Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Synopsis

Everyone has heard motivational speakers like Jack Canfield and Brian Tracy. The hidden element behind a motivational speaker is passion, and that’s the most important element you can bring to your 60-second commercial and your 10-minute presentation. You can’t afford to be ordinary, and if you’re not excited about what you do, no one else will be, either.

To become a motivational speaker, answer the following questions from your heart.

1. What can you say about yourself that your competition can’t?
2. How does your work fulfill you?
3. What do you most enjoy about your work and why?

Never forget that one of the top ten traits of the master networker is enthusiasm.

Brought to you by Networking Now.

Complete Transcription of BNI Podcast Episode 089 -

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’m Priscilla Rice, and I’m coming to you from Live Oak Recording Studio in Berkley, California, and I am joined on the phone today by the founder and the chairman of BNI, Dr. Ivan Misner.

Hello, Ivan. How are you?

Ivan:
I’m doing great, Priscilla. Thank you.

Priscilla:
Where are you today?

Ivan:
Well, I’m at BNI headquarters this week. I’ve got my top management team for the organization. A lot of members may not know this, but there’s actually over a thousand BNI directors who work for the organization worldwide, and we have good representation of directors around the world in our top management team. Europe is represented and Australia, Asia, and of course, North America is in the top management team. We get together a couple times a year to just guide the organization and keep things going on track. And so this week is our executive management meeting.

Priscilla:
Cool. So what are you going to share with us?

Ivan:
I want to talk about becoming a motivational speaker for your business. Now, I’m sure you’ve listened to motivational speakers like Jack Canfield and Brian Tracy, both good friends of mine, great speakers, absolutely very effective at motivating an audience. And when you listen to any of them, you feel the passion that’s flowing through their words, their actions and the images that they show.

The hidden element behind a motivational speaker is passion. And what I want to suggest to BNI members is that the most important element they can bring to their 60 Second Presentations and to their Ten Minute Presentations is an element of passion. Think about that, passion. Passion really helps to add enthusiasm to the message that you’re delivering. Your personal challenge in networking is having an extraordinary message that not only captures the educational content that you want to get across but highlights your unique selling proposition. It’s called the USP.

The USP is what sets you apart from your competition, and you can’t afford to be ordinary like your competition. You need to do it with passion, so your message needs to be filled with that. If you’re not excited about what you do, no one else in the room will be either. In word of mouth marketing, that’s not a good thing. If you’re passionate about what you do, you draw people in.

So how do you tap into your passion and tie it into your daily message or, in BNI, your weekly message about your business. Well, you can capitalize on your passion and spotlight your uniqueness by specifically answering the following questions, and you have to do it really from your heart, not your head.

Here’s the first one. What can you say about yourself or your business that your competition cannot say? What sets you aside from your competition?

Now, I’m not suggesting your stand up and beat up your competition. That’s a bad idea, as a rule. I’ve seen it done where people stood up and said, “My competition does this and that, and I don’t do those things.” I think that’s a bad idea.

Instead, what you want to do is you want to focus on what you do by simply saying, “Here’s how I stand out from what my competitors do. This is what I focus on. This is what my vision is. This is how we practice customer service.” Focus on what you are doing that your competition is not doing without saying anything negative about your competition.

Here’s one that I see a lot of people wouldn’t think about, and that is: How does your work fulfill you; what does it do for you; how are you excited about what you do?

And oftentimes, I think that members don’t really think about that. I had an attorney in one group who was really stuck in this area, and he was saying, “Well, I don’t know. I can’t say anything…” And he was a divorce lawyer, so all he’s dealing with is just one problem after another problem and their personal issues with the families that he’s working with. And he said, “I don’t know what I can say that’s positive.”

And one of the members, who was a client of his, said “You know, Mark, you know you do for me? You have enabled me to sleep easy at night by helping me solve some of the legal issues that I’ve had.” That’s powerful. “You have really helped me feel at ease with the problems, the serious problems I have.”

And he said, “Wow, you know, I never really thought about that.”

And so his presentation started talking about, “Look, you don’t have to worry as much about these things. That’s what my job is.” And he said that’s what fulfills him, being able to do that, but he never thought anybody would be interested in hearing that.

So I thought that was a powerful ticket.

The third is: What element of your work do you most enjoy and why? What do you really enjoy doing? What’s fun for you to do?

And if you do those three things, you’re going to be able to get across the passion of your business. Never forget that one of the top ten traits of a master networker is enthusiasm and motivation. And that’s based on a study that we did a few years back that was published in my book, Masters of Networking, were the top ten traits of a master networker, and we interviewed 2,000 business professionals in a dozen countries around the world. And we found that one of the top ten traits was enthusiasm and motivation. People want to do business with people who are motivated and enthusiastic.

So you, your sales force, and your word-of-mouth marketing team are the motivational speakers for your business, but that message begins with you, and you’ve got to have passion for what you do.

Priscilla:
Great. Do you have more to share with us?

Ivan:
Well, that’s it. I think the last thing that I would say is, talk about, focus on the parts of your business that you’re passionate about, because the more you can convey that to your fellow members of BNI, the more excited that they’re going to be. When you think about it, if you’re listening to this podcast now, think back to times when you’ve heard speakers who’ve just stood up and said, “My name is so-and-so, and this is what I do, and here’s how you can give me a referral.” Then think about some of the members who’ve stood up and oftentimes, they may sometimes not even be the most slick presenter, but they stand up and they’re really passionate about what it is that they’re doing, and they’re excited, and they get you excited.

Those are the people that other people remember and think about when it comes time to give the referrals, and it’s important for you, the listener, to become one of those people, to be passionate about what you’re doing. So focus on those things that you’re excited about, share that with BNI members, and that passion will spread to the members in the group in the interest in passing you referrals.

That’s it for today.

Priscilla:
Okay, that’s great. I think you’re right. I just want to say it’s infectious and that it draws people to you and so I think you’re really right about all that.

Ivan:
Thank you.

Priscilla:
Okay, well, thank you, Dr. Misner. And that’s it for this week.

I just want 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. Thanks 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.