The advantages of meetings

You may not like meetings. But who says you have to like meetings? You just have to come to them! Now of course this is said jokingly, but there's a number of very valid reasons why meetings are important and help you build your business. How many people can you deal with at a meeting? You can have 10 or more guests if you want. How many people can you deal with on a one-to-one basis? Right, just one. I'm gearing up my time by doing my business at briefings instead of doing one-to-ones. I'm not saying you shouldn't do one-to-ones but don't expect your business to grow very rapidly because it's very time consuming to do it that way.

When you do your business at briefings you have a number of advantages over one-to-ones. First, you have what we call group dynamics. There's a lot more energy with a hundred people in the room than at a one-to-one meeting.

Then there's the aspect of third party credibility. Your prospect is not taking your word for it. They are hearing the story from a presenter that they probably don't know. You can introduce your guest to people from a similar background, for instance another dentist, doctor or accountant (there's almost always an accountant in the room).

What we do is a team effort. If you have a guest or not, you still have to come to the business briefing because this is where you build your business. You may think "I've heard it all before", "I know the presentation", "I'm not gonna learn anything new" but again this is a team effort!

If you have a guest, you need the meeting. Say you have arranged for your best contact to come to the business briefing. You then want the meeting to be the best ever. You want to be impressed, because if you are impressed, your guest is really going to be impressed! You want a good presenter, you want lots of feedback from the audience, you smile, applaud, do all the things to make this the best meeting you've ever been to. You also want a big audience, because of the group dynamics and the 3rd party credibility. Now suppose everyone has a policy of only showing up when they have a guest. What if all or most of them happened to have a bad week that week? You tell your guest all about this great business opportunity and how wonderful it all is, and yet no one shows up but yourself, your guest and the presenter. Not very impressive. So treat the business like you want the business to treat you. What goes around, comes around.

Arrive early. You don't want people coming in during the presentation, so make sure you don't do it yourself. It distracts everyone, but in a business opportunity meeting it is essential that everyone's got their attention focused. The presenter is working up to a point that really grabs the attention of your quest, and just when the important point is about to be made, someone comes in, the audience turns around.... you don't want it to happen to your guest, so don't do it yourself.

When the meeting is over, even if it is the worst meeting you have ever seen, don't let it show on your face. Your guest may be impressed, because they have never seen another presentation before. They don't know any better, so they may be impressed. It really doesn't make any difference. Maybe your guest comments "I didn't think much of the speaker" and then you can react by saying "Yeah, can't you do that a lot better?".

We don't want real slick professional speakers, so that people still think they can do better. Actually, if the speakers are too good, your guest may think "If I have to be that good to succeed at this business, I'll never be able to do it". So he does not get involved. We want to avoid that line of thought. So get up and give the speaker your best applause ever. If your guest sees you enthusiastic, they even may think: "Hey, I might have missed something?!?"

In addition to all this, if you attend a meeting while you have no guests, you can take the opportunity to learn from the conversations afterwards. Just go sit at a table where someone else in your up- or downline, does have a guest. You can learn from those guests' questions and objections. Also, you can listen more relaxed because without a guest you're likely to be more relaxed - and you'll learn better.

You see - meetings are a win-win situation. But only if you are there. So I'll see you there!