How to choose which local networks are worth your time

There's always another local business group to join: a chamber of commerce, a breakfast club, a WhatsApp group, a co-working morning, a town centre forum. Each one wants two hours and a subscription, each sounds reasonable on its own, and together they eat the most expensive thing a small or medium business has, which is the owner's attention. So decide what you want from a group before you join, keep to one or two, and give each a trial with an end date.

What are you there for?

Most groups are good at one of these and ordinary at the rest.

• Work: other businesses sending customers your way.
• Suppliers and staff: people who can do what you can't.
• News: hearing what's coming before it lands, such as Surrey's council reorganisation.
• A louder voice on something you can't change alone, which some towns make official when the businesses vote to pay into a partnership for their high street.
• Company. Running a business on your own is lonely, and wanting people to talk to is a perfectly good reason.

A group that keeps you well informed hasn't failed you by sending you no work. You joined it for the wrong thing.

Five questions that sort them

Who is actually in the room? If they all sell to businesses like yours, you're the customer. That can still help you find suppliers, but it won't bring you work.

Does one person get every recommendation? Some groups have a pecking order nobody mentions, so watch for a meeting or two before you decide.

What does it cost to leave? Good groups are easy to walk away from. Penalties for missing meetings, rules that you must pass on work, and long minimum terms mean you're paying for obligation.

What happened to the last three ideas? Ask. If all three happened, the group gets things done; if all three are still being discussed, it's a conversation.

Would you tell them about a bad month? If not, you'll never hear the real news from them either, and that's usually the most valuable thing a group has.

One, done properly

One group you attend every time beats four you drop into. People send work to faces they recognise, and recognition takes repetition. Surbiton Business Community is a local example built around turning up. If you're torn between two, pick the one where you already know somebody: the value starts on the second visit, and you're far more likely to make one.

Give it six months. Write down at the start what you want from it, and at the end count what came of it: enquiries, names, news you acted on, a supplier you now use. If the list is empty, leave without guilt. The fit was wrong, and now you know.

Some of it will never show up in a count. Someone who recognises your face sends you work eighteen months later and never mentions why. That's a reason to stay a little past the point where the spreadsheet says go, in one group rather than five.

If you trade in Surrey or Somerset, our area pages list the local groups worth knowing.