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BNI & The Power of One
BNI 810 - Weekly Presentation 131 - Shelly Cunningham - Marketing
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In this week's Weekly Presentation Coaching we meet Shelly Cunningham from St. Augustine FL!
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Foreign welcome back to BNI and the Power of One Podcast back with our weekly presentation coaching episodes. If you ever want your weekly presentation reviewed Simply go to bnipowerofone.com Leave it there. Let me know where you're from, how long you have. Today we are hearing from one of our members. This is Sherry Cunningham. She is out of our Legacy Referrals chapter in beautiful St. Augustine, Florida. Says that they were at a roundtable yesterday and it was discussed that you would review 60 second presentations and she would appreciate feedback and help. So here we go. Pull this open. Pull up my timer. I do time them again for everybody just to give you a point of reference. Oh okay. This is long. My guess is this is going to be too long. But we'll see. We'll see how fast it goes. So I'm going to time it just to give you a point of reference. I'll read the whole thing. My guess is it's too long, but we'll figure that out and then we'll give the review. So let me pull up my timer and here we go. Good morning Legacy Referrals Family. I'm Sherry Cunningham, president and CEO of Mindful Solutions of St. Augustine, a woman veteran owned marketing agency dedicated to helping businesses and non profits grow with intention and impact. Well, while Mindful Solutions may be relatively new, I've been in the marketing arena for going on 23 years this July. Wow. Our comprehensive services include PR, creative design, social media management, targeted advertising, market research, website development, video production and Google Ad Management. We've successfully partnered with organizations like the University of North Florida Online enhancing their digital advertising efforts to increase quality qualified leads for their online nursing programs. We helped earthcore in Jacksonville successfully get press in local coverage at a groundbreaking event for their 30,000 square foot distribution center they are building in Casper, Wyoming. Last week with a four day Runway. This included a national distributed press release and several interviews with lead architect and builder. A good referral for me is a business or nonprofit that's seeking to elevate their brand, generate business awareness and doesn't know how to do it. I want to talk to them. How can you tell if someone you're about to meet is a good referral for me? Google their type of business near you. If they don't come up on the first page or at all, they are a good referral. Does their Google business listing come up when you search their name? When was their last review? Look them up on social media. When was the last time they posted? Look at their website and look at the date at the bottom of the page. It should be current or within one year. Any of or all of those are things to look for when you're trying to secure me quality referrals. A bad referral is someone who does not understand the value of our services or does not have a budget line for marketing efforts. Visit us at www.mssafl.com or reach out to me directly. 904-535-6853 or text or email is the best way to reach me. I'm looking for a warm endorsement to Jeff Potts, Executive Director and Brenda Swan, Director of Grants and operations with the St. John's Cultural Council. We are meeting with them at the end of the month to talk about partnership opportunities with their grant winners and my golden goose is still a Procurement Officer here at the VA. At the VA here in St. Augustine, Jacksonville or Gainesville, we are GSA contract holders and easy vendors for them to partner with because of that. Thank you. Sherry Cunningham, Mindful Solutions okay, that was just under two and a half minutes. So first of all, way too long. If we're going to have 60 seconds we got to cut this in by more than half and I will tell you, most of it is not helpful. In terms of a weekly presentation. Okay, A lot of this is really good information. It's great background information. This is why one to ones are so important is to get a lot of that background and for people to dig into what your background is and to start discussing all the different areas you work with. When it comes to a weekly presentation, we gotta be laser focused and simplify as much as possible on on training people on three things. Who, how, what who am I looking for specifically this week? How do I identify that person or people just like that and what do I say to them? Okay, when you go Our comprehensive services include pr, creative design, social media management, targeted advertising, market research, website development, video production, and Google Ad management. You lost the entire room right there because that's just way too much to think about and to you know, the general theory is if we don't say something we might miss an opportunity. But the truth is when you try to say everything you do, you miss every opportunity because it's way too confusing. So this whole first half, from everything from good morning to you know, the paragraph for when we helped Earth Core isn't helping you. Isn't helping you. Unless we want to pick one piece of that and one example of that and tie the story into it to, to really hammer home the specific type of referral we're looking for so is it a non profit? Is it a business owner? Is it whatever the the target market is, Is that for PR or is it for creative design? Or is it for social media management or is it for target advertising or is it for Mark? Each one of those is a specific area, right? So we're going to say, okay, I want to talk about social media management with nonprofits. That's my focus. And then I can go into. Let me tell you the story of this nonprofit we were working with around their social media and we were able to accomplish this like all very short, we're able to accomplish this for them or they saw this kind of increase. Then we get into who are you specifically looking to be introduced to this week that fits this mold, that fits that outcome? What's the nonprofit you want to get introduced to? And specifically who's the person you need to speak to in the nonprofit? Your ask for a referral was a lot of work. There was no real specific ask in that paragraph. You were teaching people how to do some research for you. And as much as your members love you, they won't do that. They're not going to remember to do it first and foremost. But even if they did, they don't have the time, energy or desire to do those things for you. So you should be doing some of those things. Come up with the company, the non profit etc that you want to be introduced to and again, pick one of those areas. And now you've got your good referral. So I want to meet, you know Sam Smith at XYZ Nonprofit. She's the director of development or whatever or director. I want to meet directors of development at nonprofits such as this person at this nonprofit. What you want to be looking for and listening for when you're having a conversation with them is this line. They are complaining about this. They're saying that they don't get a. They're complaining about their website. They're saying that nobody gives them through their social media. They feel like the social media is a waste of time. Whatever the complaint might be, you can tell them, listen for this complaint or if you're comfortable, pick up the phone and ask them this direct question. Hey, I was wondering, do you get a lot of hits on your social media? Hey, I'm wondering do you get a lot of revenue generated from your social media? How do you guys use your social media when you're in that conversation? Now say this. That's what you need to teach them, right? So the who is the specific person at A specific nonprofit in this example that needs help with their specific social media piece. I've done the research. Here's who I'm looking for. Here's what you need to listen for with somebody in this type of role or if you're comfortable, pick up the phone and ask them these questions. Then when you're in the conversation, tell them, you know, in that conversation, if you hear they say, oh no, it really stinks. We don't really put a lot of time, it's a waste of time, blah, blah, blah, they complain about it. Tell them you work closely with somebody who's helped a lot of nonprofits really have success in this area. And would they be open to an introduction? That's the flow of a weekly presentation. And you only have a minute. So I mean, I knew as soon as I opened this it's gonna be way longer than it's a full page, single space. I mean this is a lot in here and it's just too much for that time period you have. When you try to squeeze two minutes of information into a minute window, you, you become highly ineffective. All right, it's, this isn't the time. And this is very common. This isn't the time to train the chapter who you are and all the things that you can do and all your background parts to what you do and all the different types of customers you've had and all the different successes you've had. That's important information. This isn't the part to do that in. That's why one to ones are so important. That's why you want to be meeting with as many people as you can on a regular basis. This time is all about who am I training you to be looking for, listening for and what to say to them this week and then next week I'll go on to the next thing. And maybe, you know, you take a month where you do nothing but non profits. But each week it's social media management for non profits. One week it's market research for non profits. One week it could be Google Ad management for nonprofits. One week it could be video production stuff for nonprofits. Each one of those is its own unique weekly presentation. Then you can go to businesses with 50 or less employees who are trying to grow. And this one week it's on social media management for those types of companies. And one week it's on PR for those types of companies. And one. Right, so you, you can take like a general area you're trying to get into and then for 3, 4, 5, 6, doesn't matter. There's no limit weeks. Pick a specific area you can help. Those areas come with different referral requests, right? Different non profits you want to get into each week, but it's all laser focused towards your non profit goal. Then you go into your small businesses, then you go into your larger businesses, then you go into whatever again, I think you're just a little bit under the trap of trying to explain everything out of the fear of missing anything. But you're. It will cost you everything. Gotta simplify. Gotta, gotta simplify. Pick one area. So I would, I would tell you redo it, definitely resubmit it. I think you've got a lot to talk about. That's the really good thing here is you can help so many people in so many different ways that you have no limitation of the weekly presentations you can do. Some people have a really hard time even coming up with what to do. You got a long, long, long, long long list of potential referrals and potential services. Your biggest challenge is going to be organizing that and that's going to be all around what goals have you set and where do you want the business to really come from and those kind of things. Like I don't mind the bad referral for me is someone who doesn't understand the value of our services or does not have a budget line for marketing efforts. I wouldn't put in your weekly presentation though. I don't think there's really a lot of time and it's not doing you any service because you're not teaching them like what does that look like and what does that sound like? That again is something that you should be talking about in one to ones and those kind of things. Or you could put in if they say, well we just, you know, especially in non profits if they say well we don't really have a budget for marketing. Oh, okay, then you know it's not a good referral for me, right. So I'm okay with that. But it's, there's just so much in here, just so much in here to start. So. Okay, I'm rambling, I'm going too long. I hope this is helpful to get you just kind of reset and rethink about this a little bit. Definitely pick one area and write one and ask yourself, did I hit the who? How? What? Submit that and we'll review it again and we'll keep doing it and as long as we need to to really make it as strong as possible. And that's the case for anybody and everybody. You know again, I I think you're going to hear your weekly presentation different coming from somebody else then, you know, reading it to yourself and timing it in your office and those kind of things. Submit yours, get the feedback, try to continuously make yourself as effective as possible, because this is the time in that weekly meeting have and you want to be as effective as possible. And it's so different than how we talk the rest of the day. It just is that none of us know how to do this out of the gate. So go to BNI Power of one and leave it there and we'll absolutely get to it. Sherry, thank you for submitting it. I hope it was helpful.