To the Next Level
Learn More to Earn More
By Paula Bonnell, BNI Area Director, West/Central Florida

In pursuit of the "4 M's" (Members Making More Money), there are four questions you can ask to increase your profitability:

Am I:

• taking the time to identify my key referral sources?
  
• motivating and educating my referral relationships?
  
• driving them completely through the Visibility, Credibility, Profitability model?
  
• joining the right Business Networking Organizations?

To address these questions and more, an educational CD has been released by Tom Fleming entitled, "WHO CAN PASS YOU BUSINESS ALL DAY EVERY DAY?" Tom is the Executive Director for BNI in West Central Florida and a Trainer for the Referral Institute. For an in depth "listen" beyond what is offered in the excerpts below, the CD is available at The BNI Store at http://store.bnistore.com/audio-cds.html.

This CD is co-branded by BNI, The Referral Institute and DelFuego. In it, Tom answers questions that will help professionals identify and fine tune multiple areas of their referral based marketing strategy. For example, he speaks about business professionals often spreading themselves too thin when it comes to their networking efforts. Fleming says, "Focused networking with key relationships is critical for constant referral generation. Those key relationships consist of others who are serving the exact same target market as you, but are in a non-competing industry." Business Professionals are often challenged in identifying these key relationships because their target market is too broad. Target markets that include "somebody," "anybody" and "everybody" do not lend themselves to identifying these key relationships and cause professionals to be spread thin across their networking efforts. The analysis and commentary on the CD helps the listener clearly define their target markets by instructing them on how to identify and then build key relationships.

Fleming's tips provide professionals with techniques to motivate and educate specific relationships that can, as a result, pass them business all day -- every day. It is imperative that all relationships are driven completely through Dr. Ivan Misner's and Robert Davis' three phase relationships development model: Visibility--Credibility--Profitability or VCP. Many professionals' relationships stop at visibility or credibility. Fleming points out relationships only count in business when they are win-win and are driven completely through the model. His goal is to help people understand how to invest in their network by taking relationships through to Profitability versus wasting time by building only Visibility and Credibility. Many people define networking as "shaking hands and passing business cards," or worse they see networking and selling as synonymous activities. Much of what people know about networking is often just the tip of the iceberg. Networking is largely about how to generate profitable relationships, not visible relationships.

Another major theme in the CD targets questions people have about their networking frustrations. In addressing these concerns, Fleming discusses the 6 different types of networking organizations available and covers networking goals each professional should have. Each type of business organization discussed supports various networking goals: generating referrals, creating support and socialization. If you would like to clearly identify your networking goals and find the support you need to meet these goals – order "WHO CAN PASS YOU BUSINESS ALL DAY EVERY DAY?"

To purchase this CD, or for more information on these and other topics, please visit the BNI Store at http://store.bnistore.com/audio-cds.html.