very modest $50 joining fee and an annual renewal fee of only $50. This is affordable to every sized business!
• Each of our members represents one business category so that you will not compete for leads within the group.
• Regular attendance is required, but you will not be penalized for going on vacation or making a customer a priority. We do reserve the right, however, to reopen a category if a member stops coming to meetings on a regular basis.
• We give back to the community! Every year, we select a charity, organization or family and "adopt" them for the holidays. We start a collection for presents and gift cards and also contribute cash from our operating fund to make their holiday season special.

I'm Interested! How Do I Join?

Guests are welcome at all of our meetings! Please contact one of our current members so that we know that you are interested, and we will sponsor you as a guest. You may attend twice as a guest and then we will ask that you apply to join our group. Our membership committee will review your application and if there are no category conflicts with existing members or other potential conflicts, you'll be formally invited to join.

Need more information? Fill out our contact form and someone from our membership committee will follow up with you in person.