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Episode number 917, show and Tell in your BNI presentations.
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You're listening to the official BI podcast with BI 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.
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Hello everybody, and welcome back to the official BNI 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 the founder and the Chief visionary officer of BNI, Dr. Ivan Meisner. Hello, Ivan, how are you and where are you?
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Hey, I'm still in Austin two weeks in a row. It's great to be home for a couple of weeks.
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Oh, that's good.
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Today I'm going to talk about show and Tell for your weekly presentations. Throughout all the years that I've been doing the podcast, I've said specific is terrific in terms of doing your weekly presentation and you want to break your business down into its least or lowest common denominator, LCDs. And one of the best ways to do that is show and tell, where you bring in something very specific about your product or service, you know, a prop or something that you can hand out and show people or do. And so I'm going to give you some examples and I what I'd like you to do, if you're listening to this, is to think about your business and how you can incorporate what I'm talking about as these examples into your business. The first that I want to mention is a massage therapist who brought in a massage chair and he showed it in his weekly presentation. But in his feature presentation, he spent some time talking about massage chairs and how he used them at shopping malls and also about chair massages that sometimes are offered at street fairs or charitable events. He talked about how important it is to clean the chair after each client and showed his method of cleaning each part of the chair and why. And then he asked for a volunteer and of course, you know, almost everybody's hands went up. And he selected one of the chapter members and asked them some questions and told everyone why. He asked those questions and then he began a shoulder massage and while doing so, he explained what type of massage massages are most effective in a chair, then talked about the best referrals for his services. Senior citizens with decreased mobility, pregnant mothers, mortgage office managers who can arrange on site employee benefits once a month. Now Remember all of that he did in his feature presentation. For a weekly presentation, any one of those topics would have made a great topic. But bringing in the chair is the show and tell. And if you can do that, that is fantastic. Here's the second profession, a real estate videographer. The real estate videographer in his weekly presentation shared a compilation video three different properties that they had done and explained the benefits of his of the shot and showing the feature of the house. And described a good referral for each type of property, including the names of two top realtors in the area that that he'd like to be introduced to. The next is a residential contractor. And there they focused the presentation on bathroom remodels. That was the, the specific the bathroom remodels. And they actually in, in addition they would, they included this in their feature presentation. They actually brought in a full size bathtub and shower insert one week and they described the features and the benefits to the client for each and allowed people to step in and out for demonstration purposes. Next is an auto mechanic said that everyone knows they need routine maintenance such as oil changes in their vehicles, which of course is part of their shop duties. He said, how many of you have ever asked about the cabin air filter during your regular oil change? And almost no hands went up. And then he showed and he did this during his weekly presentation. He showed him an extremely dirty air filter that he had taken out and replaced and there were all kinds of oohs and ux, you know, yuck throughout the entire room that this was, this was in there and it rarely gets replaced. And that's was his feature presentation. And you know, he talked about going beyond the routine and making sure that every customer's vehicles were getting everything that they needed. And this was just one example. And he said sometimes that happens when people say my car has this strange smell or it smells like old socks and generally it's the air filter. And that was it. He just talked about air filters and he brought one in and showed it. So consultants, you know, people with no products, consultants, business coaches, CPAs, financial advisors. I talked about this in a podcast years ago doing a test, a true false test where you have a list of questions and ask. But it's, you know, you can do it quickly in a weekly presentation. You know, do a list of a short list of misconceptions or assumptions that people make about their business, true or false, and then have each person in the room write on a sheet of paper on one side true, the other side false. And then ask the Questions, you know, during their. Their presentations ask, is this true? Is this statement true, or is this statement false? And you have them hold it up and it's hysterical. How many people get the answers wrong? And you can do this during your weekly presentation, or you can do this during your feature presentation. The next one is from. Actually comes from my assistant, Dana, and she was a B and I member for over 13 years. And she was a credit consultant before she came to work with me. And she helped people correct their credit scores. And she did a presentation where she called it the Credit Detective. And she had a Sherlock Holmes type hat, a pipe, a giant magnifying glass. And she talked about credit repair companies that typically focused on late payments and collections and not much more, sending basically boilerplate, often ineffective letters to credit bureaus. But she held up a credit report and a magnifying glass and said that if you look at every item on the report, the search for any error that could be hurting the scores, beginning with personal information that you come up with all kinds of great things to help in improving scores. Some of the errors included extra Social Security numbers. One, one had six Social Security numbers on. On their account past addresses. One client said they lived in Mississippi and didn't. So in her case, she had the. The, you know, the credit detective, Sherlock Holmes, and then talked about some of the things that she could do to help improve a credit report. I think also before and after photos are fantastic for home decorators or contractors. Seeing the before and the after photos can be really dramatic. And I've been to meetings where people passed around a sheet of paper with before photos. And you look at it, you go, ooh, you know, that needs some more. And then, then they pass around a second sheet, second paper with a lot of photos on it that showed all of the after and you want, wow, this is beautiful. This is incredible. And I've seen it done for both home decorators and building contractors, and it works really, really well. Let me wrap up here. These are great ideas. You can use these actually both in weekly presentations and feature presentations, but don't go too far. I'll give you an example. A mobile auto mechanic brought in a flip chart with several pages of carefully drawn and detailed diagrams of a car's electrical system. And they got so technical and so involved in their expertise and their comfort zone that they lost the attention of most of the people in the room. And they never did say what type of referrals they were looking for or how the electrical system was part of their services. So don't go too deep. I think the general idea of saying, hey, here's an electrical. Here's a car's electrical system. Wow. You know, if I were doing it, I'd say, okay, I'm going to start here on the top left, and I'm going to work my way all the way down to the bottom. And. And then look at everybody, and they're going to all be like, oh, no, please. And then I'll say, no, because that'll bore you all to death. You don't have to know, because I know what this car system does. And so I think that would have been great. I just wouldn't have. I would not have dove into it. I would have scared them that he was going to go into it. But then I would say, you don't need to know this stuff because I know it, and I think that would be incredibly impressive. People would remember that and then talk about the kind of referrals that you want to get.
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I have one example. There was a general contractor in our group, and he uses all battery operated tools, you know, no cables or cords. And he brought in. He has a ton of them. He brought them all in. He let people screw things and unscrew things and drill and hammer and all this. This stuff. He brought in some wood, you know, and he let everybody experiment with his tools.
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I think that's a great idea. The more you can bring things in for show and tell, the better, because it's memorable. It's. It's. You know, I talked in a previous podcast about telling stories that are sticky. Well, bringing in props are sticky. People remember things that you do because you brought in props. We're both your weekly presentation, but it's gotta be something quick. And your feature presentation. Having props for both is a great idea.
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Yeah, it's really fun, too. It makes it more interesting.
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Definitely. Well, that's all I have for today, Priscilla. Thank you.
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Okay. Thank you so much, Dr. Meisner. That's some great information. This podcast is sponsored by MeisnerAudioPrograms.com these audio programs will provide you with the tools and the inspiration to powerfully enhance your B and I experience. So check out the great material available to you@meisneraudioprograms.com and use the promo code IVAN5O for 50% off of everything. All of the proceeds go to the BNI Foundation. Thank you so much for listening. This is Priscilla Rice, and we look forward to having you join us again next week for another exciting episode of the official BNI podcast.
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Sam.