In this week's inaugural episode we talk about the importance of professionalism and netiquette while maintaining an Office at Home.
The Voice of BNI Greater Los Angeles; Where we’ll talk about referral networking that works!
http://bnipodcast4success.com
In this week's inaugural episode we talk about the importance of professionalism and netiquette while maintaining an Office at Home.
The Voice of BNI Greater Los Angeles; Where we’ll talk about referral networking that works!
http://bnipodcast4success.com
[inaudible] each week at BNI for success. We'll talk about referral networking that works. We'll discuss networking, tips, strategies, and action steps that are designed to help entrepreneurs and businesses work together to create quality referral business, and explore new opportunities.
Speaker 2:Hi, I'm Cece, Brawner executive director of BNI for success in the greater Los Angeles area. And this week I was thinking that I have a unique professional background that allows me to bring my experience as an online events producer and be an I executive director together to help us all have better results in this new life of zoom meanings for one, and all each person in your referral network contributes to each other's success. How you present yourself online or offline creates the path to building trusted relationships that are critical to business success. In other words, if you wouldn't do it, when you meet face to face, you shouldn't do it via zoom meetings. Our appointments in business, respecting each other's time and their bandwidth is an important part of the game years ago, when I was a district manager at San Francisco music box company, the vice president, Dick Bordeaux once said to me, there's only one alternative to being on time. It's been almost 30 years since I was in retail, but it stuck. And it's just as important today. What that means to me is that each party arrives prior to the start, not at the start time. It also tells me that it's disrespectful to those that are on time to have to wait for others. To start. When we talk about our online events, Walter Cronkite never looked out into the audience and said, let's give it a few more minutes for others to show up before we started the evening news. And you shouldn't either, Y you'll develop a reputation of that place. Never means what they say and start to lose people, or at least the on-time people. You know, the saying practice makes perfect even practicing how to mute and unmute. We all know first impressions count. So why not take a few extra minutes of preparation time to show how smooth you are. Don't fidget. Use the mute feature, have your camera set to professional mode with proper height and light. And Oh, did I say don't fidget? If you fidget, your movement keeps grabbing that zoom highlight that yellow box around you, away from the speaker and back to you. It's like a big old spotlight that shows you can't sit still or worse. You keep getting up and leaving. Take a look at how you appear to others. This is just so basic. Are you in your car? That's fine. If you're parked for a quiet spot to participate in the meeting as a professional, but if we can see the background going, moving behind you, we know you're driving somewhere that you didn't set aside. The meeting time. If you're walking the neighborhood during the meeting and are working outside, you haven't respected the other parties who made a commitment to meet with you in a business setting. And I can bet you're now less referrable to their best client. So what if you aren't in your car? It's been a few months since we all rushed to set up a home office. It's okay. She's part of your home as we do now, but we've had a little more time to make it workable. What about that background? People need to picture you as a business person. You are. If your bedroom is showing well, there are very few professions where that might be acceptable. Consider putting up a screen, a curtain, or use a virtual background. I'd also take a moment to hide all those piles from the camera view. Let them feel that you have every client file, an item of importance neatly placed, where you could access it at the appropriate time. BNI online is a great tool to help our members use the be it, I structure that creates referral success, but we have to do our part too. You wouldn't welcome them into a physical office that looks like you have no idea to find anything. So please don't do it online either. Oh my God. Yes. Spelling counts in your emails and chat windows sometime ago, professionals would have their secretary take dictation, read it back, print up the communication and still make changes before an improved copy went out in the mail today. We dash off a quick email response and send it away. But does it make us look good? Probably not. I do know that I've heard of people not making the cut professionally and personally because it just don't present themselves well online. So skip the lead speak spelling of, are you or see you later? What are you doing with all that extra time? You save not typing the entire word anyways. Hey there, what are you aware of saying, remember while networking or any business meeting you're looking to be referrable you can't get to the next level or close a sale. If you look like they weren't worth your time or your pants, or you ask creepy questions. I once had a member who would roll into every meeting, wearing a trench coat and his hair looking like, well, I don't, I don't even know what it looked like. When I would speak to the leadership team, they would tell me he doesn't need coaching. He's very good at what he does, maybe so, but I wouldn't send my best client to him. And I believe he left because no one else did either while I'm at it. Now is not the time to mention that your poolside, unless, unless you're letting them know that you took the time on your vacation to meet with them as you're grateful for that opportunity. Thanks for joining us on this week's BNI for success podcast. Make sure to visit our website BNI for success, or be an iPod cast for success.com, where you can subscribe to the show at Apple podcasts, Spotify, and Google podcasts. So you'll never miss a show. Our networking success ask this week is that you tell a friend about BNI for success.