2. The Most Important Part of the Meeting

WLC shares the four things that should be included in the "I Have" or "Referrals & Testimonials" section of the BNI agenda.

Transcript

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Well, hello there and welcome to the Imperfect Podcast. I am Wendy, and I'm going to be your host today. It's so good to have you here. I hope that music got you up and pumping. And now let's go ahead and get started. Because gosh, now that I've started this podcast, I've got a thousand things I want to tell you. So let's go ahead and start with a topic that I think today will be a brilliant one for everybody involved in BI, and that is an effective use of the I have moment. So the I have moment, it's called lots of things in BI, but really it's the part at the end of the meeting that the president will often say is the most important part of the meeting. In fact, let me have a look here. I think I have, yes, I do. I'm pretty good with this here. I've got a chapter operations manual right here. And let's see what the president is supposed to say about this section right here. It's called referrals and testimonials. We in Australia tend to call it the I have moment, or at least we do in my region. And uh let me just share with you here's the script. This is the most important part of the meeting, and it truly is. All members of this chapter stand and participate. Keep it brief and positive. Start with I have, hence the name. Yeah. Examples include referrals, visitors, or testimonials. Now let's listen to that. Referrals, visitors, testimonials. That's it. All other activity should be recorded in the B and I Connect app. Visitors, tell us briefly what impressed you the most about the meeting. There you go. There's the script that we're supposed to use. So our presidents aren't required to use a script, but they are required to follow the agenda, and they're required to follow the spirit of the script. And so it's important that we all get this part much better than we have been. So when I'm training in the Member Success program, I train that you should prepare two presentations for every weekly meeting. Presentation number one is your weekly presentation. It's where you're sharing with us who your target is and how we can find them and what to say them to them when we find them. So that's weekly presentations. And we discussed that in a previous podcast. This one is the second presentation that you need to prepare. And it is the referrals and testimonials part of the meeting. So you need to prepare it, or it won't be the best part of the meeting. So when I say it's the most important part, it's because this is where the rubber hits the road. BI is all about receiving good quality referrals, right? That is what we are looking for, to grow each other's businesses through quality referrals that we are receiving from the people in our chapter and indeed in the network. So let's focus on that. That's what the point of this part of the meeting is to demonstrate to ourselves and to the visitors in the room that we are transacting with people in the chapter. And that's why we limit this to the things that are adding value. Now, obviously, doing education adds value to your membership, but it's work. It's not giver's gain, it's it's work that you're doing. Same thing with one-to-ones. Reporting on one-to-ones is something you do in the app, but not as part of this part of the meeting. And it's very important that you focus on the referrals that you have given, not received. I often hear people, and it just gives me a little shiver, talk about all of the referrals they received. Well, that's not generous. That's not the I have. That's that's the I got part. And that's not what this is about. This is about what you've given. So I recommend that all members prepare this each week and make it as effective as possible. So here's the way to make it really effective. Make a list of the referrals that you have given between the last meeting and this meeting, and write down the names of who you've given them to with the first and the last name, and make a note of the category that that person is in. So if you were giving one to Jessica Simpson, the bookkeeper, beautiful, that's great. I gave a referral to Jessica Simpson, the bookkeeper. Good. If you're limited on time, that's all you need to say. Uh and the reason that you want to say what Jessica does is because there are people in the room who are either new members or who are visitors to the chapter, and they want you want to make sure that they can connect the dots. Okay? So you want to let them know you're giving a referral to the bookkeeper. And that they're making mental notes of these things. This morning, as a bad example, I heard someone say and just look at the person and say, I had a referral for you, and I had a referral for you as well. Well, that didn't help anybody in the room to really feel like this was a very powerful part of the meeting. And it certainly didn't help the three visitors that were in the room to connect the dots. So it's very important that we do that. All right, so that's how to do the referrals. Then we want to thank our visitors, of course. And if we ourselves have invited visitors to be in the room, we're not giving them a testimonial, we're thanking them for coming and for experiencing the meeting, and we hope that they enjoyed it. And that's what we want to say. I'd like to thank my visitor, Jessica, from uh uh you know, XYZ furniture store for attending the meeting. I hope you enjoyed it and got a lot out of attending. Beautiful. That's all you need to say. Uh, and and that gives them acknowledgement, and it also shares that you brought a visitor to the meeting. The third element is testimonials, and you should only give this is so important, one testimonial. One. I know you might have done business or gotten feedback from multiple people in the chapter, but we don't want to dilute this. We want to give one testimonial and make it good so that everybody in the room is thinking, wow, that person's amazing. And so that the visitors who are in the room are really hearing something solid about the person who has done the service. A great testimonial is one that you bring back to the to the member from outside of the room, where you say, Listen, I gave a referral to Jessica last week, and I wanted to let you know that my friend was so happy with the services that they received from Jessica, they would absolutely recommend her to someone else, and they wanted me to share that with you. Done. Short and sharp. Now, you can also write a longer testimonial and give that to Jessica and say exactly what you want to say in a long format so that Jessica can use that on her LinkedIn or use that on her Google or use that on her Facebook or her Insta. She might be able to create some sort of a social media post about it. She may even put it onto her website. But you don't need to read the whole thing in the meeting. You simply need to make a warm and true testimonial. Now, you know what? While I'm on testimonials, I do want to point this out. They have to be true. Don't give a testimonial when really you're not happy. If you have nothing else to say during the I have moment, then you should stand up and give a true testimonial from yourself about your BI experience. That is what you should say. If you have not given a referral, if you have not brought a visitor, if you don't have a testimonial that's true about a member, then don't make those mistakes and don't pass. Instead, stand up and confidently say, Today I would like to thank BI for all of the opportunities that you've given me. I have learned so much from the system, and I know that my business is getting stronger because I'm here. I wanted to thank all of you for that and sit down. Don't apologize for only having a testimonial about BI. Don't use the word just. Ooh, I could write a whole entire podcast about the word just. But instead, stand up and confidently say, Today I'd like to thank BI and provide a testimonial for what it's done for my business. All right. And again, you don't need to write the whole thing out and read a long presentation. Instead, you can make it short and sharp and simply pass the message across. That, my friends, is how to do the I have moment. We also, in my region, and you know, I think that as a B and I executive director, I'm not really supposed to say that. In my region, we do it this way. But it's my podcast, so I'm going to. And it's an imperfect podcast. So if I get things wrong, I'm sure people will tell me. But in my region, we also report on our closed business that we received as a way of thanking the fellow members for that business. And I think that's a really important part of this section. And so I encourage people to acknowledge the business that they have received by thanking the person who gave it to them. And so once again, just like you would for the referrals that you're giving, if you are thanking someone for closed business, you should know three things. One, their name, first and last, two, their category, and three, the amount of closed business that they've provided to you if that is within your ethical standards. In other words, if it's against your ethical standards to report your income or revenue, then don't do that. But you can instead do a heartfelt thank you for the referral that you received. Okay? Um, I do think that that's really important. And by the way, if you've got a lot of people to thank, then thank each of them and perhaps give a total closed business figure at the very end. All right. And the presidents should explain very clearly at the beginning of this section that when people are reporting closed business, it means that they have received that business and that that business came through a referral from someone in the room or someone in BI. A really powerful part of the meeting, too. And it's important not to talk about the service you provided and to go on to detail and sell yourself again. Simply thank the person for giving you the referral. This is not a time to promote your business. It's a time to thank people and to share with what you've given. Okay. Well, um, I could again talk for a long time about this, but those are the four elements, in my opinion, that should be reported. You report your referrals that you've given very succinctly. You report your visitors and you thank them for coming. You report a testimonial, but only one, and you don't need to give it a lot of detail, but you do need to make it very powerful. And you can let them know I'm going to send you a written testimonial, or even better, I've already sent a written testimonial. Ooh, powerful. And then the fourth thing is reporting the thank you for closed business that you have input into the system by way of acknowledging the people who gave you the referral, not as a recognition for yourself. Okay. Well, that I guess should be the end. So thank you for being here. And I'm going to give you this outro music, which is fantastic. It's the 20 Hours of Texas, which is a song written by my friend Ben Little. I'm super happy that he allowed me to use it for this podcast. I would now tell you all about the producer, which is me, the engineer and the sound people, which is me. Uh, I take responsibility for all the mistakes that are in here. And I hope you have a wonderful day. Thanks a lot for listening. Talk to you soon. Bye.