6. Visitor Etiquette

The Imperfect Podcast welcomes your questions. This episode addresses visitor etiquette... from inviting visitors, to welcoming visitors, to being a visitor.

Transcript

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Well, hello there, and welcome to the Imperfect Podcast. My name is Wendy Lloyd Curly. I'm your host today, and the topic for today is visitor etiquette. So let's just dive straight into this. First of all, BI members are weekly attendees at a networking event that is with their network. BI stands for Business Network International. Your chapter is your network, and those are people that you're with on a regular basis. And part of the strategy in BI is to grow the chapter in order to balance the chapter and ensure that you have people that you can refer to in lots of different categories, and that there are people in lots of different categories who can also refer to you. So one of your goals as a member is of course to grow your own contact sphere, the people who you know you'll be able to work well with and refer a lot to. So I encourage you, and everybody will encourage you, to invite people who are in open categories to help grow the chapter. And I will encourage you as well to invite people who are in categories that are not available. In other words, the chapter already has people in those seats. When the chapter has people in those seats, but these people are people you know outside of BI. It's a great opportunity that you have to invite them to experience a networking event in the local area. And that's exactly what I would say. I'd say, listen, this Thursday morning I'm going to a local area network to do some networking. Would you like to come with me? You could meet everybody who's there. What a fantastic invitation for them. You're not inviting them to become a member, you're inviting them to do some networking. And when you invite them to do that networking, if they say yes, then the etiquette that you would say is that you're going to invite them. There's already someone in the chapter who's in their specialization. You can't wait to introduce them to each other. That is great etiquette. If you already have an architect in the chapter and you've met an architect in your client base and want them to visit your chapter, tell them it's because you want them to meet the architect in your chapter, helping them expand their network and also finding out more about how BI works. Further etiquette to that is to let the architect in your chapter know that you've invited a client of yours who is also an architect to visit the chapter this week in order to experience BI. There's the right etiquette. Number one, explaining to the visitor themselves that you already have a member in their category and that you're excited to introduce them to that person. And two, to call the member who is in the category already and to let them know who you've invited and that you're looking forward to introducing them so that we can show them the benefits of BI. Alright? Additionally, it's important that we all as members have an abundant mindset and a commitment to our members. What this means is an abundant mindset means that when people are visiting our chapter, if they are attending in a category that is already taken in our chapter, we don't make them feel uncomfortable. We make them feel very warmly welcomed so that they get a great experience from the event. And we share with them what the next steps are for them if they want to get involved. Okay? Really important to have an abundant mindset on this. And that includes the person who's in the category that they're in. Interestingly, people can invite themselves to BI chapters. And we in the regional office and you in the chapter might not know how they found out about BI. Maybe they were told about BI from a relative that lives in another country, and so they looked it up online, found a chapter, and registered to come. We want those people to experience a really abundant mindset and the givers gain philosophy. It doesn't mean we're going to start giving them all of our referrals. It means we're going to give them a great experience and then show them the next steps. Okay? So warmly welcoming people is very important. Now, the president does have a responsibility in managing what a visitor is able to say in a chapter because the chapter members get priority in the meeting. And the visitors are really only asked to say who they are, what they do, and who invited them. And when we ask them to share what they do, what we really mean is what is your business? Not a pitch or a 30-second informational piece, but instead, hi, I'm Wendy, I'm an architect, and I was invited by Jessica. Right? That simple. And you can give that sort of an example as the president in order to say, we definitely want to know who's in the room. So for our visitors, if you could please all stand and get them all to stand and say, let's go around the room and find out who you are, what you do, and who invited you. And then just ask them, who are you? What do you do? And who invited you? And go around the room and make it really comfortable for the visitors. And then all of the members can clap or thank everybody for coming after that introduction period of all of the visitors. Okay. Another bit of the etiquette is that it's important that you make this networking opportunity worth the visitor's time. So make sure that you arrive early so that when visitors arrive, they can net do some networking with the members that are there, that they can be introduced to the people they want to be introduced to. They probably want to meet the person who's in their category if that person exists. They probably want to meet other people in the membership who are in the same contact sphere as them. Or maybe they want to get together with the person who invited them. All of these people should be working on identifying who the visitors are in the open networking and going and meeting them and making it very worth their while. Because that's when a visitor will be able to explain more about what they do and who they do it for. Additionally, after the meeting, there's the visitor orientation that the visitors will go to, and after that orientation, the visitor hosts invite the visitors to go back and do more networking with the members after the meeting. So it's important that you also don't immediately leave most of the time because that's when you might get most of the value out of the visitor flow. By the way, it's proven through the BI systems that visitors do spend money with BI chapters. So I think it's really important that we treat visitors with care. We recognize that they are there with an abundant mindset, and that if they are in a competing category for someone who's already a member, that we share with them what the next steps are. So those are the bits of etiquette about bringing visitors to your chapter. You want to inform people if you can, you want to guide them through the process, and they can only visit twice anyway if the category is full. I think we need to have a lot of respect for our current members and allow our members to actually do the referral requests and the training of the members. But don't allow the visitors to do too much of a referral request. Instead, give them the benefit of the open networking and then being able to experience a great meeting. Okay. So what about when we visit other chapters? Members do visit other BI chapters, and I think that we are one of the worst visitors because we don't demonstrate respect for the people who are in the room as members. Wow. Did I really say that on the Imperfect Podcast that we are not being good visitors? Well, I don't think that we always are. And I want to explain what I mean by that. I think a good etiquette for you when you visit another chapter is to act like a visitor and to meet a lot of people during the open networking. And when you are invited to introduce yourself, I think you should say your name, your category, who invited you. You can say that you're from another chapter, but you should not do a pitch for business during the introductions part of the meeting. You might think that's a waste of time, but why would you even go if you can't make a pitch? And the real uh answer to that is that you will make a lot of connections in the open networking, and you'll be able to follow up with all of the members with well intended one-to-ones. Givers gain is the reason that we attend other chapters. We attend other chapters to help other people. Maybe we are subbing for them, or maybe we're there to meet the other members of our regions and of our BI community worldwide. It is so important that we respect the people who are in the room, just like we want them to respect us when they visit our chapters. So, what is good etiquette when you visit another chapter? Number one, arriving on time and meeting all of the members. Being open about the fact that you are a member of another chapter and that you're really delighted to meet other people in the B and I network. Being kind and helpful to other visitors who are in the room that are not part of BI, and importantly, not inviting them to go to your chapter. It's important that you don't visit another chapter and invite their visitors to come to your chapter. That is a little bit of the givers gain mindset. By allowing them to keep their visitors in their room and considering an application to their chapter, you will be welcome to come back time and time again. If you attend someone else's chapter meeting and invite all of their visitors to come to your meeting, well, you're probably not going to be welcome every time that you come because it's going to feel like you're taking their visitors away. Now, let me just put the shoe on the other foot there. I think it's very helpful for the chapter to recommend that their visitors go and visit other chapters. And if the chapter themselves say, Hey, by the way, John's visiting our chapter today and he's from another chapter in our region, if you would like to visit his chapter too, we would recommend that you do. And please talk to him about that. See the difference? The difference is that the chapter invited the visitors to leave them and go to another chapter in order to experience different uh cultures, different chapters, different ways, instead of you inviting them and pulling them away. So it's better for the chapter to let the visitors know that there are other options than it is for you to ask visitors to come and leave the chapter that they've been invited to and come to yours. That is a better amount of etiquette. So the etiquette for visiting is number one, to arrive early and meet as many people as you can and to experience the new members of this other chapter in a way that enables you to identify the ones that you want to have one-to-ones with later. Number two, to only do the very brief introduction of who you are, what you do, and who invited you. And number three, not to invite the visitors to go to your chapter without the members offering that as an option. All right? It probably is another point to go and meet someone who is in your category and let them know that you do what they do, you respect what they do, and you're really excited to meet all of the other members of their chapter and them, and you probably should organize a one-to-one with them while you're there and say, I'd love to find out what your experience is with BI and how you're using it and how it's working for you, and I'd be happy to share the same from my perspective. Okay. Whether you're subbing for a member who can't be there, or visiting in order to expand your network, please always attend another chapter meeting with givers gain in mind. Well, I'm probably over time. Thank you so much for listening to this podcast. This has been the Imperfect Podcast, and I hope that it's helped you in your journey. I know a lot of people are asking me a lot of questions that I'm going to be able to bring up as topics on future podcasts, so I'd be very happy to do that if you've got some suggestions. And I also want to let you know that the music that you hear on the intro and the outro to this has been recorded by my friend Ben Little in his band Concord Joe. I was a member of that band, and it's a song called 20 Hours of Texas. And I can't wait for you to listen to it. Give you some energy on the way out. Have a great day. Bye.