Does Speed Networking Work? The Research Says Yes

We’ve lost count of how many times someone’s told us speed networking is pointless. “You can’t build a real relationship in five minutes.” “It’s all surface-level.” “Nobody remembers anyone afterwards.”

Here’s our problem with that argument: nobody ever said you would build a relationship in five minutes. You’re starting one.

And you cannot know which relationships are worth building until you’ve had the first conversation.

Every relationship you’ve ever had started with one conversation

Think about your best supplier, your favourite client, the person who sends you referrals without you even asking. Every single one of those relationships began at a single point in time, with two people who didn’t know each other yet.

The research backs this up. University of Kansas professor Jeffrey Hall spent years studying exactly how relationships form, and found it takes around 50 hours together for an acquaintance to become a casual friend, closer to 90 hours to become a genuine friend, and over 200 hours to become close. Business relationships follow the same pattern, just with fewer hugs.

The point isn’t the hours. It’s that nobody gets from zero to 200 without a starting point. You have to meet before you can build anything at all. A rapid networking event isn’t trying to replace those hours – it’s trying to create as many starting points as possible, efficiently, so you can work out who’s worth investing your 50, 90 or 200 hours in.

Let’s start with delegation, because the data here is honestly pretty eye-opening.

The people who’ll actually help your business aren’t who you think

There’s a piece of research from Stanford sociologist Mark Granovetter that’s been quietly shaping how we think about networks for over 50 years. He found that people’s loose acquaintances – not their close friends and colleagues – were the ones most likely to lead them to new opportunities. He called it “the strength of weak ties.” Your close contacts tend to know the same people and the same information you do. It’s the people on the edges of your network who bring you something new.

In 2022, Stanford and MIT ran the largest test of that theory ever done, tracking 20 million LinkedIn users over five years. It held up. The people you barely know are disproportionately the ones who open doors.

That’s the entire case for rapid networking (our extra fast – speed networking events) in one sentence: it’s a deliberate, efficient way of building weak ties on purpose, instead of hoping you bump into the right person at the right time.

You’re not meant to close a deal on the first conversation anyway

Marketers have talked for decades about the “rule of seven” – the idea that someone typically needs around seven interactions with you before they trust you enough to buy. Nobody’s claiming that number is scientifically exact anymore, but the underlying point holds up in every industry: trust is built through repeated contact, not a single pitch.

So even if you did try to sell something in a five-minute 1-2-1, you’d be working against how trust actually forms. The job of that first conversation was never to close. It was to become interaction one of seven.

And it matters who that first interaction is with. Nielsen’s global research on trust in advertising consistently finds that somewhere around 90% of people trust a recommendation from someone they know over any other form of marketing. Every one of those trusted recommenders was, at some point, a stranger you hadn’t met yet.

Why we built Rapid Networking (extra fast – speed networking events) around 30 minutes and five conversations

This is exactly why Rapid Networking sessions at SMEs Unleashed are built the way they are: 30 minutes, five 1-2-1 conversations. Not because five conversations builds you a network. Because five conversations gives you five potential starting points – five people you now know enough to decide whether they’re worth the next 50 hours.

You’ll walk away from some of those chats with nothing more than a name and a “nice to meet you.” That’s fine. You’ll walk away from one or two with the start of something that turns into a referral partner, a supplier, or a client eighteen months down the line. You just can’t know which is which until you’ve had the conversation.

Rapid networking was never trying to build relationships in 30 minutes. It’s trying to give you enough first conversations that the real relationship-building – the 50 hours, the seven touches, the weak tie that turns into an opportunity – has somewhere to start.

Want more first conversations like these? Head to SMEs Unleashed to see our upcoming Rapid Networking sessions and everything else going on – that’s where we post all our rapid events as soon as they’re live.