Summary5 min read

Podcast Summary: BNI 785 - Weekly Presentation Coaching 123 with Sherri Madrigal, Travel Agent

Podcast Information:

Title: BNI & The Power of One
Host: Tim Roberts
Episode: BNI 785: Weekly Presentation Coaching 123 - Sherri Madrigal - Travel Agent
Release Date: February 7, 2025
Description: A BNI podcast focusing on success, increased referrals, tips, strategies, and elevating your BNI membership through the Power of One.

Introduction and Technical Challenges

In the opening segment of episode 785, Tim Roberts addresses the listeners with a candid reflection on the podcast’s recent technical difficulties. At [00:26], Tim shares,

“Sometimes we just get in the motion of things working and we start getting a little bit lazy on checking and ensuring things are being done really well.”

He recounts past issues where podcast recordings sounded poor post-upload, leading to the need for re-recording episodes. This honest admission serves as a prelude to the episode's focus on quality and attention to detail, setting the stage for the coaching session.

Weekly Presentation Coaching: Sherri Madrigal’s Submission

Transitioning from the technical hurdles, Tim introduces the core segment of the episode: Weekly Presentation Coaching. He highlights the purpose of these segments—to review member-submitted presentations and provide constructive feedback to enhance their effectiveness within the BNI framework.

Sherri Madrigal’s Presentation Overview

Sherri Madrigal, a travel agent from Tucson, Arizona, presents her 60-second pitch aimed at attracting potential clients for holiday travel planning. Her presentation, timed at [00:50], goes as follows:

“Good morning everyone. With the holidays fast approaching, many families are starting to plan their vacations. But it can be overwhelming with so many options out there. That's where I come in. As a travel agent, I take all the stress out of planning your trip so you can focus on making Memories. Best of all, it doesn't cost you anything extra to use my services. Whether you're dreaming of a tropical getaway, a magical Disney vacation, or a winter wonderland escape, I'm here to help. If you know any families who are considering traveling this holiday season, I'd love for you to send them my way. Let's make their holidays unforgettable.”

After delivering her pitch in 33 seconds, Sherri experiences some stumbling, leading to the realization that her presentation needs a complete overhaul.

Host’s Evaluation and Constructive Feedback

Tim Roberts delves into an in-depth analysis of Sherri’s presentation, clarifying the objectives of a weekly BNI presentation:

“The purpose is to train people on how to identify referral opportunities for you and how to see if that opportunity is actually a good referral for you or not.”

He emphasizes that the focus should not be on selling services but on enabling members to spot and identify quality referrals. Tim outlines three key components essential for effective presentations:

Identifying the Specific Referral Target: Clearly define who the ideal referral is for that week.
Recognizing Referral Opportunities: Teach members how to spot when someone fits the referral criteria.
Engaging in Meaningful Conversations: Guide members on how to approach and communicate with potential referrals.

Analysis of Sherri’s Presentation

Tim critiques Sherri’s pitch for being overly commercial and not aligning with the training objectives:

“This hit none of those and is very commercial... it's not uncommon in a lot of ways because a weekly presentation is very different.”

He breaks down the problematic aspects, highlighting the lack of specificity and the direct sales approach. For instance, Sherri’s call to action:

“If you know any families who are considering traveling this holiday season, I'd love for you to send them my way.”

Tim points out the vagueness and the focus on the audience in the room rather than training them to identify referrals.

Refining the Presentation: Specificity and Strategy

Tim advises Sherri to refine her presentation by removing vague terminology and honing in on specific referral targets. He suggests transforming the presentation to focus on a more tangible reference point, such as:

“Think of your colleague who is planning to travel during the holiday season and might be feeling overwhelmed by the options.”

He underscores the importance of identifying signs that someone is stressed about planning their trip, which could indicate a need for Sherri’s services. For example:

“Listen for complaints about being tired from trying to plan their family vacation or how stressed they are about it.”

Enhancing Conversational Techniques

Further, Tim educates on initiating conversations that lead to potential referrals without sounding like a salesperson. He recommends using leading questions to uncover referral opportunities, such as:

“How long have you been working on planning this vacation?”

and,

“Would you be open to an introduction to someone who could take that stress off your plate for free?”

By doing so, members can naturally connect potential referrals to Sherri’s services without immediate resistance.

Overcoming Common Challenges

Addressing common pitfalls, Tim explains why direct commercial pitches often fail within BNI settings:

“When you use words like, have you ever... Did you know... I can help you with... you're my perfect referral... this is what I can do for you type of conversations, we actually make it physically impossible for people to find us referrals.”

He encourages members to focus on building relationships and identifying genuine needs rather than pushing services, which can lead to rejection and hinder referral generation.

Key Lessons and Strategies

Throughout the episode, several foundational lessons emerge for crafting effective BNI presentations:

Purpose Over Pitching: The primary goal is to train others to recognize and refer potential clients, not to sell directly.
Specificity is Crucial: Clearly define who the ideal referral is to help members visualize and identify suitable prospects.
Identify Pain Points: Teach members to listen for indicators of stress or need that align with the services offered.
Conversational Engagement: Use open-ended, leading questions to facilitate natural introductions to potential referrals.
Practice and Preparation: Acknowledge that creating compelling presentations requires time, practice, and thoughtful preparation.

Conclusion and Encouragement

In his closing remarks, Tim reinforces the importance of continuous improvement and the role of weekly presentations in achieving greater efficiency and effectiveness within the BNI network. He invites members to submit their presentations for future coaching sessions and encourages feedback through reviews on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

“We want to get better, we want to get more efficient. We want to become far more effective.”

Tim’s closing sentiment emphasizes the collective journey of the BNI community towards mastering the art of referrals and leveraging the Power of One to elevate their networking success.

This episode serves as a valuable resource for BNI members seeking to refine their presentation skills, emphasizing the strategic approach needed to generate meaningful referrals and strengthen their professional networks.

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[00:26]
A
Foreign. Welcome back to BNI and the Power of One. We are back with our weekly presentation coaching episodes. Before we get into that quick little reminder of important lessons. I guess one of the things that happens to all of us I think is sometimes we just get in the motion of, of things working and we start getting a little bit lazy on checking and ensuring things are being done really well. So the case in point for me is with the podcast. It's happened in the past, hasn't happened in a long time. Every once in a while we'll have an issue with the tech where when recording the podcast sounds great in the headphones, everything seems to be working. It's recording. It goes from the board to the computer. We upload it into the website that's that hosts them and then it comes out and you hear it. Sounds like absolute garbage. Or what happened a couple an episode ago was the upload to the website only took half the part or only not even half the podcast? A part of the podcast. So just seems to be a week of that. This is the second time we're recording this one. We had another one before that that now needs to be re recorded. And so it's just a little bit of a life lesson, you know, I mean when, when we don't double check the quality before we post it. Yeah, sure, 99 out of 100 times, not a problem. But the 100th time it can be. So that's where we're at. So I apologize about that. We should have already had a couple episodes out but they have to be completely redone. So anyways, let's get right to it. We are back with weekly presentation coaching. We're viewing submitted weekly presentations. Try to give advice to help them become as effective as possible. If you ever want yours reviewed, go to bnipowerofone.com thank you to everybody who has. We're getting quite a list going and so we will be able to do these for for some time now and I appreciate that. Today we're hearing from Sherry Madrigal from Tucson, Arizona. She is a travel agent and has 60 seconds. So Sherry, I time these just so you know how long it took me. Again, we'll be at different speeds, but we'll be pretty close. So here we go. Good morning everyone. With the holidays fast approaching, many families are starting to plan their vacations. But it can be overwhelming with so many options out there. That's where I come in. As a travel agent, I take all the stress out of planning your trip so you can focus on making Memories. Best of all, it doesn't cost you anything extra to use my services. Whether you're dreaming of a tropical getaway, a magical Disney vacation, or a winter wonderland escape, I'm here to help. If you know any families who are considering traveling this holiday season, I'd love for you to send them my way. Let's make their holidays unforgettable. Okay, so that took me 33 seconds and stumbled a little bit through it. So there's a lot of time, which is a good thing because unfortunately, we're going to have to completely redo this one. Okay, let's just start with what is the purpose of a weekly presentation? The purpose is to train people on how to identify referral opportunities for you and how to see if that opportunity is actually a good referral for you or not. It's not about selling to the room. It's not about selling our services. It's not really about explaining our services. It is all about training. Three key things that we have to hit in training. Who are we looking for specifically that week? How do we identify people like that, and what do we say to them when we do? Okay, this hit none of those and is very commercial. Like, this one was targeting the people in the room, which is not uncommon in a lot of ways because a weekly presentation is very different. It's different. It's a different way of speaking and even thinking about speaking than we do the rest of our day or at many other networking events. It is unnatural. It's just not something that we would naturally say. That's why it takes preparation, it takes time, it takes thought, it takes practice, all of these things. That's why this podcast exists. And, you know, this is like 123rd episode of doing weekly presentations and a lot in the pipeline because it is difficult. So I don't want anybody. Sometimes I. I feel like the feedback can sound a little harsh and it's not meant to be because I want to pick on anybody. I want you to really understand how to make it effective and understand that it's not natural or easy. Okay, I'm going to read this again. I'm going to highlight why I say this is a commercial and some keywords you got to get rid of. Okay, so we say, good morning, everyone. With the holidays fast approaching, many families are starting to plan their vacations. But it can be overwhelming with so many options out there. That's where I come in. As a travel agent, I take the stress out of planning you your trip so you can focus on making memories. Best of all, it doesn't cost you anything extra to use my services. Whether you are dreaming of a tropical getaway, a magical Disney vacation, or winter wonderland escape, I'm here to help. All targeting the people in the room. Then at the last line you say, well, if you know any families who are considering traveling, I'd love for you to send my way. Okay, let's start there. That's where we need to begin. All right. What is a good referral for you? It's a family who's considering traveling. Okay, that's vague. So in a training part, we. We need to be. We need to remove as much vagueness as possible. That's what being specific is all about. It's not about just the specific person you ask for. It's to help people to visualize. When you use vague families, who do you know? Who have you known? Like, those kind of things, it's too vague. They don't know where to begin. So if we're saying it's family who is considering traveling. So now let's break that down and pick one area. I want to. It's going to be your sister who's planning on traveling, or your brother or your best friend or your colleague. Pick one of those. We're going to build the story and build the structure around that. So my. Who is your colleague who's considering or starting to plan traveling during the holiday season in this example? Great. How do I know that? How do I know my colleague is planning on traveling and could potentially be a good referral for you? Because not everybody who's planning traveling wants to work with a travel agent, even if it's in their best interest. They know they may not want to. Some people enjoy the process. They enjoy going through that. They enjoy, like, you know, the design and finding the deals or whatever. So how do I know that they are doing it and that their potential referral for you? Well, it's probably because they might be. One avenue is they're complaining about it, right? They're stressed about it. That's one of the things you talked about as a benefit of your services. The pain that you solve is removing the stress of the planning. So how do I know somebody's stressed about planning? Well, I'm going to hear them maybe say something. Okay, so now my referral, who is your colleague at work? And I'm going to train you on listen for these complaints. You may hear them talking about being tired from trying to plan their family vacation or how stressed they are about planning their family vacation or how they're going to need a vacation from their vacation, whatever. Pick one of these triggers that is a symbol that they're stressed out, they don't want to be doing it, and they probably could use some help. Good. Now we got two thirds of it. The final part is, okay, I'm thinking of somebody, I'm hearing it now. What. What do I say to them at this time to see if they really are a good referral for you? And the answer there could be something like, it's a leading question. What you want to do is teach your members how to get into the conversation with the potential referral and to identify if it actually can be a referral or not. So it could be, you know, ask them how long they've been working on it. Ask them if it's really stressing them out. And if they say yes, ask them would they be open to an introduction to somebody who could take that stress off of them for free. And if they say yes, make the connection. I actually know how to do the physical part of sending them your way. But if I don't know who and I don't know what to look for and I don't know how to start the conversation, I'm not getting to that end piece. And that's what you need to train me on. And naturally, a lot of us will be like, that's dumb. This is so simple, it's so obvious. And again, it is for you. It should be for you. It's not for every member in the room. And again, the better you actually get at this, the more people in the room will actually use your services. When we target our fellow members, when you use words like, have you ever. Did you know, I can help you with, you're my perfect referral, this is what I can do for you type of conversations, we actually make it physically impossible for people to find us referrals because our natural inclination is to shut down right when you start saying, oh, I can take the stress out of planning your trip out, I'm good. Not going on a trip, or, yeah, no, I'm fine. I don't mind planning it or I've already done it, or my wife handles that or whatever. And now my brain's thinking about why I probably don't need your services, which makes it impossible for to think about who does. And maybe the couple people in the chapter that it does trigger will do something. But maybe that's only one time, right? Like, if you start talking about my colleague, my sister, my brother, I will put myself in those shoes. And if I need you, I'm still going to use you. You do not lose Tier 1 referrals by removing the focus on the people in the room. You might actually in fact gain more of them. So I would completely redo this and make sure you're hitting those three parts. And as always with anybody who submits it, you know, if you feel like you want to rewrite it and get feedback on that, absolutely resend it in. Okay. And for all of us, hopefully this is helping us think of our own because these are very, very common things. This is a weekly presentation. I, I could hear every single day during the week. If I go to BNI chapters every day I'll hear something like this. And that's the purpose. We want to get better, we want to get more efficient. We want to become far more effective. So leave your reviews on Apple podcast Spotify. However, look forward to hearing from you. Have a great day.