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Measuring Value for a Networking Group

How do you measure a group’s worth to your organization?

It is sometimes necessary to measure the value of a group. You may be asking yourself why you would want to measure the value of a group whose purpose is business. You would want to measure the price of membership vs. the business you will get out of the group through either referrals or direct business with members. There are several ways that the measurement can be taken. First, you will need to assess the current membership. You should develop a scale of 1 to 10 and give each member a rating based on a set of predefined criteria. What criteria should you use? That will depend entirely on your goals for belonging to the group. For example, if you are selling services for repairing computers, you may rate members by the number of computers they have at the workplace, and you may also add a factor for who they are currently using on the servicing side. It is best to define at least 3 criteria for a sampling of the members. You will not want to measure every member, but a small cross-section will do. Second, you should measure the amount of business each member (or a sample of members) has received by joining the group. You may also want to know how much business they do with other group members as well.

Once you have the measurements, these same criteria should be applied to each of the groups you are interested in. Next you will want to do a comparison of the groups and then make your selection based on facts rather than emotion.

Now that you have thought out and used a measurement tool for deciding the value of a group, you will want to test as many groups as possible. You may decide to join only those groups that measure in the top 20% of your scale. One thing you may want to consider is the time and place of the meeting. Your calendar must be open and flexible enough to deal with attendance requirements.

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