Synopsis

Even if your business is established and successful, it’s important to identify the strengths and weaknesses of your business. Businesses evolve, so it’s good to revisit these questions from time to time. Understanding what we do and why we do it makes for great weekly presentations. Write down these questions and your answers to them.

* Who are your customers–specifically? Define your absolute ideal client.

* What are your core competencies? What do you do really well?

* Who are your direct and indirect competitors? How well are you doing in comparison to them?

What you need to do as a businessperson is improve your product. Improve your service. Know why you’re doing what you’re doing, who your customers are, who your target market is, what your core competencies are, who your competitors are, and how you are doing in competing with them. If you can communicate all that to your network, you will get better referrals.

Brought to you by Networking Now.

Complete Transcript of Episode 450 –

Priscilla:

Hello everyone and welcome back to the Official BNI Podcast, brought to you by NetworkingNow.com, which is the leading site on the net for networking downloadables. I am Priscilla Rice, and I am coming to you from Live Oak Recording Studio in Berkeley, California. I am joined on the phone today by the Founder and the Chief Visionary Officer of BNI, Dr. Ivan Misner. Hello, Ivan. How are you and where are you?

Ivan:

I am doing great, Priscilla, but I have to talk quietly because I am on a writing retreat this week. I am in hiding. Don’t tell anybody, okay?

Priscilla:

Okay, I won’t tell a soul.

Ivan:

It will just be our secret along with the thousands of people that listen to the podcast. You know, every now and then, my wife and I go away and do a little writing retreat where we try to punch out as much writing as possible. That is kind of important to the podcast because a lot of the content that we have in the podcast stems from the writing that I do, either articles or books.

You will get some of the benefits of this little writing retreat in the future in the podcast.

Priscilla:

Perfect. Okay. Well, what is this topic, how well do you know your business?

Ivan:

This is a great example of how the writing that I do ends up in podcasts because this is based on an article I wrote some time ago that I put in my blog a while back. This is a great topic for anyone in business.

If you are in BNI, you are in business, and oftentimes, established business owners hit a point where they don’t think that they need to continue improving themselves or their business. You know, even if you have been successful, it is important to continue to identify the strengths and weaknesses of your business.

As businesses evolve, the needs of that organization can change over time. So many of you listening to this podcast have thought about some of these questions that I am going to bring up here in just a minute. But you may not have thought about them recently. You may have given them some thought when you started your business. If you didn’t you really need to sit down and answer these questions.

Even if you did sit down and think these things through when you started a business, businesses evolve. What I am going to throw out for you today are questions that are good to revisit from time to time.

Even though it sounds silly, we all know what we do, right? We all know what we do. Right? No we don’t. Not really. You know, I think taking the time to identify the basics can really be helpful in the long run. We kind of know what we do, but do we know it in a way that we can express it effectively?

This is what makes great weekly presentations.