Practice your presentation at new Chamber South group

December 4, 2006

At a meeting of Chamber South’s new Business Relationship Network, from left, Sergio Pinto, Bank Atlantic; Dipak Parekh, Radiance MedSpa; Abe Bertan, Tenzer Realty and Dr. Steve Liebowitz, Wisdom At Work

Chamber South’s new Business Relationship Network (BRN) has struck a chord with members. The bi-weekly meetings are filling the Chamber South conference room table, with more than 30 in attendance.

This is one of the interesting new projects coming out of the chamber’s revitalized Business Committee, under the direction of Dipak Parekh of Radiance MedSpa. Dr. Steve Liebowitz of Wisdom At Work, a business coach, has taken a leading role in getting BRN up and running. After long and thoughtful debate, this Business Relationship Network set two goals:

• For members to learn about each other’s businesses enough so they can not only do business with each other, but find business for each other.
• To help each other become better presenters when talking about their business.

At one recent meeting, for example, the presenter was commercial Realtor Abe Bertan of Tenzer Realty. He described how he helped a client find new office space. But Bertan read his presentation – fast – and everyone was a couple of paragraphs behind, still processing the data when he finished. There was a moment of silence as people absorbed his final thoughts.

I understood from the presentation that as a result of his efforts, the client got larger space in a better building and paid nothing for the service, since the landlord paid Bertan’s commission. That’s a pretty good result.

But Kathy Terry of Terryfic Ad Specialties was listening more closely and asked: “If I’m doing the math right, it seems you saved the client $10,000 a year on a five-year lease?”

“Yes,” Bertan said.

“Maybe you should say that in the future,” she suggested, as Bertan nodded agreement.

Fun meetings, taking place now every other week, and the cost is only $5. They order in pizza or some other inexpensive lunch into the chamber conference room. You can try one or two of these meetings to see if you like it, but to be a regular participant you must be a member of Chamber South. The BRN is, in effect, one of the benefits of chamber membership.

There continues to be an interesting philosophical discussion surrounding BRN. Is it a leads group? Chamber leadership thinks not.

But that’s a very important ethical question to some chamber members who care about ethics (yes, there are a few), since many people already belong to a leads group elsewhere and are committed to belonging to only one such group.

If you don’t know about leads groups, they are organizations of only one person per industry that usually meets weekly. The groups are small by nature, and members become very close as they learn about each other’s businesses and exchange business leads. If you have a moral commitment to use and refer business only to the florist in your leads group, for example, it’s a problem if you try to make that same commitment to the members of several different groups.

Each chamber member needs to search his or her own heart on this matter. One huge difference is that leads groups – with varying degrees of intensity – insist that members make referrals to each other, and there are no leads being exchanged at BRN, at least as a formal part of the program. Nor is there any limitation on how many people can join from each industry.

But the heart and soul of a leads group is the intent to get to know each other and do business with each other, and that’s a very clear part of the BRN mission. However, it’s also the mission of every networking organization, isn’t it? Hence, the ethical question. You figure it out for yourself.

By contrast, the Coral Gables Chamber is very upfront about it. There are two clearly defined leads groups as part of the organization, and chamber members can join these at no additional charge. Again, weekly meetings and $5 for a simple lunch.

Check the calendar on the Events page for upcoming BRN meetings. Give it a try, particularly if you are already a Chamber South member or are considering membership. It’s a nice group, and fun meetings (unless you are the speaker preparing to be skewered), and it’s only $5 for lunch. If the response eventually overflows the conference room, it will break up into a two groups.