Every congress or tradeshow is a great opportunity to learn new business lessons. Here are the 3 main lessons I have drawn from my 3 days at Web Summit. Feel free to use them when attending big networking events!

Collect business cards… but remember who people are

Everybody there is going to meet a lot of people. You may perfectly remember some of the exchanges you had because there has been a special something to it:

• It’s a potential customer
• It’s a potential investor
• You had a great connection with them
• The person is single and attractive (I won’t expand on that)

But maybe 90% of these people will fit into one of these categories. So when you exchange cards, feel free to pick up a pen and write down a few key elements about your discussion with them. It’s way catchier to receive a personalized email after three intense days of networking, rather than a generic email. It is your best way to make them feel special – and they deserve that.

Show us that big smile of yours!

At some point I was high on people and new acquaintances: I crossed a hall with a big smile on my face and when my eyes met an attendee’s eyes, my smile got even bigger.

The man stopped to ask me: “What is up with you? Why are you smiling like this?”

Turns out this guy is Max, the founder of Just Wash, a crowdsourcing project to connect people who do laundry and people who need it done.

Well, by smiling, I may just have found a great way to outsource doing my laundry, Max has met a future ambassador for his company, that’s what I call a win-win situation!

This is why I encourage you to smile. Not only because there have been countless articles naming smiling as a great networking virtue – but also because I had a blatant example that it’s true! :-)

See some of the other awesome entrepreneurs I met at Web Summit.

Listen first

This is true especially when you are facing an entrepreneur who has spent the last 6 months or 3 years nurturing their project like their own baby. Their eyes will sparkle as they tell you about what it does, what problem it solves and how they work to make it even better and to spread the idea.

Then, if you can help them through your own activity: kudos to you! I am very lucky to be able to offer each of the entrepreneurs I met an opportunity for them to meet other passionate entrepreneurs with whom they could talk about developing their business internationally!