The attendees ate a chicken and vegetable dinner with dessert before listening to the usual business speeches, introductions, and comedic efforts from the podium. The room then began to buzz for the next few hours with all of the real meeting and greeting. The soft instrumental music in the background was drowned out by the busy chatter.

Ivan told himself, Yup. This is just like business everywhere else. Time to go to work.

Jacari was a perfect companion as she followed him around the room, smiling, nodding, and cosigning his every joke and explanation. Their teamwork was so good that Vance Wellings got a real kick out of watching them, which led him to work Ivan around the room to amuse himself.

“Hey, Ivan, tell my friend Gil here how you plan to turn your company into the next Google,” Vance joked, with too many glasses of wine in his system.

Ivan explained, “Our whole goal at IDPromotions.com is to become the signature branding vehicle, online, of all hot companies, products, and services. Right now our focus is in the San Diego region, but as we expand nationwide, the sky is the limit.”

Vance said, “Then he’ll focus on the world’s hottest products.”

As long as Jacari could collect and distribute business cards, Ivan didn’t mind the spectacle. But once his initial explanations were made, he continued to move on. He realized that the business plans and proposals he would create as a result of this gathering were when the business talks would really begin. The network event was about the introductions.

“Well, what makes your company unique from any other website that could essentially do the same thing?” Ivan was asked.

“That’s the million-dollar question,” he responded. “And the million-dollar answer is loyalty. Who has the loyal following to increase and maintain their numbers? That’s the same question you can ask of any business. And a lot of that has to do with better products, better services, better ideas, easier accessibility, a faster response to your customer’s needs, name recognition, and ultimately, investor capital for marketing and expansion.”

He continued, “But at IDPromotions.com, we’re more concerned with identifying you. What makes your company unique? So our strength is in being the strongest support system. We don’t try to be more important than our clients. Where our clients go, we go. And what we do best is help to take them there.”

Vance Wellings could drink and laugh all he wanted to that night, but Ivan’s pitch was serious. And he took it that way.

He stated, “When people think about IDPromotions.com, I want them to trust that we’re going to identify the best of everything. And if we don’t identify the best, we want our customers to let us know what is. And we can then start an online survey.”

He concluded, “And the result of that information would be valuable to any company.”