Beyond networking… all the way to new business.

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I’ve been attending networking clubs and networking meetings for the better part of 25 years.

A couple of weeks ago, I attended a Business Networking International event with Chapter Lucky 62 in New York City as a guest. I wanted to give a short talk on networking strategies, but it seems as though the rules of the club forbade it. Respecting that, I attended anyway.

I didn’t really know what to expect since I had never been to a BNI networking meeting before, but I must say, whether they had selected me as a speaker or not, the meeting was exceptional. Very structured, but exceptional. And did I mention structured?

It began with a two-minute educational segment. I expected someone to get up, hem and haw, and give some weak tip. Instead, I listened to an amazing duet that turned their tip into a song!

The singsong tip got the meeting off to an incredible start – both in tempo and in tone. The message was so well constructed and completely customized that I am including it here for your educational pleasure.

Let me tell you something about your personality
You’re the only one with it, so let it shine brightly.
You may not be the only lawyer doctor broker cake decorator accountant in town,
But you’re the only one that’s unique inside and out

So let me tell you how
To stand out from the crowd

You gotta lead with your personality
You gotta lead with your personality
They have got to see individuality
You gotta lead with your personality

You may share a profession with a thousand other folks.
But what sets you apart is you make really lame jokes.
And that’s ok, it just ads to your character, it makes you like-able
People do business with people they like,
Especially if they like title!

So let me tell you how,
To stand out from the crowd

The singer-songwriter, Antony Bitar, is a real estate salesman. If you think his song lyric is great, you should see his YouTube introduction of himself for his real estate business. This guy gets it.

The guitar player accompanying Antony, Adam Lomeo, was actually showcasing his talents to the group. Which, by the way, were flawlessly excellent.

Back to the meeting… After the introduction, a sheet of paper was passed to each attendee that contained everyone’s signature slogan. I was about to be exposed to one of the coolest, one-of-a-kind introduction routines I’ve ever seen. About 80 members are given 30 seconds each to give their introduction, and at the end, the entire group recites their tag line.

As you can imagine, some of them were classic. A woman photographer ended her commercial with “I shoot your family” and the group responded, “so you don’t have to.” And the Xerox salesperson said she had been copying since the 2nd grade when she copied off her buddy’s test paper – the audience howled.

I did get to give a short 1-minute talk – my host, Jennifer Gluckow, gave me her commercial spot, but I went over my 1 minute time limit and got dinged. Timing is everything.

After the 30-second commercials, two people got to give a 5-minute talk to give the members and their visitors a more in-depth look at their business and their ideal referral partners.

Before the meeting ended, members had the chance to thank each other for business, or at least the opportunities for business. And there was a lot of it.

Then a black book was passed around the room where members entered the dollar amount of their closed business from BNI referrals. NOTE WELL: They’ve passed more than $4 million this year in referral business. WOW!

This was one of the most serious, yet fun business groups, hell-bent on self-promotion and giving business. And did I mention structured?

Here are 4.5 things you can learn from this meeting:

1. You don’t always have to say your message. Sometimes you can sing it, and it’s much more attractive and effective.

2. Creating group participation for individual commercials is both powerful and memorable. When 80 people say your tag line in unison, it creates a unity of group and memorability of message – especially if it’s funny.

3. Leads and networking groups don’t work unless there are plenty of leads and everyone is willing to give them. This group was just as interested in giving as they were in getting. Huge – especially in NYC.

4. The science of networking is getting more sophisticated. You have to be prepared, be willing to share, and be reputable.

4.5 Your creativity, style, and overall presence create attraction. Master all three elements.

I’ll be back in NYC in a few weeks. The BNI meeting is at the top of my list to attend. I’ll be bringing a few leads.

Reprinted with permission from Jeffrey H. Gitomer and Buy Gitomer.

About the Author

Jeffrey GitomerJeffrey Gitomer is the author of The Sales Bible, Customer Satisfaction is Worthless Customer Loyalty is Priceless, The Little Red Book of Selling, The Little Red Book of Sales Answers, The Little Black Book of Connections, The Little Gold Book of YES! Attitude, The Little Green Book of Getting Your Way, The Little Platinum Book of Cha-Ching, The Little Teal Book of Trust, The Little Book of Leadership, and Social BOOM! His website, www.gitomer.com, will lead you to more information about training and seminars, or email him personally at [email protected].

Leadership Inspirations – Cultivating Habits

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StrategyDriven Inspirational Quote“Cultivate only the habits that you are willing should master you.”

Elbert Hubbard (1856 – 1915)
American writer, publisher, artist, and philosopher

Avoiding Resistance

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Every year, with the best will in the world, we make New Year’s resolutions to make some sort of change, like exercising more or eating healthier. We start off with great gusto and determination, yet by February we begin making excuses to avoid the gym, or convince ourselves pizza would be great for dinner. What happens? We’re approaching change in the wrong way. But we can easily make it right.

Beliefs Define Behaviors

Here’s the problem. Within each of us are long-held rules and principles, created and maintained by our idiosyncratic belief structure. I call this internal, unconscious collection our system, and (as explained in my new book What? Did you really say what I think I heard?), this system determines our behaviors (including how we respond to/hear others, how we choose friends, our politics and religion) and our behaviors are our beliefs in action. We rarely behave, communicate, or decide in ways that offend our beliefs because we would then be incongruent.

It all operates effortlessly until we attempt to drive a behavior that runs counter to our beliefs – and then we get resistance as our system attempts to maintain balance. [I’ve written about it exhaustively in Dirty Little Secrets: why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell and what you can do about it.] This is why people and teams won’t execute good decisions, users don’t use new software, and why implementations fail: we are ignoring our accepted practice and pushing unapproved behaviors into a system that must resist to maintain it’s status quo and balance.

Why New Year’s Resolutions Fail

New Year’s resolutions seek behavior change with no accompanying belief change, potentially causing their own resistance. When my coaching clients seek change, we begin by understanding the systemic baseline beliefs and getting agreement from the system to add acceptable behaviors that will match those beliefs. Here’s a personal example: I’m a healthy person and strongly believe one of my modalities toward health is exercise. But I hate hate hate the gym (Did I say I hate the gym?). I hate it so much I count the steps backward from my house to the gym, and backward again until I’m eventually home. Thankfully I found several classes that are somewhat non-objectionable, and do sweaty country-swing dancing a few times a week. So I get 10 hours a week of exercise and remain congruent with my beliefs: I am a fit, healthy person. And when I find myself making excuses for going to the gym, I remind myself that if I don’t go I won’t be a healthy person. I decide from my beliefs, and act from my behaviors.

I’m aware that there are many models that show how to work with resistance, or behavior change. Yet it’s possible to avoid resistance altogether by first enabling agreement from our beliefs and only then adding behaviors – working from within first, and avoiding ‘push’ from the outside. Then we can maintain our New Year’s resolutions.

If you want some personal or team coaching to manage congruent change, or wish to work with clients in a way that avoids resistance (for sellers, coaches, consultants, negotiators, and decision scientists) contact me at [email protected] to set up a time to pursue possibilities.

To learn more about What? Did you really say what I think I heard? and how to close the gap between what’s said and what’s heard, go to www.didihearyou.com where the digital book is available for free.

About the Author

Sharon Drew Morgen is founder of Morgen Facilitations, Inc. (www.newsalesparadigm.com). She is the visionary behind Buying Facilitation®, the decision facilitation model that enables people to change with integrity. A pioneer who has spoken about, written about, and taught the skills to help buyers buy, she is the author of the acclaimed New York Times Business Bestseller Selling with Integrity and Dirty Little Secrets: Why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell and what you can do about it.

To contact Sharon Drew at [email protected] or go to www.didihearyou.com to choose your favorite digital site to download your free book.

Corrective Action Program Best Practice 9 – Perform Periodic Aggregate Analyses

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StrategyDriven Corrective Action Program Article | Condition Report AnalysisCondition reports provide detailed information on individual performance deficiencies, operational events, and opportunities for improvement. While such information enables the resolution of specific problems, the aggregate analysis of all condition reports provides insight to the underlying systemic faults the correction of which would prevent recurrence of many of the organization’s issues.

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About the Author

Nathan Ives, StrategyDriven Principal is a StrategyDriven Principal and Host of the StrategyDriven Podcast. For over twenty years, he has served as trusted advisor to executives and managers at dozens of Fortune 500 and smaller companies in the areas of management effectiveness, organizational development, and process improvement. To read Nathan’s complete biography, click here.

What investment in your business are you REALLY making?

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‘Return on Investment’ (ROI) in business is predicated on the ability of the company to deliver as promised in product, profit, and its accompanying service.

It’s amazing to me that everyone measures ROI to the penny, and no one measures ROS (return on service) at all.

Most companies are too busy pissing their money away on customer satisfaction surveys when they could eliminate the survey costs, and spend half of that money training people to improve service, and measure the only three things in business that matter: repeat business, profit margins, and referrals – all the rest of the ‘satisfaction’ process is an empty waste of time and money.

Let’s get real here, when J.D. Power gives the customer satisfaction award to an airline, what could the category possibly be? Least crappy?

The object of service is to be so amazing that one person tells another person, or one person posts to their Facebook account, or both. How’s yours?

The key to profitable repeat business and unsolicited referrals is to create genuine word-of-mouth, and word of mouse about the company, the products and services, and especially the people.

ROI REALITY: Do you want to deliver service that’s satisfactory or remarkable?
ROI REALITY: Do you want to deliver service that’s satisfactory or memorable?

Return on service can take place in any part of the business. Here are the most prominent examples:

  • Provide positive attitude training for everyone in the company
  • Provide specific and customized empowerment service training for everyone in the company (what is EACH employee allowed to do and say to a customer?)
  • The receptionist or telephone operator. This is the customer’s first point of contact and sets the tone for the entire transaction.
  • Ship an order error free and backorder free. Get them what they want fast and seamlessly.
  • The delivery and arrival of a customer shipment. Packaging determines image, and the condition of the contents upon arrival proves their worth to the shipper and the care of the shipping department. A HUGE part of re-order consideration.
  • The accounting department people. Accounting can play a major role in customer loyalty. The way they talk to an account, the frequency of error, their accuracy of invoicing, and the common courtesy they may display when someone is late making a payment.
  • Damned automated attendant. No one on earth wants to hear their telephone call answered by a computer, yet every major company in the world employs these godforsaken things. There has to be a better way, and the person that creates it will make billions.
  • The speed, accuracy, and outcome of handling a complaint. Complaints go WAAAAY beyond one customer. They go all the way to social media.

You must perform REMARKABLE or MEMORABLE service for:

  • Following up and thanking customers for an order
  • Following up and making certain that the service call went perfectly
  • Making certain that everyone on the inside of the company is well rewarded, and well thanked for a job well done.

And for those of you who still possess an ounce of skepticism about ROS after these truths, here are some additional ‘return’ elements to consider.

Many Happy Returns:

  • Return on training. Especially for front line people.
  • Return on morale. Internal happiness creates customer happiness.
  • Return on leadership. The leader sets the tone and the attitude BY EXAMPLE.
  • Return on friendliness. All things being equal, people want to do business with their friends.
  • Return on getting the job done ahead of schedule. Real profit created by exceptional team effort.
  • Return on wowing the customer. Priceless. Period.
  • Return on accuracy. Beyond a good feeling all the way to respect – and reorder.
  • Return on quality product. This is a given, but creates more word-of-mouth than any other single forum.
  • Return on positive social media posts. Social media is the new “satisfaction” survey or report.
  • • Return on value messages offered to customers on a consistent basis. Weekly value-based messages to customers create life-long desires to stay connected.
  • Return on using voice-of-customer in YouTube, blog, and Facebook video posts. When you say it about yourself it’s bragging. When someone else says it about you, it’s proof. Video proof is the new proof.

Big companies hammer their entire workforce to make certain that their customer satisfaction scores are high or higher, when they could be (should be) creating an internal training program that begins with the word wow, and progresses upward from there.

Reprinted with permission from Jeffrey H. Gitomer and Buy Gitomer.

About the Author

Jeffrey GitomerJeffrey Gitomer is the author of The Sales Bible, Customer Satisfaction is Worthless Customer Loyalty is Priceless, The Little Red Book of Selling, The Little Red Book of Sales Answers, The Little Black Book of Connections, The Little Gold Book of YES! Attitude, The Little Green Book of Getting Your Way, The Little Platinum Book of Cha-Ching, The Little Teal Book of Trust, The Little Book of Leadership, and Social BOOM! His website, www.gitomer.com, will lead you to more information about training and seminars, or email him personally at [email protected].