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BNI: More Than A Meeting
By Ivan R. Misner, Ph.D.
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.
1. Plan
Having taught Strategic Planning at California State University over the last decade, I've learned a great deal about planning and small businesses. Many years ago it used to surprise me that 50 percent of all businesses fail after only three years in operation. However, now that I know how little planning many businesses do, I'm surprised that it's only 50 percent that fail.
If you want to be successful in business, it is critical that you plan your work and work your plan. Furthermore, part of your plan should involve your strategy for building your business through word-of-mouth. In my book, The World's Best Known Marketing Secret, I talk at length about the importance of what I call your Word-of-Mouth Business Acquisition Tactics plan or WOMBAT plan. All BNI members should start the new year out by completing their annual WOMBAT plan. This will help you achieve the results you deserve for all the hard work you do as a business owner or sales professional. A copy of the WOMBAT plan can be downloaded as an Adobe Acrobat .pdf file by clicking on this link.
2. Referrals
Referrals are the reason I started BNI. It is the reason that we go to our weekly meetings in over 2,600 locations throughout 13 countries around the world. Somewhere, every working day of the year, BNI members are meeting and passing referrals to one another. It is estimated* that BNI passed over 2.5 million referrals last year, generating over $856 million (U.S.) in business for our members around the world (final numbers will be released in February).
This is an incredible amount of business-the BNI system makes a substantial difference in the financial health of companies.
Our philosophy is "Givers Gain." It is predicated on the age-old idea of "what goes around, comes around." If I help you, you'll help me and we'll all do better as a result of it. The absolute best way to get more referrals is to "give" referrals whenever you have the opportunity to do so. This is a system that works when everyone in a chapter is working for the best interest of the group and trying to support one another through a reciprocal system of referral generation.
Here are two suggestions for you to increase the number of referrals that you are getting in your chapter. First, immediately set up a schedule to meet with all the members of your group in the "One-on-One" Dance Card system that we have (see your local BNI director if you are not familiar with this). Two, ask the president of your chapter to conduct the "Is Your Net-Working" exercise that can be found in the BNI Chapter Toolkit.
Doing either of these two items will dramatically increase the number of referrals your chapter will generate. Doing both will make a huge difference.
As I said above, referrals are the reason I started BNI. I presume that we all joined BNI for more business. But what we've gained as a result of the BNI system is much more than the business we've generated.
*Footnote - Official numbers for the referrals generated in 2002 will be released in February 2003.
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