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 currently consists of around 350 companies and is growing at between 3-5 members per week.

Our membership is varied and represents the breadth and range of London companies. We are well represented within a host of sectors, especially the new media/media, legal, financial, IT, property, design and leisure sectors. Look at our online directory to see the range and number of member companies.

Business Junction has no areas for membership. We primarily hold our events along the City Fringe of London for historical reasons - and because there are some fantastic venues to choose from - but our guests and members come from other parts of London and increasingly from further afield, such as the Thames Gateway, Oxford and even Leicester! The only thing they seem to have in common is they want to do business in London with London-based companies.

Business Junction holds a 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.

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 come to their first event with us a guest. 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 guest, 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.

Smaller companies make up 90% 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.

Around 25% 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. 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 councils and other 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.

£295 + VAT for a calendar year's membership. No registration fee. And it is the same for all companies.

Smaller companies with three or fewer employees can pay quarterly (but they must commit for the whole year).

We think this rate is reasonable, certainly cheaper for all sizes of companies than joining The London Chamber of Commerce (not forgetting the fee for your local Chamber of Commerce), BNI and BRX.

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 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.

Our flat fee encourages 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.

Many member companies started as single-person start-ups, using our network to fuel their growth and find help with their expansion. Many smaller start-ups which joined as members have found that our network can represent around 40% of their first-year's turnover. You will find Business Junction supportive and helpful as you try to survive - and thrive - in the first often-difficult years of business.

Alerts are our unique way of allowing member companies 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.

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.

No. Think of Business Junction as a network without barriers. When you join, you are joining a growing club which is driven by its members and steered by its directors. To create more opportunities, we are adding new areas where we can hold events and new companies which we can invite to attend them.

Membership allows any Business Junction member company to attend any event at member rates (including free evening ones) regardless of where they are based or where the event is taking place.

At present, we hold regular events across the area broadly known as the City Fringe and those boroughs adjacent to the City of London. Regular events are held in Shoreditch, Clerkenwell, Spitalfields, Aldgate, London Bridge, Docklands, Stratford and the City of London.

Now we have added Soho (Westminster) and Kings Cross/Camden (Camden)

But we are always looking for new venues and new places with businesses attracted to see our style of networking.

If you are interested in helping us deliver new areas into the Business Junction event schedule, inside or outside London, contact the office.

Sorry, but you are not not necessarily a member. We have over 18,000 email addresses in our event invitation database and we have invited you because we think you'll find the event we are organising interesting and valuable.

Once there, you will meet a host of other friendly business people and can talk to them about  your services and products. You can also talk to the members about Business Junction and find out the truth about what we do first hand!

No. We have strict rules about what we send out and to whom - even for members.

Basically, we have three databases. One is of Company Members (around 350), the other is Company Representatives (around 600) and the final database is where we keep our Event Invite emails (17,000+).

We only distribute information about events we have organised or help organise. This means we know they will be to our level of professionalism. Our recipients also trust us to only recommend events or programmes that we believe will be worth attending.

We also occasionally promote programmes or events when we have spoken to the organising organisation and are satisfied it will fulfill our criteria. If we are putting Business Junction's name to an email, we must be assured it will be worth the companies that know us attending.

Our strict rules means our emails get read and acted upon. If you want a quality audience for your quality event, then contact the office to talk to us.