Showing Up!

Showing Up – Adding Value to Your Network

Printable Training Topic Worksheet

I get asked a lot about Bold Networking’s attendance policy, so I thought I’d share a little, and let’s discuss why showing up matters so much for your networking events.

A lot happens when we show up every week to network.  Ultimately, people only do business and introduce people that they know, like, trust, and value (K.L.T.V.), and your weekly meetings are a great place to start and nurture those relationships.

Six Things Showing Up Increases

1. Know – over the course of several networking meetings your teammates get to know you and the unique problems you solve for your ideal prospects.  Also, your teammates, through repetition, learn most of your 60-second commercial and can often utilize parts to help you prospect and pre-qualify your prospects.
2. Like –  shared experiences and contact helps grow how much we like each other.  If you contrast that with someone you rarely see, how much does “like” grow?  Not much right.  In fact, the people we typically care about most are the people we meet with regularly.
3. Trust – learning of the stories where our teammates have helped their clients and have done the right thing for them adds to that trust as does the consistency of them showing up week after week.
4. Value – again learning of the stories where our teammates helped create unique value for their clients by solving their problems, and as we learn what problems they solve their value increases to the market.
5. Dependability – by showing up each week your teammates learn that you are dependable.  If you only show up when it’s convenient your teammates may wonder how you show up for clients.
6. Team Value – more possible referral partners increase the perceived value for visitors making it easier to rapidly expand your network.  If half the team doesn’t show up for an event, visitors will likely lose interest in a small team with little commitment; however, having twice the number of professionals engaged helps to add value.
7. Face to Face referrals – many of our teammates will bring your ideal prospects to networking meetings to introduce you in person and if you’re not there it may be very difficult to introduce you in person.

Six Tips for Showing Up and Adding Value

1. Make Showing Up Every Week a Priority – while we do have a relaxed attendance policy, you’re still expected to show up 3 out of 4 meetings.  My suggestion is to seldom miss barring major catastrophes.  Act as if this is the most important meeting of the week or a class you signed up for at college and had to buy a $1,000 textbook.
2. Show up early and stay late – the extra time and commitment to your teammates will grow and deepen relationships.  Plus, you’ll have a chance to meet visitors and help them feel welcome.
   1. Block off the time in your calendar and make your meeting time non-negotiable.  Clearly, we are all very busy people and get even busier as referrals grow.  Those that make their meeting time non-negotiable, typically receive far more referrals.
   2. Not showing up and not showing up on time may signal to your referral partners that you may be unreliable and you may miss introductions.
3. Be prepared – being prepared helps add to the quality of each event and increases the amount of interaction
   1. Print, fill in, and study the weekly training topic.  This adds value to the meeting as a whole and possibly to your personal growth.
   2. Prepare for your weekly presenter – review their social media accounts and web pages to learn more about them, their company, and industry.  Formulate a couple of questions about them and their business to ask following their presentation.
4. Actively Listen and Participate – it’s one thing to be at the meeting and yet another to be engaged in the meeting.  By being prepared and actively participating, you’re more likely to have fun and get noticed.
   • Minimize distractions – nothing conveys you don’t care as much as checking your text messages, playing with your smartwatch, or sending emails during a weekly meeting.  Turn off your electronics, kill notifications, and be 100% present.
   • If you’re easily distracted, like me, position yourself with distractions out of view like TVs, picture windows, and if online, turn off pop-up notifications.
   • Actively listening also means not actively talking.  Avoid like the plague talking over your teammates including 60-second presenters, gratitudes, team leaders, and 6-minute presenters.
   • Ask questions and add dialogue to the training topic when possible.  Training topics are intended to be completely interactive and immersive, so please participate in your team training.
5. Be Strategic and Intentional – I find it is incredibly effective, whether they be Bold Networking events or not, to have an intentional strategy.  For example, if I intentionally seek one new visitor for each meeting, actively seek at least one introduction for a teammate, and schedule one connect meeting following each meeting, I’ll add enormous value to the meeting and my personal network.  If, on the other hand, I show up and hope something happens, I’m far less likely to add value and far less likely to grow my personal network.
6. Invite Guests each and every week – inviting guests is one of the most productive activities possible when it comes to professional networking
   1. Enables you to prospect for your own clients in a very low-pressure manner, as you are simply inviting your ideal prospects to meet some of the professionals you network with to grow their business
   2.  Provides prospects for your teammates
   3. Expands our network enabling us to connect our network to more solutions
   4. Adds vibrancy and appeal to accelerate the growth of your team and adding teammates exponentially increases everyone’s network as each new teammate may have 100’s or even 1,000’s of connections in their network.
   5. When your guests show up it makes you look super cool in front of your friends!  It only takes 2-3 teammates intentionally inviting guests each week to make for a steadily growing powerful networking team.
   6. Plus, if you have guests coming, you are far more likely to make it a priority to show up too.

It’s one thing to be at the meeting and yet another to be engaged in the meeting.

Printable Training Topic Worksheet

PS  Call To Action:  Take action now to add value to your network and invite at least one professional to this weeks meeting by email, text, phone call, Facebook private message and LinkedIn In Mail.  Extra Credit:  Invite 3-5 every week for the next four weeks.  You’ll like to be amazed by what can happen to your network and sales in just a handful of weeks!