|
Smoother Sailing in BNI
By Elisabeth Misner, Special Projects Director and Senior Editor for SuccessNet Online
How does the world of sailing and navigating apply to our world of BNI?
The word navigator comes from two Latin words, navis, meaning "ship" and agree, meaning "to direct" or "to move." Navigation is defined as "the process of directing the movement of a craft from one place to another."
Marine navigation methods and techniques will vary with the type of vessel, the prevailing conditions, available equipment, and the navigator's experience. There is a world of difference between navigating a pleasure craft and an oil tanker, even though you may use the same type of equipment and navigation techniques.
In BNI, we are moving from a traditional way of looking at marketing ourselves to a primarily referral-based marketing! It can be very different navigating through this process as a newcomer to BNI as it is for a long-term member, but the basic techniques are the same!
One of the greatest appeals of sailing is that you are dealing with the elemental forces of nature, and your ability to sail well depends upon your ability to sense and respond to changing conditions in the wind and water. Your ability to develop a word-of-mouth based business, or a referral-based business, depends on your ability to sense and respond to changing conditions in the marketplace and understanding how to navigate the ocean we call BNI.
Three of the primary phases of navigation have relevant points that tie in with the phases of developing word-of-mouth-based business:
Harbor Phase
In this first phase, you are primarily visually navigating to keep yourself clear of other vessels and off the rocks as you approach or depart your mooring or dock on the way to the mouth of the harbor. A parallel phase in BNI is when you are first getting to know your fellow networkers. You will tend to see newer members using themselves as the referral for the first few months until they get to know the other members of the chapter on a more personal level.
There are some techniques in BNI that we employ to help get through the Harbor Phase and onto the next two phases. The first technique is the Sixty Second Introduction. By teaching you to be specific in your intro's, breaking your businesses down into LCD's or Lowest Common Denominators, you are able to better educate the other members as to who they can refer to you.
Many BNI members do the laundry list intro. A much more effective thing to do with your 60 minutes a week (which adds up to nearly one hour a year!) is to choose only one element each week and elaborate on that. For example, as a former chiropractic assistant, I would talk one week about how the doctor could help headaches; the next week, I would cover our successes with allergy sufferers, and so on!
Another technique is the One-on-One Dance Card. Networking is a relationship-building exercise! Do the GAINS (Goals, Accomplishments, Interests, Networks and Success) exchange talked about in Business By Referral during your "dance." When you take the time to really get to know your fellow networkers outside of the meeting, you will begin to clear the harbor and sail toward coastal waters.
Coastal Phase
This phase is defined as navigation within 50 miles of the coast or inshore of the 200-meter depth contour. Now, I know that is way more about navigation than you wanted to know, but this phase is seen in BNI chapters as well. In the coastal phase, the navigator is using every navigation resource available with the possible exception of the celestial, because coastal sailing is usually done during daylight hours.
As you begin building your business with word of mouth, you begin to really utilize the tools provided by BNI. You are:
• on the website, reading back issues of SuccessNet,
• joining the BNI Yahoo Club and taking part in the networking online once a month, and
• listening to the BNI Conference tapes from our twice-yearly Directors' Conferences.
These Directors are the very ones who contributed to Masters of Networking and have helped to propel this book to the number three spot on the Wall Street Journal's Bestseller's list the first week it was released!
The more you utilize the resources available within BNI to develop your networking skills, the closer to your goal of wide-open ocean sailing you will become.
Ocean Phase
In this phase, you are well away from shore and your navigation takes on a rhythm of its own for days and sometimes weeks on end. This is true in a BNI chapter as well. Most BNI members are receiving one or more referrals every week! The chapters have a rhythm with the meeting agendas.
The "crew" of the chapter works together to achieve success in developing word-of-mouth business for all members. Your chapter mirrors a sailing crew; every person on that team is vital. Each person has a function and without that person, the chapter doesn't work as well. That's one reason we instituted an attendance policy in the very first months of BNI's existence. How many of you have ever gotten a haircut over the phone? You must be present and accounted for to contribute to the success of the chapter as a whole, not to mention your individual success!
Your President serves as the captain; your Membership Committee frequently evaluates where the chapter is and determines if you've gotten off course, if it's necessary to correct course so that the chapter can continue to be productive.
You've heard of the term "tell-tale sign," right? That term originated with a sailing technique. "Tell tales" are attached to the sails so they indicate whether the airflow past the sail is turbulent or smooth. You must allow for shifts in the wind when sailing in order to keep the boat heading in the right direction. A 10-inch piece of wool string is passed through the sail with a needle so that five inches is left hanging on either side of the stitch. These strings are passed through the sail in several places and the crew keep an eye on the way the strings are fluttering to tell if they are going to get the desired drive from trimming the sail one way or another.
Your Membership Committee has tell tale signs as to the drive of the chapter as well. They can look at the Vice President's report, which tracks referrals given and received as well as the numbers of visitors to a chapter each month, and tell you if the chapter is healthy or not. Your Leadership Team has been trained to keep an eye on the reports to evaluate if the chapter is about to stall or headed for success. Some of those reports and tools include:
• Reality Checklist
• Chapter Tool-Kit
• Stack Day
• Membership Drives
• The BNI Game
A healthy chapter:
• has few absences; the crew is all accounted for;
• will be exchanging a steady number of referrals—that's what we are all here for, anyway!; and
• will be attracting other business professionals who visit, are excited by what's going on in the weekly meeting and who become a part of the sales team. That really is what you are for each other: a sales team on the lookout for new clients and business for each other.
The philosophy of BNI is GIVERS GAIN. By that we mean, if you give referrals, you will gain referral. This is a dynamic that is the same the world over. Members who focus on what they get out of BNI don't make it to the Coastal Phase. Those who focus on bringing referrals to the chapter are the ones who, week after week, receive more referrals than anyone else!
So, the thing to remember whether you're sailing or participating in BNI is that if you're taking the wrong tack, you're obviously going in the wrong direction. But if you stay your course, you'll get to your destination&mdashsuccess in BNI and success in your word-of-mouth-based business.
This article was adapted from a live conference presentation in Brea, CA, at the 2001 International Directors' Conference for BNI, given by Elisabeth Misner, Special Projects Director and Senior Editor for SuccessNet Online. The presentation is available on CD from the Learning Center at http://www.bni.com.
|
|
