Successful BNI members will tell you that Relationships equal Results. And as another year winds down, we start to think about how we did over the last 12 months to increase the number and quality of relationships with other BNI members. We ask ourselves the same questions every year:
“How did I spend my time developing relationships?”
“What was the one area where I gained the best return on my investment of time?”
And perhaps most importantly, “Next year, how do I replicate and increase my successes from this year to make next year better?”
On a regular basis, we survey BNI Leadership Team members (Presidents, Vice Presidents and Secretary-Treasurers) by asking, “What is going really well in your chapters?”
From among the many and varied responses, the top answers are the same every time, and the result is always two-fold: (1) we have great relationships among members and (2) we get great results by passing a ton of referrals between members.
Another way to frame this response from BNI leaders is: Relationships = Results!
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HUDDLE TIME
Will ‘Do Not Call’ Lists Ruin Your Business?
BNI’s legal team offers guidance on how to make this new legislation work for you
By Ivan R. Misner, Ph.D.
In October, the U.S. Congress passed special "Do Not Call" legislation that prohibits salespeople from calling individuals at home who are listed on a Do Not Call registry.
BNI has had our legal counsel review this matter. Here is a summary of their findings (click here for a full review of their findings):
1. This should NOT affect most or all referrals given by BNI members in the United States.
2. The Do Not Call provision does NOT apply to any business-to-business calls. Therefore, we should inform all members that they should list a referral's business phone number whenever possible. If this is done, we completely avoid the Do Not Call legislation.
3. Member's may contact any of their existing clients because there is an "established business relationship" exception to the Do Not Call legislation.
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When Every Hour Counts
5 things you need to know about maximizing your ‘hours inventory’
By Jeremy Gerber
Professionals and contractors who bill their time, either by project or hourly, need to think of hours the same way that hotel managers think of rooms or airline executives think of seats: as expiring inventory. It’s a case of fill ’em or lose ’em.
Hotels and airlines might reach nirvana when they hit the magic 100% occupancy, but when it comes to providing services, there is no equivalent—100% occupancy of your work hours just doesn’t exist. However, carefully managing your “hours inventory” can enable you to maximize revenues from whatever occupancy rate (i.e. billable hours) you do have.
What does managing your hours inventory mean? Two simple examples should help explain the concept. Imagine that you are working on a document for Client A. At that moment, Client B calls and you consult for 20 minutes. You return to your document, then get called to a meeting and find yourself doing other things the rest of the day. At the end of the day, you log your time worked on the document and completely forget about the 20 minutes invested in Client B.
The next day, you are asked by Clients C and D to take on projects, both in the same time frame so you must choose between them. Client C is offering about 20% more money for a similar amount of work. It looks like an easy choice: Client C wins. What a shame you didn’t have the information at your fingertips showing that Client C is a chronic late-payer—about 120 days slower than Client D!
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