Maximize Your Chamber Membership For More Sales (part 2)

Rob  00:00

Hey, welcome back, everybody to The Slow Pitch. And last time, we talked a little bit about the Chamber of Commerce and how you can get the most out of it, and I want to continue on my thoughts on how to get as much as possible out of the chamber of commerce. Let’s get started.

V/O  00:22

This is The Slow Pitch Podcast.

Rob  00:26

So this is based on a bunch of questions that I’ve been asked over the years. And if you have not listened to the first episode, that’s kind of the starter basics. And we’re kind of get into the more deeper stuff here on this episode, but go back and listen to that. If you haven’t already, if you have great you’re caught up. So let’s kind of get started into this.

Rob  00:43

At the end of the last episode, we talked about, how many events should you attend? And we kind of get into how many, and it kind of depends on you. But once you’re at an event, what’s the best way to introduce yourself at a mixer or a breakfast if you’re gonna do things, what I feel like is the right way and what I see and not enough people do at chamber events. If you’re gonna do it the right way, I would highly recommend you position a quick and brief introduction that explains or hits on a pain related to what you do and how you serve your customers or clients.

Rob  01:21

Here’s what I mean. When I go to a breakfast, we sit at a table. All these things happen during the breakfast, introductions, all these other things, but there’s usually a time during the event that goes around the table where everybody gets to introduce each other or themselves, and tell people what they do.

Rob  01:36

And here’s what I always hear, I’m so and so, I’m from company, A, B and C, and we do this, that’s it, right? And that gives them nothing, that gives them no idea of of what people do. And so I like to try to make sure that people understand what I do by framing it in terms of something of a pain or something of a problem that I’m solving.

Rob  01:59

So if I’m a video production company. What I’m saying is something along these lines. I might introduce myself and say, Hey, my name is Rob. I work with XYZ company, right? And one of the things that I’ve found is that a company that we work with recently has a problem explaining exactly what they do clearly.

 

Rob  02:17

Obviously, they’re a really complicated company in what they do. They do a lot of things, and they serve a lot of different types of customers. So how do they boil down what they do really? Well? Well, they do that through video. What they do is they talk about how they solved this problem and they solved that problem, and they did so quickly enough in a 62nd commercial.

Rob  02:36

That’s the type of company that I help, and that’s the type of things that we create. If anybody would like to hear more about that. I’m happy to talk about the after the breakfast, and that’s really kind of what I do, right? If so, I’m gonna talk about what the issue is, or what I do to help solve the problem for my clients. That’s the best way that you can create a commercial.

Rob  02:54

And the other thing that you can do is, and this is what I typically will do and say something along the lines of, I do that for all types of other companies, and one of the types of companies that I’d like to be introduced to today is and then I will name a company or person who’s in attendance today at that breakfast or lunch. Well, guess what?

Rob  03:12

Somebody typically knows who that person is, and I might get an introduction to them, especially if I haven’t found them during the mixing part. That’s how you make sure that you’re getting the most bang for your buck. Why are you wasting your time telling everybody about what you do when what you really want is an introduction to somebody in the room?

Rob  03:29

So keep that in mind. And still, while you’re educating some people that are at the at the table with you, right, you want to make sure you keep them you’re educating them so that when they see you, they know what you do.

Rob  03:38

And to me, that’s how you can stand out against other businesses or your competitors at these types of events, you stand out because you’re clear in what you’re asking for, clearing what you do, and you can explain it in a succinct way that’s critical. And I also feel like this kind of goes along the lines of, like, people ask me, how do you get referrals, or do you get a lot of work through the chamber?

Rob  03:59

And I would say, Yeah, I do, but it’s not through the ways that people think it is. It’s not like I go networking and handing out all my cars and somebody just goes, Oh, I needed this. That’s not what happens. It’s through strategic work. It’s through identifying on the list of who’s going to attend, making sure that I know that they’re going to be there, and then again, introduction through them.

Rob  04:17

Here’s the level up that people don’t understand. If you know somebody that works at the chamber, which is what you should be doing first, is getting to know the people that work at the Chamber, or getting to know one or two people that work at the chamber. If you get to know them, and they get to know you, when you need to be introduced to somebody at an event, they can and will do it.

Rob  04:39

That’s what they like to do. They want to make sure they help you and get the most out of your membership. So what they will do is they will full on introduce you to that person that you’re asking about. So when I arrive at a check in desk, when I’m going to one of these events, I might say, Hey, have you seen so and so?

Rob  04:57

Have you seen Joe from XYZ Company? Okay, and they’ll look at their list. They go, No, but I see that they’re going to be here. Well, when they get here, would you let me know?

Rob  05:05

And they will let you know, it’s incredible, or they’ll come find you and go, Hey, I wanted to introduce you to you know why they’ll do it? Because nobody else who checks in does that, nobody else who checks in asks for it, and nobody else who checks in even thinks about that. All they’re there for is the drink, the food, and they’re trying to just network and mingle, and they think they’re doing something be strategic and be direct.

Rob  05:28

One of the other questions that comes up is, you know, there’s a lot of committees in the chamber. Should I join one of those? Is it helpful? So depending on the type of chamber that you’re involved in, they may be very large, if you will, and they may have several committees that you can enjoy, I would recommend figuring out what you enjoy being involved in and get involved with that committee.

Rob  05:48

So some chambers have committees that are related to or, let’s say, government or government affairs or economic development. Sometimes there’s a committee that’s related to some sort of a city function.

Rob  06:01

Sometimes there’s one that’s related to tourism. Sometimes there’s something related to education. It depends on what’s going on around the around the chamber, or what’s really big in that city or that area.

Rob  06:11

So make sure that you understand what each committee does, what their purpose is of being there, and what your purpose is also of being there, right? So their purpose as a committee is, one thing, do you belong there and should you be there?

Rob  06:25

The next thing is, if you go to a committee, you should hit, you should hit a couple of them, you know, figure out which ones you think you might like, and then figure out which ones is the one you want, which one or ones are the ones you want to attend more regularly.

Rob  06:36

And so knowing that these are the things you want to get in, to get involved in, attend those committees and just listen. Just listen and ask as many questions as you can during or after the meeting. So during what typically what I end up doing, and it’s mostly because I’m more introverted, right?

Rob  06:53

So I will tend to just sit quietly, listen, take notes, learn, and then I might ask somebody afterwards about some of the other things that I heard after a few meetings. I might ask more questions during the meeting, and a lot of times.

Rob  07:05

I hate to say this, but what I’ll do is I’ll when I ask my first few questions, I might say something along the lines of, you know, I’m sorry I don’t know enough about what this whole committee is doing, so I apologize if this is a dumb question, but here’s my question, and every time I do that, somebody will always say, there’s no dumb question.

Rob  07:22

It’s okay, because there really is not. And now that I’ve been involved in several committees, and I run a committee, there is no dumb question. In fact, as a committee chair, that is the best thing you could have, is people asking questions.

Rob  07:34

That means there is engagement, that means that people want to learn more, and that means there’s other things that to talk about. So sometimes you might be running a meeting, or they might be running a meeting, and then they’re trying to figure out, how do I fill those last 10 minutes?

Rob  07:46

And so the questions really become an important component. And so asking those questions are really, really important. One caveat here, when you ask the question, don’t make the question about what you do.

Rob  07:57

Make the question about what is the committee about? Whatever the question is, has to be about the committee, not about what you do, not trying to promote yourself, not an indirect promotion. Don’t do that. That is the worst thing. And everybody in the room knows exactly what you’re doing, and nobody enjoys it, okay?

Rob  08:15

And that’s one of those leadership roles you can take on. So if somebody asked me, you know, is there something that we can, I can do from a leadership role, or anything they do inside of the chamber. That’s really one of those best ways you can do is become involved in the committee.

Rob  08:25

The other thing is, you can do you can ask the President of the Chamber, what are some of the leadership things that you can become involved in. There’s usually a whole other level of membership that’s a premier membership, or another level up that’s usually an executive level, or some sort of level that is business owners only, or some sort of, you know, some, sometimes they call them trustees.

Rob  08:47

Sometimes they call them executive or some other level, right? And those are the kind of leadership things that you can start to take on, too. And you can ask, How can I help? How can I help the chamber? And they will tell you how you can help.

Rob  08:59

And so, the other question that comes up sometimes is, how do I track my return on my investment? Sometimes people don’t ask that question, but they’re like, I don’t seem to get much out of this, or I haven’t gotten much out of it in the last, you know, three months.

Rob  09:09

Okay, my course, first question when somebody says I haven’t gotten much out of that, or they’re not sure how to track it, I my question becomes, how are you tracking it, right? So what? What are the ways that you’re making notes of who is calling you, who your meetings are, and all that kind of stuff.

Rob  09:23

And I go back to when I have my task list or my report that I run every week and do every week, which is check mark on I did a meeting at I did a networking meeting. I followed up with this person after the meeting. I went on a coffee meeting with somebody.

Rob  09:38

There’s some things that you can do that say, what’s my ROI and how much time am I spending on that? So if I’m running through a week and I say, Okay, I had a meeting with this person who is a chamber member. They do this business. They’re a good referral source.

Rob  09:51

I met them three months ago at this other breakfast, but I wanted to reconnect with them. And then I went over to this event and I met somebody new, and then I had another conversation with them, and I had a five minute call with this person, I introduce them to that person like those are your trackable things that you should be doing.

Rob  10:06

And then on the other end of that, which is your sales cycle, you should be tracking all of the things that are leading to business that you’re getting. So how many were of the people that you spoke to at different events are leads? How many people have been referred to you?

Rob  10:19

How many incoming calls have come from their the chamber website, or referrals, or people that have been referred from people in the chamber itself. How are you tracking that? And you really should be tracking that.

Rob  10:30

One of the other interesting questions is somebody asked me, should I join more than one chamber? Because there’s a couple really close by, and should I join that? My gut feeling is no, and…hear… hear me out.

Rob  10:44

My reason I say no in the first seconds of hearing that question, Should I join more than one chamber? Is how much time are you going to spend at each of the chambers? How much time you spent at the first chamber?

Rob  10:56

How much business are you already getting out of the first chamber? If you’ve spent a good amount of time. And you know, I’ve gone to every breakfast of this year. I’ve gone to some networking events in the afternoon or the evening.

Rob  11:07

I’ve joined a committee or two. I’ve gotten involved in whatever right different leads groups or different things that you’ve done. I’ve done all these things, and you go, Okay, there’s six things every month that I’m doing, and I’ve done this for 12 months, and I’m getting nothing I’m getting no traction.

Rob  11:22

My first statement would be, what are you doing wrong? Because there’s something you’re doing that’s rubbing people the wrong way. If you’re pushing your cards, if you’re making things feel very uncomfortable, it’s you not the chamber. And if you go to a new chamber, you’re gonna have the same problem.

Rob  11:36

Okay, now, if you’ve done all of that, and you’re getting a bunch of business out of the chamber already, and you want to expand into another chamber, you can but just remember, if you go from one chamber and you expand into a second chamber, you’re going to find that your time is limited, and you’re going to start to see the first chamber dwindle, and the second chamber, you’re going to start to grow, but It’s going to take you time, right?

Rob  12:02

So if you have more than one person in your business, or if you have multiple people, yeah, you can join other ones, but they need to be purposeful in what they’re doing, and so should you. So don’t think that if I join a second low second chamber, that I’m gonna get a whole bunch more business, unless you put the work in, you won’t.

Rob  12:20

So don’t, don’t do things like be, oh, I think it’s gonna be automatic. I did that a long time ago. I had, I was, I was joined one chamber. I joined the second chamber. I thought, Oh, okay.

Rob  12:28

And then I would go to one event every month of this other chamber. Never hit. All the big events never hit all the I just had one event. It really didn’t pay off. And after two years, I was like, What am I doing?

Rob  12:37

Why am I going to these, this other chamber? Because I’m wasting time, I don’t need to spend the time there or the money. The money is not such a big deal. It’s the time. So I went back to the original first chamber, and I expanded what I did there, and that has made a difference.

Rob  12:53

You know, somebody asked me too, there’s a local chamber, there’s a regional one, there’s a State Chambers, there’s a you, there is a US Chamber of Commerce. They’re all interconnected.

Rob  13:03

And should you join all of them? No, unless you’re going to do something that’s related to whatever you need. If you’re a statewide chamber, you’re joining that and you it’s because you deal with a state that’s a different issue.

Rob  13:16

I would recommend, like, schools would join the statewide chamber because they have impact, or they have needs from the state, and they would need to network there, right?

Rob  13:24

But if you’re just a small business in a location, or even a multi location business in a state, it may not be worthwhile to join the statewide chamber. It may be it just you need to investigate that. So it’s really hard for me to answer that question for any one particular business, but once you start to investigate what you’re trying to get out of it, and what they can evaluate, what they can give you in value, you may find that that’s the area you should be focused on.

Rob  13:45

So let’s kind of talk a little bit about behind the scenes questions. These are some of the things that people kind of want to know but they don’t want to ask, right? So one of the questions that can come up is, how political are chambers of commerce, and should you get involved in that side of it?

Rob  13:58

And that’s a tough question, because what kind of political are you talking about? Are you talking like politics? Politics? Are you talking about political within the cities and the Locate local markets because you want to be involved in the local markets.

Rob  14:09

Believe it or not, the more that you’re involved with local government, the more influence that you have, the more that they know who you are and know what you want, the more that they’re going to be helpful and friendly to your business and to your neighborhoods and so forth.

Rob  14:23

And the more that they see you as a person rather than a business, the better off you are. Sometimes there’s things you that you as a business need. So here’s a good example.

Rob  14:32

One time when I had my business up and running. We were running, running and running, and then the landlord had just kind of the sign out front was on a monument sign, and there was multiple names and lists on the sign, and then there was a hole in the sign, and the sign looked really like it looked like it was damaged, basically right, and it looked bad.

Rob  14:54

And our brand was next to that hole. And I asked the landlord, and the landlord didn’t really do anything about it. And I asked again, and they didn’t do anything about it.

Rob  15:02

And so finally, I just happened to be talking with a with a city council person one time, and I asked him, I said, you know, how does that work with code blah, blah, blah, right? And he goes, well, you know, there’s this, there’s this. And I said, well, well, if there’s a sign that has a hole in it, I mean, would that be a code enforcement issue. And he goes, Yeah, why? And I said, well, because the monuments on that my my brand is on, has a hole right underneath our name, and it looks bad.

Rob  15:30

And he goes, “What’s the address?” And would you know that within a week it was fixed? Now I’m not saying you do that with everything, but you know, there are occasions that things come up that are small, that they can fix immediately.

Rob  15:43

And why not have that connection so that thing, those things can happen, and it’s nothing. There’s nothing wrong with that. That is how it works. So is it bad to get involved in the political stuff? Not really.

Rob  15:55

There’s some value in some of that, from a politically correct if you will, not not so much in the politics world, but in the political standpoint, how do you just politely say you’re not a good fit when you’re at networking events? Right? They’re there for the same reason you are.

Rob  16:09

And so when I find that there’s somebody who is not a good fit when I’m networking and I don’t feel like I don’t want to talk to this person anymore, what I’ll do is I’ll find out who is a good person for them to talk to, and then bring them to that person.

Rob  16:22

Obviously, that matters, if you know enough people, but by bringing them to the person that they actually want to talk to and who they want to be in front of, instead of me, who I’m never going to buy from them, ever, ever, ever, why would I stand there and talk to them?

Rob  16:34

Let’s get them in front of the person that they really want to talk to. So one of the things that it’s really important to understand is that chambers can really be an advocate for your business.

Rob  16:44

That’s what they’re almost there for. And so from a regulate, regulatory standpoint, or from how the city behaves, those are the things that the chamber is really good at, usually, if they’re run correctly, if they’re not an advocate for your business, it’s probably not a very good chamber. It’s not about networking.

Rob  17:02

It’s about being an advocate and having a a community that is business friendly. It doesn’t mean they’re bending over backwards for the for the business. You know, like the city shouldn’t be bending over backwards and making it just about the business, but it’s friendly.

Rob  17:15

It’s making sure that everybody can survive together and be happy, right? And the chamber should be supporting that. And if you don’t have a chamber that’s not that’s supporting it very, very well, or being that business advocate, then you probably need to look at other options. In my opinion, there are a couple of other little points that I would give you.

Rob  17:33

There are ways you can leverage your membership for improving your social proof. There. There’s things that you could do to leverage your SEO by using the chamber membership, and that’s doing stuff on their website.

Rob  17:46

You can post blogs, sometimes you can post press releases, sometimes you can post on their social media, or let them hold an event at some place. So there’s different things you can do to help you with your SEO. So that’s another thing that you should be looking at.

Rob  18:00

How do I do that? You can speak at different events, or you can create a content that’s valuable for other members. And by doing that, by speaking and presenting, people look at you as you are a resource about this particular topic, and they will call you when it’s time.

Rob  18:15

Those are the kinds of things that you should be doing, in addition to any of the networking stuff. But these things take time the Chamber members, or the chamber people that are working there, they don’t just want everybody to come up and start speaking as an expert. They take time. They need to understand and feel comfortable with you and just know that that’s not going to happen immediately, but more that you do that, the better off you are. Obviously right.

Rob  18:36

That helps your business. So if you can get yourself in front of a group of people as a speaker in the chamber, that is very helpful. I feel like that’s one of the secret strategies that most people don’t understand.

Rob  18:46

That they can use that to their advantage by positioning things, even if they don’t make it a chamber event, if you can host it at the Chamber itself and hold an event where you’re going to talk about a particular topic, and the chamber can put it out there say, this is something that is happening in our community. And here’s Rob over at this company, who’s going to be presenting this information that’s valuable for the people that are going to be attending. It just adds clout, right?

Rob  19:08

So if, even if you’re not sponsored so to speak, or supported by or brought to you by the chamber, have your own event hosted at the Chamber itself, because they have a boardroom or some sort of a conference room, and make it that your own event and let them promote it for you.

Rob  19:23

That’s totally that’s totally fine if they’re willing to do that. Those are the things that are little secrets that people don’t realize that you should be doing. I hope that this is kind of helpful in helping you understand that a chamber is not join and get business.

Rob  19:35

The chamber is work. You have to work and get in front of as many people as possible by learning what they do, figuring out who they need to talk to, introducing them to other people, asking a lot of the right questions, and making sure that they understand who you are and what you do clearly as possible at any networking event, they should all understand who you are and what you do before anything.

Rob  20:00

Don’t make it about you every time, whether you’re at a committee meeting or you’re at a breakfast or at a luncheon or even an evening event, it’s not about you. Always. There are moments where you have to say who you are, what you do that’s critical, and do it, but don’t go on and on, right?

Rob  20:17

Don’t make everything about you. If there’s something that I missed, or you think that there’s something that you would add to this list I am open. I would love to have you drop me a comment, drop me an email and let me know what I missed, because I want to share that with other people.

Rob  20:28

And if you found this to be helpful, please share this with other people. You can share it out on social media. You can make sure that people understand more. You can mail it to somebody directly through an email and let them know that this is the way you should be behaving at a chamber, because people need to know more of this than they then they realize.

Rob  20:45

I hate to say that, but I’ve seen it too many times that people join and they think they’re there to just get business. And it’s not about just getting business. It’s about making relationships, understanding what people do, and helping each other find other business.

Rob  20:58

So I do hope this helps you, and if you think it helped you and you want to share it with somebody else, I really somebody else, I really appreciate it until next time, remember Slow Down and Close More.

V/O  21:06

Thank you for listening to The Slow Pitch. Do you have a question about sales? Call or text your question at (608) 708-SLOW. That’s (608) 708-7569. Or you can email them to Questions@TheSlowPitch.com. Slow Down and Close More.