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How many of us don’t have people on our teams because they haven’t been invited to join?
At my church, they are doing a series called Jesus, The Rebel, and one of the points that stuck out to me is that Jesus invited the uninvited.
Jesus invited all to share in His love and kingdom of heaven. He broke all the rules around racism, sexism, and the status of children.
So for my birthday and Charlie’s, which are a week apart, we are having a kid-free birthday party with our friends. We never get to play pool volleyball because when we are swimming, our kids are swimming too. And when our kids are swimming, they are constantly asking for any or all of the following – snacks, boogie boards, inflatable rafts, their towels – or they are hanging on us in the water.
But I forgot to invite people, except for one of my friends, and then kind of forgot about it. I followed up with her, and she was ready to come and she invited a mutual friend as well.
Before following up with her, though, I was waffling about the party and was asking Charlie about other plans with just the two of us. After talking to my friend, though, I just sucked it up and invited 4-5 other people. I invited the uninvited, and it wasn’t that big of a deal. Naturally, some of these late invitations were declined, but it still has given me the opportunity to reconnect with some friends I haven’t talked to in awhile. And the friends that are coming, we always have a great time with.
Now what does this have to do with you and your business? Well, I ended up inviting some of my friends, and it wasn’t as hard to reach out to them as hard as I thought it was going to be, or as much drama as I had made it out to be in my mind. It really only took a few minutes.
There is so much shyness about inviting people to learn about your company’s product or possibly running a business. I run a course on recruiting, and the common problem that many of my students face is that their teams are not growing because they simply are not inviting people.
How many of us don’t have people on our teams because they haven’t been invited to join? So I want to encourage you today to invite people to have a conversation.
Now, you may be wondering, “Well what would I say? Because I don’t want to look foolish,” a lot like I didn’t want to look foolish inviting people to my party that is on Saturday and today is Wednesday.” So here are a few steps that will help:
- Acknowledge the awkward
- Give them an agenda of what the appointment would entail
- Give them a time frame and that whatever they respond with is ok.
So when I sent out my party invite I said:
“I know this is last minute and only a few days away. I’m having a party this week on Saturday, and it’s a no-kid pool party. We’re going to have pasta, we’re going to put up the volleyball net from 5 to whenever, let me know if you can come either way.”
Remember, there is no shortage of people that need to make more money, and we can invite them to an opportunity to do that. You can say something like this:
“I know that you know I have been doing this thing for a long time, and I never asked you if you wanted to learn about how this works. Right now, I’m reaching out to people I really like and care about to see if they would like to learn about how to earn money and what you would do. It would take about 30-45 minutes, and then we can catch up afterwards. I just want to make sure you make an informed decision. Is that something you would find helpful?”
We do this without attachment; we don’t stress about it; and we use the three steps so that we have some skill, and then they get to decide.
We get to invite, and they get to decide.
And now, I’m excited about our party. We’re going to get pasta, I’m going to order some cookies, and we’re going to have fun whether it’s 6 of us, or 10 of us. It’s going to be the best party we could throw on short notice, and I think that’s good enough. The people that need to be at my party will be at my party, and that is all I can do – invite people and let them decide.
I hope this is helpful for you today!
Thank you for reading today’s post. Let’s continue the conversation by joining our Facebook group.
If you would like to continue the conversation about inviting people to your team, you can email me at tasha@cnmcommunity.com.