Episode 261: The Art of Being There

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Synopsis

Cindy Mount Managing Director of BNI Ont. GTA Plus joins Dr. Misner to remind listeners of the importance attendance plays in the VCP process. If you don’t show up at meetings, you don’t have visibility with your fellow BNI members. If your attendance is poor, you can’t build trust with them. You seem unreliable and lose credibility. As for profitability, you can sell or educate an empty room. Your BNI chapter is your sales team. You want them to show up for you; they need you to show up for them.

Brought to you by Networking Now.

Complete Transcript of BNI Podcast Episode 261 -

Priscilla:
Hello everyone and welcome back to The Official BNI Podcast brought to you by NetworkingNow.com, which is the leading site on the net for networking downloadables. I am Priscilla Rice, and I am coming to you from Live Oak Recording Studio in Berkeley, CA. I am joined on the phone today by the Founder and Chairman of BNI, Dr. Ivan Misner. Hello Ivan. How are you and where are you?

Ivan:
Hi Priscilla. This week, I am in Fort Meyers, FL. I am speaking to an event put on by the Referral Institute, where we have many BNI members attending. We are doing a presentation on the gender book this week. It’s great to go around and visit the BNI members. It’s really the fun part of my job doing what I am doing this week.

Priscilla:
That’s great. Who do you have as a guest today?

Ivan:
I have a guest, yes, and the topic for today as you said, is the art of being there but the subtitle is why attendance is so important to BNI. I have as a guest today Cindy Mount. Cindy started her business back in 1995. She discovered BNI in 1998. It helped her out so much that she decided she wanted to go on a mission of educating others about the benefit of BNI. She is now so connected to the organization that she is a director in the greater Toronto area as well as the Director for BNI Ontario Central East. She was nominated for Toronto Women of Influence 2011 and has really been recognized as a member of Stanford sufu. Cindy also has 18 year old twins. Now, they are auditioning, Cindy, for TV commercials. Is that right?

Cindy:
That’s me.

Ivan:
You’re auditioning for TV commercials. That’s nice. We love having you as part of the BNI family and we appreciate having you on this podcast. Today you want to talk about the art of being there. It’s about attendance, and there are 3 topics that you want to discuss: visibility, credibility and you can’t sell or educate to an empty room. So let’s start with the first one. Visibility.

Cindy:
I can get very passionate about attendance within chapters because I believe, like Woody Allen said, that 90% of success is showing up. Visibility within your chapter is the first element or first component of VCP. Visibility, credibility, profitability. If you are not at the meeting you are not visible. It’s just simple as that. If you are not visible, you are not reminding your chapter that you are available, that you are reliable and most important, think of all the opportunity that you are missing with your visitors and guests that day. If you are not there and the seat is empty, they don’t even know you exist.

As an example, we had a member of a chapter who was floating in and out. He eventually left and the seat was open but he was floating in and out of the chapter to the degree that members didn’t even realize that he was an actual member. They were giving referrals to someone in a different chapter in his own seat. Why? Because his attendance was so poor. If you are not visible, you are not going to get the business. It is just as simple as that.

Ivan:
By the way, I agree completely. I like to tell members how many of you have ever gotten a haircut over the phone? It’s one of those things where you have to be present for. I think referral marketing and building relationships is the same. The second one is was credibility. Talk about that.

Cindy:
In terms of credibility, we want other members to refer you. They need to know that they can trust you. They need to know that you are dependable, that you are reliable. They need to know that you are supportive. This is about givers gain so you do have to give into the group as well. You cannot give if you are not there. Simply put.

So how do you build credibility within the chapter on a regular basis? You have to be there every week. You have to meet with your members every week. Make good use of that 15 minutes open networking time. Networking is a gradual process. It’s not going to happen in 60 seconds. You don’t market your business 60 seconds a week. You need to be in front of the people in order to build that credibility and build that trust in the process with your other members.

Ivan:
I think people who don’t understand about going deep in relationships don’t get this part, the credibility part. They are out there hunting for their business and are meeting people, shaking hands and trying to close deals. They don’t understand that before anybody refers you, they are going to have to have confidence in you. The only way they are going to gain confidence is over time with credibility. I think BNI people get that more than the average person out there who is networking. But it’s good to remind especially the new members that credibility is key. It’s all about relationships.

Cindy:
I certainly add to that one. When I am doing training here, I add there are two different kinds of the networkers that you see at some of the events. They are the “spray and pray” and they are out dealing business cards and asking for referrals. There is no credibility there. You don’t see them every week.

Ivan:
You thought that was funny, Priscilla. You liked that one?

Priscilla:
I love that!

Cindy:
And then I have my “collect and dash” and they are the people who go around and ask for all the business cards. Again, they are visible, so they have attained level one, but they collect all these business cards and then they dash. And guess what- everyone is on their mailing list. There is no credibility there again because they haven’t taken the time to show up to every meeting and build a relationship with anyone.

Visibility is step one. You can be there, but you have to spend the time with them each and every week on an ongoing basis in order to build that, like Ivan said, that deeper relationship or it just won’t happen.

Ivan:
I love that. Those two phrases made the podcast for me just by themselves. Spray and pray. Collect and dash. That’s hysterical. I am going to do a blog on it and I’ll quote you, Cindy. I think those are great phrases. That’s how they do networking wrong.

Cindy:
I have those up on my blog as well as they are two different kinds of networkers out there who are doing it wrong.

Ivan:
I love it. Okay, so the third one is you can’t sell or educate to an empty room. Couldn’t agree more. Talk about that.

Cindy:
If you have ever gone to a chapter meeting and they say there are going to be 22 people there and you show up and there are 10? And you prepared this great presentation for your chapter and not everyone is there. Here you are trying to educate your sales team and your sales force hasn’t shown up. If this were your business and your sales team didn’t show up, you would fire them. Plain and simple. This is your business. The chapter is your business. You want to educate the sales team to promote your business and find referrals for you. That is what you would want them to do for you.

The people who don’t show up are missing a huge opportunity to get educated on how this member does business and how to find referrals for them. If you are saying you can’t find referrals for Mary, maybe you are never around to hear what she has to say. That’s part of it.

You can’t educate an empty room. You can’t sell to an empty room. Being reciprocal in the return of givers gain, if you were sitting in the other seat, you want people to show up for you. So why aren’t you showing up for them?

Ivan:
It seems so obvious, Cindy, but I think people lots of time don’t think it through. It’s one of those situations where attendance makes all the difference. If you are listening to this, go to BNIsuccessnet.com and do a search on the article I wrote called “Addition by Subtraction.” At the end of the article are some surveys that were done in BNI that show a direct correlation between absenteeism and referrals. As absenteeism decreases in a chapter, referrals increase in a chapter. There is a direct and dramatic correlation between the two. I think that is what you are saying here, Cindy, is that they are related.

Cindy:
Exactly.

Ivan:
Listen, I love your ideas here. I think Woody Allen certainly had it right in terms of- from my perspective, that’s where it starts. If you don’t show up, nothing else really matters. You have to be present. The way you described it is you have to be fully present. We only have a little bit of time left but you had a great example with a restaurant. Can you share that with us before we wrap up?

Cindy:
Yeah. In a restaurant training, this individual I know trains his servers and says, “When you go to the table, show up at the table, serve the people only at the table. Don’t worry about the table next to it. Don’t worry about anything you have to do beyond the table but be with those people 100%.” So not only be with those people physically but show up with the intention and then walk away not until they are done talking. The idea is show up and bring yourself to the experience. Not just your physical self, bring your whole self to the experience.

Ivan:
You have described your positions more appropriately for us because showing up just physically isn’t enough. You have to show up emotionally, physically, mentally. You have to be fully present. That’s what I love about the restaurant example. Being there physically is part of it, but now you have to be engaged. You have to show up in an engaged way. That makes a world of difference.

Visibility, credibility, you can’t sell or educate an empty room. Cindy, thank you so much for these topics. They are great. I think they are really valuable for other members. I really appreciate you being a guest on our podcast.

Cindy:
Thank you. It has been a pleasure.

Ivan:
Back to you, Priscilla.

Priscilla:
Okay. That’s great. Thank you, Cindy, that was very, very fun. I think that’s it for this week. I would like to remind the listeners that this podcast has been brought to you by networkingnow.com, which is the leading site on the net for networking downloadables. Thank you so much for listening. This is Priscilla Rice, and we hope you will join us next week for another exciting episode of The Official BNI Podcast.