1. The Imperfect Podcast

Wendy shares her newfound understanding of the lowest common denominators for weekly presentations in BNI.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:10

Well, hello there, and welcome to the Imperfect Podcast. I'm Wendy, and I'm your host today. And today I'm going to speak alone. I'm just going to talk about why I'm here, what I'm talking about, because this is the first podcast in the series. And who knows how many podcasts we'll have in the series, but do you listen to a lot of podcasts? I listen to quite a few. And the things that interest me are things about BI, which is Business Network International, and things about strategic networking. I also like some fun things like Smartlist, that's one of my favorites. I listen to that every week. I listen to Brene Brown. I listen to audiobooks sometimes, but I get kind of bored with those. The main thing about a podcast, though, is you can listen to it while you're driving or while you're walking or maybe intentionally while you're cooking or doing other things. And so it might be a good way for you to get to know me and the things that are important to me. And so today's topic, I thought, I'm going to steal directly from another podcaster and share with the BI members who might be listening to this right now. The other podcaster and a podcast I highly recommend is Tim Roberts, and he is from BI The Power of One. It's a great podcast. He's an executive director too, just like me. And he does an evaluation of weekly presentations. Now, for those of you who aren't in BI, you may not know that a BI member gets to do a weekly presentation to educate their fellow members on who they want to be introduced to. And it's very, very different than a sales pitch. In fact, in the past, I've heard even me call it a sales manager minute. It's not. It's not a sales opportunity, it's not a commercial either. We don't want to be a marketer in this instance. We want to be a trainer. And I think that is a mindset difference that really is needed for a lot of people in our BI community is that you're going to be able to get more referrals if you teach people who you're looking for, how to identify them, and what to say once you identify who they are. And that's not my formula, that's actually Tim's formula. Who are you looking for? How do I know where to find them? And then what do I say once I do meet them and realize that you could help them? What should I say to make the introduction? That all by itself is a really amazing formula. But the thing that has blown my mind, and I actually mean blown my mind, because isn't it neat when you think you know something, you think you understand how to train something, and all of a sudden what wasn't clear, what must have been cloudy and muddy in my brain, all of a sudden becomes crystal clear. For years and years, I have learned that when you are doing your weekly presentation, you need to break it down into the lowest common denominator. I've trained people on this and I've gotten people to write down what all the different lowest common denominators are in their business, what they serve, what pain points they resolve. But it wasn't until recently that I realized the indicator of a laundry list of issues versus the lowest common denominator. So I thought that this first podcast would be a great opportunity to share with you my personal breakthrough in that. When we introduce ourselves and B and I, and boy do I wish that I had the opportunity to go back in time and do it again now that I know about this formula, but when we are making a list of things that we resolve, when we use the word and and commas to say, I solve this problem and this problem and this problem, that is three different presentations. Three different weekly presentations. And we don't need to ever say all three things that we do or all ten, instead, we need to focus on one each presentation that we have. Now, that might not make a lot of sense yet, so let me continue. If you are a landscaper or a lawn and yard maintenance person, and you do hedges and lawn mowing and planting in springtime and um winter pruning and all of that, each of those things is an individual service that you offer and has an individual problem that you can solve. And instead of listing all four things that I just listed, each week you could do a different presentation. And that was a really key breakthrough for me. So it enables me to train my team in a different way to really focus on each individual thing and then say, okay, what story could we tell about that? So let me use that landscaping as an example and share with you the hedges. You know, I actually met someone uh a few months ago that specialized in hedges. Specialized, that was what their business was. But most people don't specialize in hedges, they do yard maintenance, and that includes hedges. So let's talk about the hedges. You are looking for an introduction to a land a homeowner who has a need for their hedges to look amazing. Someone like the people who live at 86 High Street in Springville. By saying 86 High Street in Springville, what you're doing is you're basically saying, I've driven by that place, I see they have a lot of hedges, and I would actually like an introduction to them because I would be able to solve their problem because they've got hedges that need my work, right? So I've just told you who I'm looking for, but I've also been very specific about one client that would be a good example. So that's how you would start. And then you would say how you would identify them is to be going on a walk. If you're going on a walk and you notice throughout the neighborhood that the people who are in the neighborhood have really big hedges, those would be people that you could talk to. Yeah, that's probably not a great example. Maybe you talk to people about the hedges that you have or the hedges that someone else has and say what a pain in the butt it is, and you start a conversation with someone about the hedges, and if they say, I have the same problem, then you can open up the conversation about how you know someone who actually can convert that, can make their hedge problem go away, can make sure that they always stay neat and tidy, can bring them back into alignment with the rest of their yard so that they aren't encroaching on other areas, the things like that. And then you close. So your weekly presentation says, I'm looking for a homeowner like the people who live at 86 High Street in Springville. Um, they have unruly hedges and they really need some help with it because it's encroaching on all the areas of their property. You might be able to talk about this with people who you meet at a party or at a networking event where you're talking about yard work and how hard it is to do. That might be a good way to bring up the conversation. And if you find out that they have hedges that are doing that encroaching in their yard, I would love an introduction to them and I'd like you to ask them if you could pass my name on to them and if they could pass their name. You know, I've messed that up, but that's why the Imperfect Podcast is imperfect. So instead you'd finish it by saying, ask them if they can be um, if they would like to be introduced to you. All right? And and that is is the way that you would do the who are you looking for, how do we identify them, and what do we say? All right? So the who, the how, the what. The lowest common denominator, by only talking about the hedges, of course that person is going to be able to also get all of the other business. But I've just trained my marketing team on who that I want, what to listen for, and how to introduce me. Next week I can talk about edging a lawn and how important it is and how wonderful it would be to have a perfectly manicured lawn with great edges, and that you really only need to do it every two weeks. The neat thing is you don't need to talk about how you fix the problem. You need to teach me how to identify the problem. You in your 30 to 60 seconds are not going to be able to teach people how you do what you do. And we in BI must already assume that you know how to solve the problem. What we need to know is how to identify people and how to introduce them to you so that you can then get their business. Well, this is my first podcast. I hope you've enjoyed it. The breakthrough for me was lowest common denominator, and that is indicated whenever you hear yourself making a list of things that you do. When you hear yourself making a list, realize that that is different weekly presentations. You can break it down and make it easier for your fellow members to find a referral for you. Alright, well, there's been lots of noise while I've been talking. This is the Imperfect Podcast, and I always want to mention the fact that the music that comes into this podcast was written and performed by Concord Joe, which is a band that I used to be in with Stephen Little, who is the musician who wrote the song Twenty Hour of Texas. And uh, let's finish with that. Have a great day. Thanks a lot for listening.