Priscilla Rice (0:00)

Episode number 891. Be prepared. Always win.

Dr. Ivan Meisner (0:06)

You're listening to the official BI podcast with BNI founder and chief visionary officer, Dr. Ivan Meisner. Stay tuned for networking and referral marketing tips from the man who's been called the father of modern networking, along with suggestions and insights into getting the most from your membership in the world's largest networking organization, bni.

Priscilla Rice (0:29)

Hello, everybody, and welcome back to the official B and I podcast. I'm Priscilla Rice and I'm coming to you from Live Oak Recording Studio in Berkeley, California. And I'm joined on the phone today by Tim Roberts, who's standing in today as a guest host for Dr. Meisner and will be joining us from time to time. Hello, Tim. Welcome to the podcast.

Tim Roberts (0:52)

Hello. Thank you again for having me. And yeah, today we're going to talk about how the prepared always win when it comes to networking. And I think a lot of times when, when people hear that title, they may think about BNI and the importance of preparing our weekly presentations and preparing our featured presentations. And those are absolutely true. We want to be prepared in those moments. We want to have a clear plan of when and what topics we're going to talk about. You know, build a marketing plan for the year. We're going to take a little different approach today. Talk about networking in general and in bni, but how to take advantage of the fact that most people never truly do prepare for networking. As we enter in the holiday seasons, we're getting busier. There are more and more events coming up, and a lot of those events will be social in nature. Whether it's a chamber after hours, a holiday party, a company holiday party, family, friends, whatever it may be, we have an amazing opportunity to really be out, be engaged, to be networking. Unfortunately for most, present company included, I would say all of us in general, we never really know how to take advantage of that situation. We might know that we need to be there. We might know we want to be active. We might know that we know that if we don't go, we won't get anything. But how do you actually prepare for a social networking opportunity? How do you actually make it meaningful? How do you actually make it valuable to you? I think what happens to a lot of us is we'll show up to those events and we will naturally grad, you know, gravitate to those we already know. We'll, we'll find ourselves talking to the same people. We'll find the conversations to be kind of, they're great, but they're not really valuable. They're not really, they're not really purposeful in helping us accomplish any kind of goal. And how do we change that? And it takes just some simple preparation and realizing that you can really take advantage, for lack of a better term, of a lot of other people in that situation by knowing they didn't prepare, that they're feeling very similar to you. They, they don't really know how to get something out of it. They're there, they want to be there, but they haven't really prepared for that moment. So this is a very simple tip. I've been teaching for many years and I wanted to share across here with everybody else. What you want to do is first think, selfishly, think about what kind of conversation could you have at this event that you know based on your answers, it would be an impactful, meaningful, valuable conversation for you. Meaning what questions would you want to be asked that you know based on? Your answers would provide value. Value to me in these kind of moments isn't a tangible referral at that time. Okay, I, I would hardly suggest anybody have that as a goal. You should not be going to a chamber after hours with the intent of getting a referral that day. The intent is to start a relationship. The intent is to be remembered after that event. So when you follow up with them and want to schedule a one to one or schedule a meeting and schedule, you know, the further development of that relationship, they remember you and that the conversations you had were rememberable and positive. So under that kind of guideline, what questions would you want to be asked that you know based on your answers would make that conversation valuable to you? I would think of strong business, yet also personal type of question. So not a personal question has to be business founded, but is not just tell me what you do, what product do you offer? You know, who do you work with? Something that has a little bit more meaning, something that maybe others are not asking or you've never been asked before at this type of event? Some examples of these things would be what's the most common misconception about your business? What's your favorite part of your profession, or least favorite part of your profession? What's the one job or client that really sticks out in your mind? And why does that? How did your past experiences lead you into the profession that you're doing today? What's your why? What's your purpose behind what you do? Where's your passion come from? If you had to start all over again, what would you do differently? What's your biggest challenge? These type of Questions are again, founded on business, are really kind of personal, right? They're not fluff, they're not just the same question everybody else is going to be asking them. They take thought and they trigger emotion. Now the best conversation anybody ever has is the one where they do the most talking. So the best way to be most memorable is to get other people talking. So what you want to do is prepare. What are the three questions you would really want to be asked? Really think about your answers. How would you answer a question like, you know, what past experiences led you to do what you're doing, or what is your passion behind your profession and where does that come from? Really think deeply on how you would answer that. Besides, yeah, I just really like what I do or I really like helping people. Those are fluff, generic surface level answers. Really think about those questions and part of the preparation might be have somebody, a spouse, a friend, a colleague ask you these questions and dig for some meaningful answers. Think about them, prepare them. And then what you do is you simply go to that event and you walk around asking other people those questions and what this is going to do for you, that little bit of preparation is going to make you stand out amongst everybody else at that event. You are going to be the one who asked questions nobody else was asking. Questions that again triggered some kind of emotion. Questions that led to a meaningful conversation for the other person. Questions that are going to make you memorable. And what happens after they answer that question? When they're not prepared with their own list of questions, they naturally regurgitate the question right back to you. And now you can give a meaningful, well thought, well prepared answer to the question that you wanted to be asked at that event. This is the same thing and the same strategy you can take into your open networking at your B and I meeting. You won't have time to do three of them. Maybe you change the question each week and you change who you're talking to each week. It's why open networking is so valuable in our meeting. It's not a buffer zone to show up whenever you feel like or you know, you got that 15 minute extra window. This is the only time at the meeting you can have these types of conversations. Great way to approach a brand new member. Great way to approach somebody you haven't talked to in a while. A great way to set up that next one to one. You can ask a question, say, I want to learn more. Can we schedule that next one to one? And just that little bit of preparation is truly gonna make you win in the game of standing out and being remembered. After that meeting, that's all we got today.