The year 2003 starts BNI's 18th year of operation. When I started the organization, generating new business for people in a positive, supportive, and structured word-of-mouth marketing program was foremost in my mind. However, over time I learned that there were many more benefits that members experienced in addition to getting more referrals and new business. Early on, I learned that BNI truly is "more than a meeting." It's about a system, teamwork, experience, professionalism, relationships, and much more. BNI offers many benefits to members who actively "work" the program. Hence, our theme for 2003 ("More than a Meeting") addresses that notion.
Many people gave great thought to this theme and came up with a list of at least 12 major benefits that members receive from their active participation in this program. With each issue of SuccessNet Online throughout the year, various guest authors will be talking about two of these issues for you to consider during your participation.
The first two topics in the 2003 theme relate to having a plan and generating referrals. Therefore, those are the ones that I will be talking about in this first article in the series of six that cover the 2003 BNI theme.
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HUDDLE TIME
Increase Your Membership with a Chapter Contest
By Don Morgan
Imagine 60 referral partners! If you are up to the challenge, the WIT chapter of Montreal, Canada, has the solution. This chapter added 25 new members through a membership contest designed just for their own chapter.
Chapter president, Stephen Hindelang, explained to me how it works.
A core group of WIT members became determined to build their membership from 18 to 30 members. This occurred when the small group invited lots of guests to the well-run meetings where they passed lots of referrals. Their meetings sold the guests.
Once their chapter had 30 members, they started their recruiting contest, determined that they could grow their chapter even more using just a bit of creativity.
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BREAKING NEWS
Go Live and Ask the Founder
BNI will be conducting a live Ask The Founder chat session on Wednesday, January 22, 2003, at 7:00 PM Eastern time (6PM Central, 5PM Mountain, and 4PM Pacific) through the BNI-Yahoo Group website.
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BNI HAPPENINGS
Montana rounds up members for motivational mega-meeting
On Wednesday, September 18, 2002, the four BNI groups in Billings, Montana, gathered together for the first time to hear motivational speaker Craig McFarlane speak about succeeding in life despite being blind. The evening meeting was a great success, and they were thankful to have the chance to hear such a inspirational person.
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BNI founder "sees" UK's success
History was made at West Yorkshire's Members Conference recently when 250 delegates took part in the first-ever live video link-up with BNI's founder Dr. Ivan Misner, who was sitting in his California office nearly 6,000 miles away!
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