Synopsis

The LCD in the title does not mean “liquid crystal display.” It stands for Least Common Denominator, a term from mathematics. If you can break your business down to its smallest components and focus on just one aspect of your business in your weekly presentations, it works much better than providing a laundry list of things you do, or a vague and meaningless term like “full-service.”

For instance, a real estate agent might do 60-second presentations about first-time home buyers, condos, single-family-homes, investment properties, house flipping, downsizing your home for empty-nesters, buying a larger home for a growing family, the communities you focus your business on, and so forth.

No matter what your business is, you know enough about it to break it down in the same way. If you do a whole series of LCDs over the course of a year, by the end of the year everyone in your chapter will know so much about your business that they can give you great referrals.

Make up a quick list of ideas for LCD presentations right now. Share your list–and your stories of how LCDs worked for you–here in the comments.

(Hear more about this topic in Episode 221: Your Business 101.)

Brought to you by Networking Now.

Complete Transcript of Episode 471 –

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 in Charlotte, North Carolina today at BNI headquarters doing Director Orientation Training. BNI Directors from all over the world come to the global headquarters and get trained. So I am visiting. They go for three days of training, 24 hours. They get out there and hopefully help members worldwide grow their businesses.

Priscilla:

That’s great. So-

Ivan:

Today – oh go ahead.

Priscilla:

I was just going to ask you what this LCD episode is about.

Ivan:

You know, I just realized somebody was asking me about LCDs the other day because I talk about them in Givers Gain. I think it is in our orientation audio as well. In fact, I am sure it is.

So they asked me about it and I said to look up a podcast on it and get more details. Then I looked up a podcast just to make sure it was there and I have never done a podcast where I do a deep dive into LCDs. So that is what today is, to give a little bit more description to people.

LCD stands for least or lowest common denominator. It is actually part of algebra, where you take your least or lowest common denominator when you break a number down to its smallest increment. Believe it or not, this actually works in networking or doing presentations as well.

If you can break your business to their smallest piece, it works so much better in BNI. So you talk about your business and really chunk it down and talk about just one aspect of your business, we have found that it works much more effectively than trying to say everything that you do.

Now, I talk about this in a different variation in episode 221, so if you are listening to this one, go back and listen to 221, where I talk about Your Business 101, where you break it down. The usual term that I use with this is the least or lowest common denominator.

You see, people will come into a BNI meeting and they will do one of two things. The first thing that they will do is give you a laundry list of everything that they do. “I do this. I do that.