Before contacting the office regarding attending events or joining, please read our responses to the most commonly asked questions we receive.

If your answer is not here, please email your particular query to membership@businessjunction.co.uk and we will respond. Please ensure the email has your contact details on it!

CLICK HERE FOR A VIDEO SUMMARISING OUR EVENTS AND WHAT MEMBERS THINK OF BUSINESS JUNCTION.

And before you leave the site, add your name to the events invitations database.

Membership is by company and consists of over 400 companies. We are currently adding 5 companies per week. In size, this makes us London's second largest network, with more members than any other independent network.

Our membership is varied and represents the breadth and range of London companies. We have large PLCs to one-person start-ups, across a variety of sectors. Members are based predominantly in London, but we have members from places as far afield as Leicester, Oxford, Surrey, Kent and Essex.

Look at our online directory to see the range and number of current member companies. The Leisure Map only shows member restaurants, hotels, bars, retail establishments and similar - not the whole membership.

Business Junction is a borderless network, recognising no geographical restriction on membership or event attendance.

We hold our events across London - mainly the central areas such as Soho, Shoreditch, Kings Cross, Clerkenwell and Bankside because there are some fantastic venues to choose from. We also hold events from Docklands to Wimbledon, Notting Hill to Waterloo - but our guests and members come from other parts of London and increasingly from further afield, such as the Thames Gateway, Buckinghamshire and Berkshire.

The only thing they all have in common is they want to do business in London with London-based companies.

Business Junction holds at least one networking event every week throughout the year, except December (two week break around Christmas). This is usually an informal but facilitated networking lunch between 12.30-2.30pm, but we have regular evening and breakfast events.

We also hold at least six free evening social and networking evening events throughout the year. These will probably become member-only as they are incredibly popular as you can expect.

Every month, we hold a networking breakfast (8am - 9.30am) which allow businesses to present their services in a slightly more formal format.

We also now hold quarterly Built Environment networking breafasts and plan to start more specialist quarterly networking events.

This adds up to around 80 events per year.

Yes! Most member companies attend events before joining.

By meeting members, you can discuss your company and its services, but also find out about how the network helps its members find new business opportunities. They can tell you what proves effective for them and how elements like Alerts work.

Any company can attend two events as a non-member, then we ask them to join.  This means two representatives from the same company, so it can be different people. This rule is the same for any company, regardless of size.

If your company is a franchise, tell us and we will treat you as an individual company with regards event attendance as a guest and membership.

And yes, non-members pay - and pay more than members. We don't allow 'guests' to attend for free. If we did, we wouldn't exist.

Smaller companies make up around 80% of our membership, but by the government's own measures, that includes companies with fewer than 250 employees, turning over less than £5M.

We have member companies who are larger, including chains of hotels, professional and creative companies, and membership for them is especially useful when looking for smaller, quality suppliers.

However, networking is especially useful such smaller companies, where decision-making is a relatively less-involved process, and it is decision-makers who attend our network.

But hey, Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Marks & Spencers were all micro companies once and large ones can go the other way pretty quickly. Many of our very small members have gone from being one-person bands to employing forty people, with 60% of that growth achieved through Business Junction.

And Lehman Brothers was large - once.

£295 + VAT for a calendar year's membership. And it is the same for all companies*. Smaller companies with two or fewer employees can pay quarterly (but they must commit for the whole year).

Our total annual costs for members to regularly attend  events are substantially lower than the annual costs of BNI and BRX membership (over £1,000 per year) and membership represents a huge saving over the costs of joining The London Chamber of Commerce, especially for larger companies.

And we don't charge a joining/registration/training fee.

And with our network, which we like to think has unique benefits over all other London-based networks, your level of commitment to attend events is yours to choose depending on what is right for you and your company.

Of course, there are some free networking groups but these are usually related to government-funded projects and stop once the project ceases.

* The only exceptions are PLCs in the banking, telecoms and financial sectors, where we offer a special corporate package and 'support' agencies delivering government-funded projects, where we work with selected organisations to ensure the quality of delivery matches our own high standards.

We have a flat fee for every company to encourage a diverse range of companies to join. After all, £295 for a company for annual membership works out at 81 pence per day. Even a big bag of crisps is more than that nowadays.

The membership fee shows everyone within the network is serious about business but is affordable even to the newest start up company. It also means larger companies get to meet smaller companies and vice versa, established firms meet fresh and challenging new businesses, exchanging ideas, information and contracts.

The only companies which pay more are banks, other financial PLCs, insurance companies, telecoms companies and support/project agencies delivering public sector contracts.

Around 10% of our membership are either members of or attend other networks. In fact, we would encourage all businesses to find networking opportunities wherever they can. We have designed Business Junction to combine the best elements of other networks but there are important differences:

• We are relaxed - no chains of office, no committees, no hierarchy
• We are modern - we understand modern marketing and Web 2.0, but we are not slaves to the latest fashion; we examine what works and doesn't work - and use it
• We like variety - different venues each week, different faces at every event. We don't know anyone we could meet every Tuesday at 7am for year in, year out
• Members make their own rules - we don't ban people for not attending, but we do encourage you to attend at least one event per month because you will find more business
• We are independent - we are only judged by our members. We (sometimes) work with quality external organisations when we feel it benefits our network and its membership, but we are not limited by artificial or political restrictions like borough boundaries
• We are not a project - we are funded by our members and are growing fast because we tell the truth and help each other. Ask how your local network is funded and what its plans are for the next 3-5 years
• With inter-member Alerts and the size of our network, we offer a greater variety of companies that you will find at smaller breakfast meetings
• Our network allows every business to connect rather than just the 15-20 to each individual group
• Our events are good fun!
 

Alerts, unique to Business Junction, allow our members to network with one another 24/7, signposting opportunities in between events.

Business Junction sends out business-related information and tender opportunities for The Olympic Games, London councils, agencies and organisations where we help them source local companies in line with Government policy.

Members can also use Alerts to send out their own supplier requests, referrals and recommendations, provided thay start with "I need..", "I want..." or "Does anyone know...?".

In any one month, around 150 Alerts are sent out and each one gets around 10 replies. Replies can be sent direct to the Alert's originator or via a reply-all system.

We estimate that around £1M of new business opportunities are distributed via Alerts per month, from small website commissions to hedge-fund investment advice, building services required to legal advice needed on contracts, from employees wanted to office space required.

For a list of some of the latest Alerts, click here.