Nielsen recently did a survey of how much people trusted different forms of advertising (see illustration below). Only four entries scored 50% or above: branded websites, editorial content, consumer opinions (such as reviews and ratings), and recommendations from people they know.

92% of people trusted recommendations from people they know–also known as referrals.

Clearly, the number one way to market your business is to get recommendations (a.k.a. referrals) from people that your prospects know.

Brought to you by Networking Now.

Podcast intro recorded by Tony Wolfe.

Complete Transcript of BNI Podcast Episode 306 -

Priscilla:
Hello everyone and welcome back to The Official BNI Podcast brought to you by NetworkingNow.com, which is the leading site on the net for networking downloadables. I am Priscilla Rice, and I am coming to you from Live Oak Recording Studio, which is in Berkeley, CA. I am joined on the phone today by the Founder and Chairman of BNI, Dr. Ivan Misner. Hello Ivan. How are you and where are you this week?

Ivan:
Hi Priscilla. This week, I am in Tampa, Florida for the US BNI conference. We have hundreds and hundreds of members coming to the conference this week and we have hundreds of BNI Directors as well. I really enjoy the Florida region. I love doing conferences with BNI Directors so it should be fun.

Priscilla:
Yeah, you picked a great place. What are you going to share with us?

Ivan:
I want to talk about how much you trust advertising. It’s really from a recent survey that was done by the Neilsen people. When I read this, I thought it was really interesting. There are like 19 different types of advertising that they talk about. They asked people in their survey, “Do you trust this kind of advertising completely, somewhat, not much or not at all?” What they did was they rank ordered them.

I am going to go through sort of a top ten list here, except there are 19 items. I want to start with the ones that performed really poorly and work my way up to the number one item, if I can. The first five or six are all ad-related in some kind of mobile or online device. For example, in the worst, only 29% said text ads in mobile phones they trust. Very few. Then display ads on mobile devices, online banner ads, ads on social networks, online video ads. They all- the best was 36% with online video ads. Very little trust in those forms of advertising.

That doesn’t mean that I don’t think banner ads aren’t going to work. What works with it is if you send out hundreds of ads online, and you have hundreds of thousands of hits online in terms of exposure, it will certainly pay off. I am not saying it doesn’t pay off. But the numbers are what the numbers are, and according to Nielson, people don’t necessarily trust those kinds of advertising.

Search engine ads also were very low, at about 40%. TV ad product placement: again, 40%. Pretty low.
Ads before a movie were not much better at 41%. Ads on radio: only 42%. Now, ads in newspapers, magazines, television: they are all at about 47%. Less than half of the people who took this survey said they trust ads on TV, magazines, newspapers and radio. Very low.

Emails that people sign up for get 50%. So half the audience or half of the people who took the survey said they trust somewhat completely the emails that they sign up for.

So that only leaves four left. Four. These four have more than half. One is a branded website. Interestingly enough, people trust a company’s website more than an ad. I thought that was really curious. 58% of respondents said that they trust somewhat or completely a branded website.

Editorial content in newspaper articles was also pretty high 58%.

The two highest: consumer opinions posted online, like the Amazon reviews or, you know, various companies have reviews that are online. Consumer opinions posted online: 70%.

Priscilla:
That is because they are not getting paid for their opinion.

Ivan:
That is right. And the number one form of advertising according to the Neilson report- I am all about networking. I am setting this up really easy for you, Priscilla. What would you guess is the number one?

Priscilla:
An advertisement from somebody that you trust and know.

Ivan:
Not an advertisement, but a referral.

Priscilla:
Oh, a referral. They consider that an advertisement.

Ivan:
They did, yeah. They consider recommendations from people they know as a form of advertising. The percentage: 92%.

Priscilla:
That makes sense to me.

Ivan:
92%. I was surprised to see it. But when you look at it, really, consumer opinions are one person talking to the many. Referrals from people I know are one person getting a referral from one person. It’s actually somewhat similar but it’s one to one as opposed to one to many.

I think it’s interesting that basically that consumer opinion or that personal recommendation were both the highest- they were they number one and number two point in the survey, which is amazing to me. I will include this survey, the graph of the survey in this podcast as a jpeg so that people can see it as we are talking about it here on the podcast.

It’s amazing. It’s a great survey. It was done by Neilsen. It is an independent survey and it shows clearly that the number one way of marketing a business is recommendations from people I know. 92% of people trust it completely or somewhat.

Priscilla:
That is great. That makes total sense.

Ivan:
That is all I have for today, Priscilla. Thank you.

Priscilla:
Wonderful. Thank you so much, Dr. Misner. Well, I would just like to remind the listeners that this podcast has been brought to you by networkingnow.com, which is the leading site on the net for networking downloadables. Thank you so much for listening. This is Priscilla Rice, and we hope you will join us next week for another exciting episode of The Official BNI Podcast.

Synopsis

This episode is based on a blog post Dr. Misner wrote. Successful networking isn’t about what you know, it’s about what you do.

Ignorance on fire is better than knowledge on ice. The only thing more powerful is knowledge on fire.

Networking is a skill that looks simple but takes constant effort to apply. Success is the uncommon application of common knowledge.

The assignment for everyone listening to this podcast is to think of one idea that you’ve read or heard over the past year that you wanted to apply to life but never got around to doing—and do it in the next seven days.

Then come back and post a comment about what it was and what you did.

Brought to you by Networking Now.

Podcast intro recorded by Tony Wolfe.

Complete Transcription of BNI Podcast Episode 305 -

Priscilla Rice:
Hello everyone. Welcome back to the Official BNI Podcast brought to you by networkingnow.com, the leading site on the net for networking downloadables. I’m Priscilla Rice and I’m coming to you from Live Oak Recording Studio in Berkley, California. I’m joined on the phone today by the Founder and the Chairman of BNI, Dr. Ivan Misner. Hello Ivan, how are you doing?

Ivan Misner:
I’m doing great, Priscilla. I’ve been traveling all over the world for BNI this year and I’m actually in town for a couple of weeks. It’s great to do the podcast.

Priscilla:
Well we’re glad to have you. Tell us a little bit about what this topic is.

Ivan:
The topic is based on a blog that I did called, Networking Is Simple But Not Easy. It’s really true. Networking is very simple, just not very easy. If it were easy, everyone would do it and they would do it really well. But they don’t. They absolutely don’t. This podcast is not a podcast about the step by step processes that you need to employ to network effectively. Instead it’s a podcast about getting the listeners to stop and think about all the articles, the books, the blogs, the podcasts that they’ve read or listened to and aren’t doing. This is a podcast to get them to stop and think about what they should be doing, rather than what they know or what they should know.

I do a lot of presentations around the world talking about how to apply networking to your everyday life and sometimes I have someone come up and say to me, “I’ve heard people talk about some of those things before.” Well you know what? Hearing it for a year versus doing it for a year are completely different things. Success is about the doing not just the knowing. In fact I believe that ignorance on fire is better than knowledge on ice. I love that phrase. I don’t know i f you’ve ever heard it before. Ignorance on fire is better that knowledge on ice. This is said by somebody with ten years of college. I absolutely believe that if somebody’s on fire and they’ve got a great idea and they’re ready to run with it, that that’s more powerful than all the knowledge in the world. The only thing more powerful is knowledge on fire.

There’s so many ways in life, there’s so many things in life that look simple but are in fact, not easy. If you understand how to do it in your own fire about it, you can make it work and work well for you. Here’s an example of what I’m talking about and I’ll give you two or three examples. Cooking is one of those examples for me. It always looks so simple. My wife can go into the kitchen and put a gourmet meal together in about 30-40 minutes. Then I go into the kitchen and I burn water.

Small repairs around the house, these things look so so simple. Then I pick up a hammer, and well, it’s just not pretty. That’s when I’m reminded that I’m missing the handyman gene. It skips a generation in my family. My dad can fix anything. He’s incredibly capable with a tool box and I’m not. This is absolutely true, I’m not making any of this up. When I was seventeen years old, he brought me into the garage and said to me, “Son, you better go to college because you’re never going to make a living with your hands.” I thought that was really good advice.

Golf is another one. Looks simple, right? Now I’m not talking about professional competition, I mean just going out and smacking a ball around some grass. Looks really simple, but I’ve learned it’s not easy. There are so many things in our lives that look simple but aren’t easy, and networking is one of them. It’s a skill. It’s a skill that takes commitment and effort to learn and apply consistently.

Priscilla:
Can I ask you, what do you think are the not easy parts of networking?

Ivan:
I think it’s the week to week process of putting it to work. The concepts sound easy but it’s the application of it. It’s like I do a presentation on keeping the fun in the fundamentals and I tell a story about football. And how when I played football we had to do all the conditioning necessary, all the conditioning exercises to have a successful team. Part of the conditioning was the wind sprints. I hated the wind sprints, but guess what? The wind sprints were part of the conditioning and it wasn’t easy. How hard is it to run ten yards, turn around and run back ten yards? Not that hard. It’s a very simple concept, it’s just not easy. It’s hard work. The secret to success without hard work is still a secret. It takes a lot of work.

So I’m giving an assignment to all the listeners today. Sorry, my inner professor’s coming out. The assignment to everyone listening to this podcast is to think of one idea that they have read in a book, or an article or that they’ve heard on a recording over the past year. Any idea and it doesn’t have to be just about networking, it can be anything on business, anything that they’ve heard in the last year that they want to apply to their life but never got around to doing. Your assignment is to find that article, locate that something you wanted to do, and within the next seven days do it. Now if it’s something you do on an ongoing basis, then find a way to incorporate it into your life or your business and do it on a regular basis. All excuses are equal. You have to do it. So what I want you to do is to put a message up on this podcast about what it is and what you did to start applying it. Because success I believe, is the uncommon application of common knowledge. You have the knowledge, now apply it with uncommon commitment. It won’t be easy, but I assure you it’s simple.

Priscilla:
That’s great. I have an example that I just thought of when you were talking, which is making phone calls to your clients. It sounds so easy because we make phone calls all the time. But it isn’t easy because something takes over and inhibits you from doing that.

Ivan:
That’s a great example. It is simple, I mean come on, it’s a phone call, how hard is that? But it’s not easy because to do it consistently is where it becomes a challenge. Finding the time, cutting it out of your schedule and blocking it in and doing it. Having meaningful conversations, it’s not easy. So much of what I talk about in business and in networking is very, very simple. But it’s not easy. If it were easy, everyone would be successful. So for those of you listening to this thinking this is so easy. Ask yourself, Are you achieving what you want to achieve in life. If you’re not, then I think it’s because you’re not applying these concepts consistently. It’s hard work. I feel like I’ve achieved some level of success and I’d be the first to tell you that it takes a little bit of hard work to do it. It’s not easy to do.

Priscilla:
Yeah. I think we’ve just about come to the end of this podcast and it’s a good point you’ve made. It’s a good tying up point. Do you have anything else you would like to share?

Ivan:
No. I appreciate having the opportunity to do these podcasts and I’d love to have those of you listening to it to comment on what it is in your life that you want to accomplish that is simple but not easy. I’d love to see some comments on this one.

Priscilla:
Okay great. Thank you. I think that’s it for this week. This podcast has been brought to you by networkingnow.com which is the leading site on the net for networking downloadables. Thanks so much for listening. This is Priscilla Rice, and we hope you’ll join us next week for another exciting episode of the Official BNI Podcast.

To be a good referral partner, you need to learn something about the person that you’re referring. If you know some of the following points about a person’s business, you can make a much better referral. It often takes at least a year to build up the kind of relationship that leads to really high-quality referrals. A deep referral relationship requires a surprising level of personal knowledge and connection. It takes time and effort to build this kind of relationship.

• What is the person’s background and experience? 
• What is their philosophy of customer service?
• Do you understand at least 3 major products or services from that person’s business?
• Do you know the names of their family members?
• Have you asked them how you can help them grow their business?
• Have you asked them for ideas about how to grow your business?
• Do you know at least a handful of their goals for the next year and beyond?
• Could you call them at 10:00 PM if you really needed something?
• Would you feel awkward asking them for help with either a personal or business challenge?
• Do you enjoy spending time with the person? See Dr. Misner’s article “Who’s in Your Room.”
• Do you have regular appointments with the person outside of BNI meetings?
• Is this person top of mind for you?
• Can you have open, honest talks about how you can help each other further?

How deep are your current referral relationships? What will you do to deepen your relationships with your fellow BNI members? Let us know in the comments.

Brought to you by Networking Now.

Podcast intro recorded by Tony Wolfe.

Complete Transcript of BNI Podcast Episode 304 -

Priscilla:
Hello everyone and welcome back to The Official BNI Podcast brought to you by NetworkingNow.com, which is the leading site on the net for networking downloadables. I am Priscilla Rice, and I am coming to you from Live Oak Recording Studio, which is in Berkeley, CA. I am joined on the phone today by the Founder and Chairman of BNI, Dr. Ivan Misner. Hello Ivan. How are you doing?

Ivan:
I am doing great, Priscilla. I think we may have mentioned this in a previous podcast, but I had one of the members say, “Ivan, you are in Berkeley, California.” No, no, no. That is where Priscilla is. She in in Berkeley. I am in southern California. Priscilla is in northern California. BNI headquarters is actually in Upland, right on the border of LA county. To be honest with you, I think Berkeley is a lot nicer than Upland is, but we are in Upland and we do this by phone with Priscilla in the studio in Berkeley.

Priscilla:
That’s right.

Ivan:
So today’s topic is really about building deep referral relationships. What I wanted to talk about is that oftentimes, people have kind of surface level referral relationships. In BNI, I think members of BNI tend to go a little bit deeper. That is really what I want to talk about. I want to talk about knowing more than just enough about the minimum amount about a referral source’s business in order to get by.

I think a lot of people don’t actually know a lot about the person that they may be referring and they tend to say vague things like, “They are nice,” “They are good at what they do,” “You’ll like them,” “They are a good person.”

If you really want to be a good referral partner, you need to learn some things about the person that you are referring. A few weeks ago, we talked about the importance of one-to-ones. We had the story about Van Gogh. In these one-to-ones, and of course, in the 60 second presentation, you can learn a lot about members. I am going to give you some things to be looking for.

If you want to go deep in your relationships with BNI members, these are the kinds of things- you don’t have to do them all, but the more of them that you do, the more likely you are to help build a deep referral relationship with your fellow BNI members. So if you know some of the following points about a member, about his or her business, you probably are going to be going pretty deep in that referral relationship.

First of all, after you learn about the person, you have to feel in your bones that this person is really good about what they do, that they are an expert in the community on that topic. You want to trust them to do a great job and take great care of your referred prospect. You want to talk to them about what is it that you know about your business? What is your background? What is your experience? What is your philosophy about customer service?

You know, asking questions like that will help you with the first two, the trust and making sure that they are good at what they do. It helps if you have known them for a little while. One of the reasons why we have discovered that it takes six months, a year- we found that within two years, members have really hit an amazing stride. In the surveys that were done, including several independent studies, it’s after that first year that referrals tend to really jump for the average member. It takes time. You can’t expect to be a member for a few months and giving a lot of referrals and getting a lot of referrals on average. So understand that it takes time.

Here is a question. Do you understand at least three major products or services from that person’s business? If you are referring somebody, could you sit down and say here are three products that I know they do and they do well- and feel comfortable explaining them others? If not, you definitely want to get that information in a one-to-one from them.

Do you know the names of their family members? That is an important one. That is an interesting one because nobody ever thinks of that. Why is that important? Well, because the more you know about a person personally, the easier it is to maintain and keep that contact.

Harvey Mackay is a master at this. He really is a master and he talks about it in a lot of his books, about making that personal connection. He walks the talk. Every time he calls me, he asks me specific questions, and I know it’s coming out of- I know his secret and it is coming out of his notes that he kept because nobody can remember all the things this guy remembers. He will ask me how I am doing with one thing or another from his notes and I am always amazed how he does what he says you should do. One of the things is you should know about is if they have any kids, are they in school? You should ask questions about it. I think it’s a great idea.

Have you asked them how you can help them grow their business? How can I help you grow your business? Have you told them how you can with some ideas you have or have you asked them about ideas they have about how they can help you grow your business? Or have you shared with them how you think they can help you with your business? Something reciprocal.

Do you know at least a handful of their goals for at least the next year and beyond? What are some of their personal goals? What are things that they want to accomplish in their business and in their life? That is a good question to ask to get to know them better.

Here is an interesting point. This isn’t a question. These are things that you should get to the point of being able to do these things or questions to ask and find out. Here is one where you should get to the point of being able to do this: could you call them at 10:00 at night if you really needed something? When I call somebody at 10:00 at night, I am nervous because it is late to be calling somebody. So I have to know the person. Do you know this person well enough that you can call them after normal hours and not have them get upset with you? If there is any hesitation, don’t.

Priscilla:
Do you have their telephone number? That is a starting point.

Ivan:
Yeah. That’s a good point. But if you do and you don’t know the answer to the question, don’t test it. But let me tell you something. If you can call someone at 10:00 at night and you know them well enough that they are not going to get upset from you doing that, then you’ve got a pretty deep relationship with them as a rule.

Would you feel awkward asking them for help with either a personal or a business challenge? That is a good question to ask yourself. And you know, one way to address that is to ask them, “Do you have any challenges going on in your life that I might be able to help with in some way? It might be a referral or support you in some way.” Offering to help somebody is a great way and then being able to ask them later if you needed some help.

Do you enjoy spending time with the person? That is an important one. More important than I used to think. We have done a podcast on who is in your room- the material from Stewart Emery. You know, who do you let close to you? If you haven’t listened to that podcast, do a search on it and maybe we can put the link here on this podcast, the topic of who is in your room?

The bottom line is do you enjoy having this person in your room or close to you? Do you enjoy spending time with them? I have been doing BNI now for almost 30 years a to me, that topic is more important than I realized in the first few years.

Do you have regular appointments with the person? Do you get together with them regularly? Now, in BNI, you get together with them as a group regularly. But do you meet with them outside of BNI in one-to-ones or other opportunities to connect with them?

Are they top of mind for you? Do you even think of them when they leave the BNI meeting? If you do, then chances are pretty good that you have developed a deep referral relationship.

Can you have open, honest talks about how you can help each other? Those are some of the kinds of points, some questions, some things that once you reach this level, you know that you are at a deeper level with people.

I think listeners may be shocked at the level of personal knowledge that is required for truly a deep referral relationship, one that feels like the referrals are more than just business. It’s one where you have this relationship with somebody. You care about them. You want to help them. They want to help you. It really takes a lot, this type of relationship, and it takes a little effort to develop this kind of relationship, so what I would urge members to do is to review these points and think about what conclusions have you come with in listening to this points or reading these points in the transcript about the depth of the current referral relationships that you have?

Take a list of all the BNI members of your group. Ask yourself, do I know this about this person? Am at I at this point with the person? Are your relationships more or less in line with these points, or could they use some work? If they need some work, start thinking about the tactics that you are going to go through to start with, in order to deepen your relationships with these people who are in your BNI group. When it comes to getting referrals, it is all about relationships.

That’s all I had for today, Priscilla. If you have anything you want to add, that’s great.

Priscilla:
That is a terrific list. I am wondering if you might submit some of those questions- I guess there will be a summary of the podcast, but it just seems like such a great list to take back and talk about, especially for education coordinators.

Ivan:
I would recommend that if you are an education coordinator and you are listening to this podcast or you are reading this transcript, I would recommend that you print this out. I think there is a print function. I might be wrong, but you can certainly print it off of the internet. If not, there may be a print function. No, maybe there isn’t on this podcast. You can go under “File” and print. You can print the entire podcast, including all the bullet points.

Priscilla:
I think it is a really nice podcast, and it goes with the one-to-one podcast from April 17th.

Ivan:
Yeah. Absolutely. Thanks, Priscilla.

Priscilla:
Okay. Thank you, Dr. Misner. I would just like to remind the listeners that this podcast has been brought to you by networkingnow.com, which is the leading site on the net for networking downloadables. Thank you so much for listening. This is Priscilla Rice, and we hope you will join us next week for another exciting episode of The Official BNI Podcast.

Susan Goodsell, BNI Executive Director for BNI Riverside and San Bernardino Counties (and also a BNI employee who works on branding), joins Dr. Misner to explain why a good referral is in the eye of the beholder.

All BNI members understand that a referral is the opportunity to do business, not a guarantee of business. But not everyone educates their fellow members with enough specifics about what’s required for a good referral.

The first time I give a poor referral, it’s my fault. But the second time I give a poor referral, it’s probably the receiver’s fault.

Each of us has a different definition of what counts as a referral. Listen to what counts as a referral for your fellow members. Don’t try to define referrals for other members.

If you’re a printer and you don’t want referrals for business cards because you don’t make much money from them, stop mentioning them in your 60-second spot. Talk about the products that do make money for you. Mention the price point for referrals.

If you get an off-target referral, go to the member who made the referral, thank them for thinking of you, and educate them on the kinds of referrals you do want.

As long as you are laser-specific, you’ll get good referrals. Wherever you set the bar is the level of referrals you’ll get.

Brought to you by Networking Now.

Podcast intro recorded by Tony Wolfe.

Complete Transcript of BNI Podcast Episode 303 -

Priscilla:
Hello everyone and welcome back to The Official BNI Podcast brought to you by NetworkingNow.com, which is the leading site on the net for networking downloadables. I am Priscilla Rice, and I am coming to you from Live Oak Recording Studio in Berkeley, CA. I am joined on the phone today by the Founder and Chairman of BNI, Dr. Ivan Misner. Hello Ivan. How are you and who do you have as a guest today?

Ivan:
Hi Priscilla. I am doing great and I have Susan Goodsell as my guest today. Susan is a BNI Executive Director. She also works at BNI Headquarters. So I see her all the time. She does a great job for the organization. She actually studied broadcast journalism in school. She worked 26 years, traveling the street at many levels: counselor, manager, trainer, seminar presenter. You have now been a BNI member and Director for many years. You joined the support services team here at BNI Headquarters in 2001 at the old office. You are now managing the branding project. You are the Branding Coordinator. You becam Regional Director for BNI in 2007 and an Executive Director after that. You handle BNI Riverside and San Bernadino counties here in California. Yeah?

Susan:
Correct.

Ivan:
Susan, it’s great having you on the podcast. You are going to talk today about a referral being in the eye of the beholder. I think that is a great way to put it. Tell everybody what that means. What do you mean by a referral is in the eye of the beholder?

Susan:
Firstly, thank you for having me. I have a lot of passion behind this topic. The point of a good referral is it is in the eye of the beholder and the eye of the person who is receiving that referral. It’s up to us to define what a good referral is. Going back to the basics, we are really clear in BNI the definition of a referral is the opportunity to do business with someone in the market for your product or service. Not a guaranteed sale.

I think we always get that part of it, but what sometimes maybe gets lost is that there is a second part of that. That is that we have to be very, very specific in defining what a referral is for each of us as individuals. The importance of that is so that we can get more effective in getting quality, prequalified referrals. It’s up to us to define what level of a referral, right? It’s about educating chapter members.

One that pops up quite frequently is with our realtor friends because most of our chapters have realtors. Does your realtor do a for sale by owner? Some do. Some don’t. It’s not a right way or wrong way of doing business. It’s that particular realtor’s way of doing business. So if you communicate with your realtor and you see a for sale by owner, which is a real low level of referral- if your realtor says, “Yes, that is a referral for me,”- great. We keep a notepad in the car, jot down the name and address on that for sale by owner sign. It may be a valid referral, right? Easy.

Well, let’s convert that to our financial adviser. I go into my chapter meeting and say, “Hey, Steve, I was in this great neighborhood. Jag parked in the driveway, beautiful house. I think they have some money. Here is the address.” That’s not going to work. A financial adviser requires a much higher level of referral, maybe even a face to face meeting, right?

Here is the point that I really want to get out there. The first time that I give a poor referral, it probably is my fault. The second time I give you a poor referral, it is probably the receiver’s fault because they are not educating us what a good referral is, what works, what doesn’t. What do you do with those?

Ivan:
If I can just interject, what you define as a referral for yourself may be different than what I define as a referral for me, correct?

Susan:
Absolutely. Even though we are in the same industry or even the same profession.

Ivan:
That is very true. I think I first saw that- I know it was the first year of BNI. Somebody stood up and said something that was totally off my definition. They said, “ Look when you are driving around the freeways here in southern California. If you see a “for lease” sign on one of those commercial buildings, that would make a great referral for me because I can go in and talk to the manager to get referrals for telecommunications.” He explained why and I thought that is no better than a cold call. Almost no one in this room would accept that. But for him, he said that he got half his business that way. The problem is he couldn’t drive the freeways enough to see all the “for lease” signs going up. It was, for him, a legitimate referral, but for most of us, that would not be, right?

Susan:
Exactly . We have to be careful that we as members or as chapters and membership committees aren’t trying to define a referral for our members. We actually had a great story at a local chapter. A local coffee shop joint. I loved it. I just happened to be visiting on this particular day. Someone from the chapter was handing over four or five referral slips for stopping by the coffee house. Chapter members are pretty protective of our members and they actually said something in the meeting, “That’s not a referral. You can’t do that.”

The owner of the coffee house actually stood up and said, “Now, wait a minute. He has an opportunity to go to Starbucks every day, every single day. Everyday, he stops at my place, pulls out his wallet and buys a cup of coffee. That’s a referral for me.”

Again, another restaurant or coffee house or what not may say every new customer or client. Whatever. But it’s really dangerous when a chapter tries to define what a referral is for us. It’s important to sit down and analyze. Here is what every chapter member can do immediately. Analyze what type of customers bring you the most money, right?

Printing is a perfect example. “I make $4 off a box of business cards. I don’t want to do them. That’s all I get.” Then stop saying yo do business cards in your chapter meeting.

Ivan:
Exactly.

Susan:
Discuss what you do want. Start educating your sales team. This printer could discuss their desire to do press kits, brochures or whatever it is that she produces that she will actually make a profit on. Then make a decision to get rid of the business that you don’t want.

Ivan:
Right. Good point. Really good point. What else?

Susan:
Define for your chapter members kind of what your price point is also. It kind of goes back to the printer. We had a very high end photographer. This photographer here in southern California is on the cliffs at the beach taking photographs, at the Ritz Carlton hotels. He did a fantastic job at this. He would walk in and say, “If you want a $700 wedding photography package, I can recommend you to someone you can trust. But if you are looking for a $7,000 photography package for your wedding, no one does it better than I do.” Guess what business he got.

Ivan:
The business he wanted.

Susan:
Exactly. Once we are educated with what you do, we will absolutely respect that. So the flip side then, I guess, is what do you do with a referral that is a little off target? It’s our responsibility to go back to the member privately. “Thanks so much for thinking of me. It’s not exactly what I am looking for. It’s not exactly what I do. It’s not my specialty.” Then that opens a dialogue. It’ll strengthen your credibility and most importantly, it’s the perfect opportunity to sit down and do a one-to-one with that person, to educate them a little bit more on what you do.

It’s really important that we take the time to figure out for ourselves what is a good referral, to define it, and then to reach out to the chapter and educate them on actually what it looks like. One other thing I wanted to say real quick- there are some guidelines on reporting referrals from the slips document on BNI Connect. There are some overall rules on reporting things. Other than that, you really need to be laser-specific in what a good referral is and accept that. Set the bar on the referrals that you want, and that is what your chapter members will give to you.

Ivan:
I think that is a really good way of describing it. The key is that you need to define the referral as it applies to you. It may apply to you, like in my story, where it really for most people would be a cold call or your stories of the real estate agent who does for sale by owner or the photographer who does only high end photography. Those kinds of descriptions are what you want to do so that you can explain it. And you see this in support services.

Susan has worked in Support Services here at BNI for a long time and whenever somebody is upset about something, as a rule, it happens because there is not a clear, open, honest and direct communication in a healthy way between the various parties. Would you agree with that?

Susan:
I’d day almost 100% of the time. It does come to educating us. Absolutely. Sometimes, I think it’s out of our comfort zone to correct people, but you need to set the bar and have open and honest communication privately and with that spirit of thanks so much for thinking of me. It’s not exactly what I am looking for.

Ivan:
You bring up two really good points. One is privately. I think Ken Lecherd really said it well when he said praise in public and redirect in private. If there is a problem, you do that privately. If there is a thank you, you want to do that publicly. And you want to do it in a positive way. So redirect privately and do it as positive as possible.

And you said it by saying, look, make sure that they understand that you appreciate their effort. Here is what would be good for me.

I think this is really good. A referral is the opportunity to business with someone who is in the market for your products or services. It is not a guaranteed sale. That means that as a member listening to this podcast, you need to define what a referral is to you.

Last week, we talked about the importance of one-to-ones and the 60 second presentations were sort of the core. This week, we are talking about that core. In the 60-second presentation, you have to be specific and you have to teach people what a good referral is.

Susan, anything you want to close with?

Susan:
No, just thank you for having me and just encouraging members that wherever you set the bar is the level of referrals that you are going to get.

Ivan:
Yeah, I agree completely. If you expect the best out of your fellow members, you will get it. If you expect less than the best, you’ll get it. So you have to set the bar high.

Susan:
One more thing, Ivan. I guess we should talk about the flip side real quick, too. Don’t forget, don’t make assumptions about other professions in your own chapter. If you are not real clear what a referral is, what level of referral they need, it’s a simple question. It works both ways.

Ivan:
Yep, I agree completely. Thanks, Susan, for being on the show. I really appreciate it. Priscilla, back to you.

Priscilla:
Okay. Great.Well, I think that is it for this week, and I would just like to remind the listeners that this podcast has been brought to you by networkingnow.com, which is the leading site on the net for networking downloadables. Thank you so much for listening. This is Priscilla Rice, and we hope you will join us next week for another exciting episode of The Official BNI Podcast.

Andrew Hall from BNI Sussex, who brought BNI to Malaysia, Hong Kong, and Taiwan, joins Dr. Misner on this week’s podcast.

You need to have a rota of one-to-one meetings of your members. Your 60-second intro is static. A one-to-one is a conversation. It’s dynamic. Nothing opens out your business to your fellow members as effectively as one-to-ones. Here’s a story to illustrate this: when Ken Wilkie was writing The Van Gogh File, instead of just reading all the other books about Vincent Van Gogh, Wilkie interviewed everyone who was still alive who had ever known van Gogh. In doing this, he discovered that Van Gogh had once been in love with his landlady’s daughter Eugenie. He visited Eugenie’s granddaughter and discovered a heretofore unknown sketch that Van Gogh had made of Eugenie.

If you make one-to-one appointments with your fellow BNI members, you might not discover a Van Gogh sketch, but you will discover things and make connections you couldn’t without those in-person meetings.

Brought to you by Networking Now.

Podcast intro recorded by Tony Wolfe.

Complete Transcript of BNI Podcast Episode 302 -

Priscilla:
Hello everyone and welcome back to The Official BNI Podcast brought to you by NetworkingNow.com, which is the leading site on the net for networking downloadables. I am Priscilla Rice, and I am coming to you from Live Oak Recording Studio in Berkeley, CA. I am joined on the phone today by the Founder and Chairman of BNI, Dr. Ivan Misner. Hello Ivan. How are you and who do you have with you today??

Ivan:
Hi Priscilla. I have a good friend and BNI Director, Andrew Hall, with me today. Andrew has been an entrepreneur most of his life. He left Cambridge University and went straight into business. Throughout the 1990′s, Andrew ran a series of art galleries, which is perfect for the story that he is going to share today. He was in London when he did the art galleries and it was a new venture after the art galleries that brought him into BNI.

He has launched some of the very, very first chapters of BNI in the UK and in 2000, he helped take BNI outside of the Western world for the very first time, helping to open up our first chapters in Malaysia. His wife, Jung, and he have gone on to assist in opening chapters in Taiwan and Hong Kong and just opened their first chapter on mainland, China.

I visited the Hong Kong region again just recently and got an amazing warm welcome from his team and Jung’s team there in Hong Kong. I would urge members if you are ever visiting in Hong Kong to drop in on one of the chapters. They always roll out the red carpet for people. Andrew, thank you very much for being on the podcast today.

Andrew:
Thank you. It is an absolute pleasure. You are right. There are some tremendous members in Hong Kong. I am just in Taiwan at the moment and we just had a great Directors meeting here, so things are pretty good at the moment.

Ivan:
I am looking forward to visiting Taiwan one day. I haven’t been there, but I have been to Hong Kong a couple of times. It’s a truly amazing experience. We even had a television show, which was out of the UK, filmed in Hong Kong chapters, The Last Millionaire, which in and of itself an interesting story. For anyone who is interested in it, go to “Pick Up Networking Like a Pro” and you will see it there.

Andrew:
It’s a pretty good watch if you get a chance to see it. It’s a good program.

Ivan:
Andew, today we are going to be talking about one-to-ones and Van Gogh. I know the answer to this but my listeners don’t. What in the world do one-to-ones and Van Gogh .

Andrew:
Well, let me tell you. I am delighted at the chance to speak to you today because I wanted to talk about this because I know that many people who listen to this podcast will be fairly new members. I wanted you to know that when you join BNI, the meeting, the 60 seconds, the ten minute slot, is so large in what we do, it’s very easy to lose sight of what you need to be doing if you want to get the most out of your membership.

You need to have a rota of one-to-one meetings with your fellow members. Focusing on your 60 seconds will bring great results, but it is static and it’s largely a one-way. You speak to the group.

But a one-to-one is a conversation. It’s dynamic. I say something to you. You react to it. I, in turn, respond to you, and we find ourselves in a very different place. Nothing opens the door to business of a member with fellow members as effectively as a one-to-one meeting. Opportunities arise that you never even knew existed.

As you say in my introduction, I used to have art galleries in London. One of the people that I met at that time was a guy named Ken Wilkie. Ken made his life’s work to study Van Gogh. He decided he was going to write the definitive book on Van Gogh. What most would have done in that circumstance is they would have gathered all the books written about that artist and pooled that information into their book. That would be a pretty comprehensive book on Van Gogh.

Ken didn’t do that. What he did instead was to track down every living soul who still had a connection with the artist. He picked up the phone and he went to see them. He was doing one-to-ones. He found out that at one time, Van Gogh had been in love. He fell in love with his landlady’s daughter, a girl called Eugenie. Ken tracked down the last living relative of Eugenie. It was her own granddaughter.

You need to remember that a lot of time had passed since Van Gogh had died, and this lady was very elderly herself by this time. She had no idea that she had a connection to Van Gogh, and there were some pretty awkward moments as the two sat there having tea, trying to figure out what to say to each other. As Ken got up to leave, the old lady said, “There are a few trinkets up in the loft. If you want, you can have a look.”

Ken climbed up into the roof and there, in a box, he found a picture, a photograph from all those years ago of Eugenie. Underneath, there was something else. There was a picture of a house where Van Gogh and Eugenie used to live. He was holding the photograph. This picture contained the hand of the master. You can see this picture today. It hangs in the Van Gogh museum of art in Amsterdam.

Ken could have gotten on the phone a thousand times with that lady, and he never would have known what was in that box if he hadn’t gotten to see her.

Ivan:
I think this is one of the most amazing stories, and I heard you talk about it at a conference. As I recall, this was almost 100 years after Van Gogh’s passing. It was around the 1990s that he wrote the book. Do you remember the title of the book?

Andrew:
Offhand, I don’t. I met him before he actually wrote the book. I actually discovered the book after you asked the question.

Ivan:
People can do a search on the author’s name. What was his name?

Andrew:
Do a search for Ken Wilkie. I think it is available on Amazon. You will find it. It’s a great read.

Ivan:
It’s a great read and a great story. Imagine going to the granddaughter or great granddaughter of the woman who was the landlord where he stayed and talking to her and finding a genuine, authentic Van Gogh drawing in her attic. It’s amazing to me. Just amazing.

Andrew:
You might not find a Van Gogh if you do a one-to-one, but things will happen to you and consistent things will happen to you in your business. I joined BNI now, I think, 15 years ago. I joined when the thing was first starting. I remember I wanted to know how an established group ran. There weren’t many established groups in the UK at that time. I took a decision to drive about 60-70 miles in the morning to go and see a group that had been running for about a year.

When it came to the contribution section of the meeting, something rather special happened because the financial adviser picked up his chair. He said to the group, “This is my chair. I want you to know that I couldn’t sell this chair for 100,000 pounds.” Being a Brit, I was quite keen on having a chair worth 100,000 pounds myself.

I said, “Really? What did you do?”

He said, “I am a financial advisor, and I am well aware that most people aren’t that interested in what I do. So what I did was once a week, I booked a one-to-one appointment with one of the members, just so I could learn a little bit more about their businesses. By the time I had been a member for six months, I was the top referral giver in my chapter. But what I also noticed was that I was doing 45% of my new business from the group. So I stepped it up. I started doing one-to-ones with the members, with referrals, with the visitors who came along. Today, I have been a member for a year and I get 80% of my business just from the fact that I am a member in BNI.”

Ivan:
I have heard many members say the same thing. As a matter of fact, I have a podcast where somebody won an award in a region for having given the most referrals and he also did the most one-to-ones. I asked him at the awards ceremony, “That is probably not a coincidence, is it?”

He said, “Absolutely not.”

They are directly related, and that is what you are saying here. The tie to Van Gogh is that the author of the book went out and met with these people and he just learned things that he never would have learned had he not met with these people one-to-one.

60 second introductions, although they are good and they are important, are not the same as a one-to-one. Do you want to talk about that for a second?

Andrew:
They very much aren’t because you are talking at the group in a sense. If you hit it right and you give a laser specific request and someone has that referral, it works beautifully. But when you sit down one-to-one, things open up. You build relationships and you build trust and you warm to each other. All those things happen that don’t quite happen listening to 60 seconds. Somebody that you didn’t realize had any connection or contacts for you- suddenly you have the dream ones that you have always been looking for.

It’s interesting because it’s about having the education to do the one-to-ones instead of the odd one-to-ones. I am sure that is the key to it. Ken Wilkie talked to everybody. He was absolutely dedicated to what he was doing. The financial adviser I was talking about had a rota of one-to-ones. Probably every one didn’t hit off, but they were hitting on such regular basis because he was doing so many one to ones. That is what was building his business.

Ivan:
One of the things I have seen with people who are doing one-to-ones is sometimes they will do one with somebody and not have any success. This is different from the Van Gogh story. But a year later, they will go back and do a second one to one with the BNI member and then something clicks later. When you have done a whole round of members, don’t stop there. Do follow up one-to-ones. You will be surprised at how well those work as well.

Andrew:
Absolutely because there were things that you said in the first one have been slowly sinking in. And those things you said in the first one- they have been thinking about you and these things are just slowly dropping through. When you sit down again, suddenly it is just far more relevant. You pick up from a different place from where you were when you started last time.

Ivan:
Closing comments before we wrap up?

Andrew:
Let me just say any member, particularly a new member who is listening in- pick up on this because there is a secret here to great success in your membership. If you have a dedication of a one-to-one per week with a fellow chapter member, you will be building up a grand swell of support for yourself in your BNI chapter that will serve you well for years to come.

Don’t forget. People do leave BNI. Let’s be honest. People do leave BNI. When those people leave, if you want them to remain a great referral source for you, if you put the investment of building up a little trust with them outside, perhaps, of the meeting, you will find that they stay in your support structure much, much longer.

Ivan:
Very true. Listen, you mentioned 60 second presentations, and I think those are really important. To me, it’s sort of Networking 101. It’s the beginning. You have to do it and you have to do it well. But if you want to go deeper, Networking 401, it’s really about the one-to-ones. This is a great story. It’s something that will remind members of the importance of meeting people and how much deeper you can go.

Ivan:
Andrew, thank you so much for being out on the podcast today and for all of your hospitality as I visit your regions around the world. I’ll turn it back over to you, Priscilla.

Priscilla:
Okay, thank you. I just want to compliment Andrew on what a wonderful story teller you are.

Andrew:
Thank you. It’s a real pleasure to be on.

Priscilla:
Great. Thank you so much. Well, that’s it for this week, and I would just like to remind the listeners that this podcast has been brought to you by networkingnow.com, which is the leading site on the net for networking downloadables. Thank you so much for listening. This is Priscilla Rice, and we hope you will join us next week for another exciting episode of The Official BNI Podcast.

Synopsis

Dr. Misner calls in from Hawaii to talk about how to share your success stories without bragging. Telling your success stories is vital to the growth of your business. Here are five ways to do this.

1. Ask for written testimonials. (Write samples to help clients get started.)
2. Write down two success stories that represent your preferred client and your strongest work.
3. Write a personal introduction for your network to use when making referrals.
4. Toot your own horn. Tell people about the good things your business does.
5. When someone gives you a testimonial at a BNI meeting, write it down and ask them for permission to use it.

Feel free to tell us which of these you’ve done, and how they worked.

Brought to you by Networking Now.

Podcast intro recorded by Tony Wolfe.

Complete Transcription of BNI Podcast Episode 088 -

Priscilla:
Hello everyone, and welcome back to The Official BNI Podcast brought to you by NetworkingNow.com, which is the leading site on the Net for networking downloadables.

I’m Priscilla Rice, and I’m coming to you from Live Oak Recording Studio in Berkley, California, and I am joined on the phone today by the founder and the chairman of BNI, Dr. Ivan Misner.

Hi, Ivan. How are you and where are you?

Ivan:
I’m doing great. I’m in Hawaii this week, first, going to a conference for the Transformational Leadership Council that’s run by Jack Canfield, and he has spoken at a number of our conferences and written for us at SuccessNet. I’ll be visiting some BNI chapters this week here in Hawaii.

Priscilla:
That sounds great. So what are you going to share with us?

Ivan:
Well, I’m going to talk a little bit about Capturing Your Success Stories. I’ve talked about this in some of my books and on my blogs, and I think this is a great topic for the podcast.

Many of us are taught as kids that we should refrain from bragging about our successes, but there’s a real caveat to those rules that our parents usually didn’t teach us, and it’s important to understand that it really helps our business to do certain things that capture our success stories. Now, success stories about businesses and entrepreneurs are really vital for those who are dedicated to learning all we can in order to make our own enterprise as successful as possible.

There are four approaches that I want to mention to capture your success stories. One is to ask for written testimonials. Get satisfied customers or colleagues, certainly fellow BNI members who’ve used your services to write letters on their own letterhead to spotlight their positive experiences with you and your business. Here’s a recommendation that I have. If you are looking for a testimonial from somebody who is really successful, they will be a crown jewel in your list of testimonials. I recommend that you ask them if it’s okay if you write a couple of sample testimonials that they could look from, edit, and use themselves.

Now, that sounds kinds of crazy, but the truth is, if you’re going after really, really, really busy business people and really successful business people – and let’s assume they’re happy with your services – they’d be glad to do you a testimony. The problem is they just don’t have the time to do it, so giving them a starting point that they can edit really helps a great deal.

And it’s something that I’m often asked to write endorsements for books, and I’m always willing to do it, but last year we did almost 60 endorsements. And that can be almost a full-time job just doing endorsements. I’m exaggerating a little, but that’s a lot of work. And many of them gave me drafts to work from and then I added my own flavor to it, and it really helped expedite the process. And I think it works really well with testimonials. So that’s my first recommendation.

Second one is a little briefer. Write down two success stories; highlight your successes to help your network; understand who best represents your preferred client. These stories should clearly emphasize what you do better than anyone else and use those success stories as examples, particularly in BNI, for people to understand the types of products or services that you offer so that they can better refer you.

Third is to write a personal introduction. Provide your network with material that they can use when talking about you and your business with people who fit your preferred client profile. You don’t want your referral sales force making stuff up about you, and this really simplifies their task and ensures accuracy. So if you can write up a little brief statement, “Here’s what you can say about me when you meet someone who might be able to use my products or services.” For those people who are serious about trying to help you, it’s a great tool; it’s a great benefit. For BNI members, I’d recommend you definitely do that during your ten minute presentation. If you’re giving the Ten Minute Talk, here’s a great opportunity for you to give them something to walk away with to help them remember what you talked about.

And number four, the last one, is toot your own horn. Tell people about the good things your business does. This isn’t about crowing over your amazing golf handicap or admitting your own fine taste in wine. It’s about spotlighting your business strengths as well as it being about the legitimate good works that you do in the community. There’s nothing wrong with letting people know some of the projects that you’ve worked on and your success with it. You can do it without being boastful. There are ways that you can do it. For example, if you’re the Ten Minute speaker, you have in your introduction some of that, so somebody else is talking about some of your successes rather than you, personally.

But the more you can communicate your success stories to others, the more they will be confident in your ability to provide quality products or services. I think these are some really tangible techniques that BNI members can use to help increase their credibility at the chapter level.

Priscilla:
I think one of the real advantages to BNI is that you don’t actually have to say all that about yourself; you can get somebody who’s used the services to stand up in the meeting and give you a testimonial at that time.

Ivan:
You bring up a great point, and I’ve never really thought about this. Here’s a fifth one. As people are giving you testimonials at a BNI meeting, jot it down. Try to capture the essence of what someone is saying. Type it up, e-mail it back to them, and say, “Thank you so much for the testimonial today. I really, really appreciate what you said. This is the essence of what I heard you say. Could you edit it, make any changes you want to make to it, and may I use it in my testimonial folder?”

You just gave me a great idea. I think that’s a super technique to do, because I’ve never really thought about writing it down as you’re hearing it. But you’re right, and you want to capture those testimonials as much as possible.

Priscilla:
There’s also another way to record people’s testimonials and put it on an MP3, if you have a Web site.

Ivan:
Yeah, I think that’s a great idea. I think maybe having a combination on your Web site of some written testimonials as well as a few audio versions of it, or even video versions of it, are great suggestions, good stuff.

Priscilla:
Yeah. Well, have we come to the end? Do you have anything else you’d like to add?

Ivan:
No, I think that’s it for today. And what I’d love the BNI members to try some of these four and the fifth one that we added on; that’s a brand new idea, never tested it, love to hear how it works. So those of you who listen to this podcast, please feel free to give us some feedback, tell us what you like, and if you’ve done the fifth one, or when you’ve done the fifth one, get back on the podcast and post a message here on the bulletin board, because we’d love to hear how it works out.

Thanks, Priscilla.

Priscilla:
Oh, you’re so welcome.

Well, I’d just like to remind the listeners that this podcast has been brought to you by NetworkingNow.com, which is the leading site on the Net for networking downloadables. Thanks so much for listening. This is Priscilla Rice, and we hope you will join us next week for another exciting episode of The Official BNI Podcast.

See the original comments on Episode 88.

Visitors’ Days are an outstanding way to bring measurable growth to a chapter. They are not the only way, but as a single technique, they can be one of the best. But don’t wing it. Use the BNI Visitors’ Day Handbook. Your local BNI director will be able to provide you with a copy of Secrets of a Successful Visitors Day.

Your Visitors’ Day will only be a spectacular success if you follow the week-by-week instructions in the handbook exactly. It contains guidelines for selecting a location, a sample press release, sample invitation letters, and instructions on developing a prospect list, among other things.

Follow up on your Visitors’ Day with a really great BNI meeting.

Brought to you by Networking Now.

Podcast intro recorded by Tony Wolfe.

Congratulations to Dr. Misner on 300 episodes and Happy Birthday to Priscilla!

Complete Transcript of BNI Podcast Episode 298 -

Priscilla:
Hello everyone and welcome back to The Official BNI Podcast brought to you by NetworkingNow.com, which is the leading site on the net for networking downloadables. I am Priscilla Rice, and I am coming to you from Live Oak Recording Studio in Berkeley, CA. I am joined on the phone today by the Founder and Chairman of BNI, Dr. Ivan Misner. Hello Ivan. How are you and where are you? And congratulations because this is our 300th podcast.

Ivan:
Our 300th podcast. That really is amazing to me. We have really great content on this site for memTbers all around the world. That’s good because I am, this week, in Poland. This is my first visit to Poland with BNI. We have some good chapters here. I am really excited to be in the Polish chapters for the very first time.

Priscilla:
That’s great. Okay. Tell us about visitor days. What are you going to share with us?

Ivan:
While I am in Europe, let me share a question that was posed to me by a BNI Director and a member from Europe. They sent me an email saying that some time ago, I sent out an email saying that Visitors’ Days are the only activity that brings measurable results related to chapter growth. They asked me to talk about that in the podcast.

I wanted to clarify that Visitors’ Days are not the only activity that can bring measurable results relating to the growth of the chapter. If someone thought that I said that, that’s not exactly what I said. Visitors’ Days are an outstanding way to bring measurable results of the growth of the chapter. They are not necessarily the only way. For example, the truth is you shouldn’t have a Visitors’ Day just to invite visitors. It’s a journey, not a destination.

It’s something that you are doing constantly, as you run across somebody who may make a good candidate. Stack days are a great way, where you get multiple people from the same profession. That’s another great way to get measurable results.

But if you are looking for one thing to get substantive growth in a chapter, a Visitors’ Day is an outstanding technique to use. Here’s the thing: don’t wing it. And don’t assume you know what a Visitors’ Day consists of unless you get the Visitors’ Day handbook.

Yes, we have a Visitors’ Day handbook. One of the advantages of you members being part of a gobal organization is we have really tried to write everything down. So we actually have a manual on how to do a successful Visitors’ Day, and you can get this manual from your local BNI Director. Ask them for an actual copy of the manual. It has different titles in different countries. The English speaking version is Secrets for a Successful Visitors’ Day Meeting Handbook.

We are not going to attach it here because there is a lot of proprietary stuff in it, so I am not going to attach the whole thing to this podcast. But I will touch upon some of the key aspects of it. You can ask your local Director for this material so that you don’t have to wing it.

So some of the kinds of things that are in here so that you don’t have to reinvent the wheel is literally a week by week outline of how to put together Visitors’ Day. It literally has week number one, do this. This includes things like take the sample invitation letter, which is part of the manual, use that and develop a personal prospect list, which is part of the manual. Take a look at a contact sphere worksheet, which you guessed it, Priscilla, is part of the manual.

So it is all there. Then week number two, do this. Week number three, do this.

I mention this because I have had many members say to me over the years that they have been there and done that. They have done Visitors’ Days and they are a waste of time. When I dig deep, I find that they did Visitors’ Day, but they basically winged it. They just said, “Let’s do Visitors’ Day. I know it’s supposed to have this and we’re supposed to do that, but we don’t need all that. Let’s just kind of set a date and invite people.” Well, it’s like if you only follow part of the program, you are only going to get part of the results.

My advice is if you really want to do it right, don’t reinvent the wheel. Take the system and apply it. Don’t start pulling things out. I had somebody once say to me that it’s like having a facory assembly line where they are manufacturing a car, and you start picking and choosing the things that you don’t want to include in the manufacture. Do we really want those cushions? And that wheel? IS that wheel necessary? You would have a car come off the assembly line and it has no tires.

You can’t start picking and choosing things to pull out and expect to get great results. So my advice is Visitors’ Day work and they work really well if you, in fact, do the full Visitors’ Day program. How do we know that? Because in almost 30 years, we have perfected a system that works globally.

So sit down with your local BNI Director and get the visitors packet. It has things like guidelines for your location, which we use for kickoffs as well as Visitors’ Day. A goal setting for Visitors’ Day best practices, so there is actually a graph on the kinds of things that you can do to develop the best practices for a great Visitors’ Day. Step by step. You can’t screw it up, including the sample invitation letters, the prospect list, etc, etc.

The short answer to the question posed to me by the BNI member and the Director is Visitors’ Day is not the only thing that brings measurable results, but it’s probably one of the best if it is done right. If it is not done right, it is a total and complete waste of time.

Priscilla:
I have a comment. Our chapter is about to do a Visitors’ Day, but we are about to do it in combination with another local chapter in our city and maybe even two chapters. I think why that might be a really great idea is that if we happen to get somebody who is in a profession that we already have represented in our group, they can join the other chapter and vice versa. You can spread the wealth and make it possible to enlarge more than one chapter at a time.

Ivan:
Yeah, joint Visitors’ Days are a good idea as long as you have chapters that really get along well. You don’t want to have one chapter to hijack another one in terms of visitors. So you want to work out the details of people and visitors who are coming. Generally speaking, chapters are very cooperative with each other, so I highly recommend the concept of joint Visitors’ Days. They can work extremely well.

Priscilla:
And then you can share the cost of the room, refreshments and all that stuff.

Ivan:
That’s right. Remember one last thing before we wrap up and that is remember that you can put on the absolute best Visitors’ Day in the history of the world. If you run a meeting that sucks- that’s the technical term. If you run a horrible meeting, nobody is going to join. So it’s all about the person’s experience. You want visitors to have a great experience.

That means that you want to run a great meeting. Having a great Visitors’ Day and a really marginal meeting defeats the purpose. You want to do the work. Follow the system that I have been talking about. Where do you get it? From your local director. Follow the system and then you want to run a really good meeting. If you do both back to back, you will have a great Visitors’ Day. You will have a lot of people who will come to that meeting and go, “Wow. I need to get a piece of this. I need to have part of what I am seeing here because this is really amazing.”

That’s my material for today, Priscilla. Thank you very much.

Priscilla:
Alright. That’s great, Ivan. Thank you so much. Well I would just like to remind the listeners that this podcast has been brought to you by networkingnow.com, which is the leading site on the net for networking downloadables. Thank you so much for listening. This is Priscilla Rice, and we hope you will join us next week for another exciting episode of The Official BNI Podcast.

Dr. Misner received this question from a BNI member. (Keep those questions coming!)

“I’ve reached out to my group to make a connection with the CEO of a startup company that I know I can help. So far, my members don’t have a connection inside the company. Other than a cold call, what would you suggest is the best way to contact the CEO?”

Cold calls are definitely not recommended. Keep plugging away with your chapter and also connect with your own personal network and with BNI Connect.

Be laser specific about who you want to meet when you give your 30-second infomercial: “I am looking to meet Sam Smith at XYZ company. Does anyone know Sam? Does anyone know someone who works at XYZ company?”

Ask your leadership team about doing the Reciprocity Ring exercise.

This may take time. It took Dr. Misner the better part of a year to connect with Harvey Mackay. Finally one day a BNI member who was driving Dr. Misner to the airport said “I know Harvey. In fact, I know his assistant very well. I’d be glad to make an introduction.” That was all it took to get in the door.

Just a reminder that you never know who they know. Be specific and be persistent, and eventually you’ll succeed.

Brought to you by Networking Now.

Podcast intro recorded by Tony Wolfe.

Complete Transcript of BNI Podcast Episode 299 -

Priscilla:
Hello everyone and welcome back to The Official BNI Podcast brought to you by NetworkingNow.com, which is the leading site on the net for networking downloadables. I am Priscilla Rice, and I am coming to you from Live Oak Recording Studio in Berkeley, CA. I am joined on the phone today by the Founder and Chairman of BNI, Dr. Ivan Misner. Hello Ivan. How are you and where are you?

Ivan:
Hello, Priscilla. I am doing great, and this week, I am in Scandinavia for BNI, visiting chapters throughout the Scandinavian regions of the organization. I love coming back to visit. As a matter of fact, I will be spending some time at the Ice Hotel.

Priscilla:
Oh, I remember last year, you shared pictures, I think it was on Facebook, and I got to see you in the Ice Hotel.

Ivan:
Yep, and I will be there again. This time, however, the Ice Hotel is actually a member of BNI.

Priscilla:
Wow. Really? Cool. That’s neat. So what do you have to share with us today?

Ivan:
This week, I have another question from a BNI member. By the way, I love the questions on various topics. This one is really a good one. Here, the member is asking me the following question:

“I have reached out to my group to help me make a connection with the CEO of a start-up company that I know I can help. So far, members don’t have a connection inside the company. Other than a cold call, what would you suggest is the best way to contact the CEO?”

The short answer is a cold call is not worth it. Do cold calls work? Yeah, sometimes if you are really good at it. But it’s not the way I would prefer to do business. My advice is keep plugging away with the chapter. The more ways that you can ask the question and periodically bring it up to your group, the better.

Of course, you know, reconnect with your own personal network, as well as your BNI group.Here is the key: you want to be laser-specific about who you are connecting with. So you want to specifically say, “I am looking to find someone who knows _________ (fill in the blank) with XYZ company. If there is anyone in the group who knows someone who might know them- does anyone know someone that might work at XYZ company? That is a great referral for me if I can have a lead in the door.”

I discovered this with an exercise that we have in BNI. If you have a chance, ask your BNI Director to do the reciprocity ring exercise. If they don’t know what I am referring to, it is available from BNI headquarters for Directors to do. The reciprocity ring exercise. Basically, members stand up and say, “This is a referral I am looking for. “ It has to be laser specific with the person’s name, the company’s name and the location. It is somewhat counter-intuitive to be laser-specific because people think how will anyone know this CEO or top executive?

One of the things I discovered is that it is much easier if you are laser-specific than if you are really general like saying, “I am looking for any CEO in any company that would be valuable to me.” Well, anybody, somebody- people don’t know that person. But Sam Smith of XYZ company, they are much more likely to either know of him or people in his company. Being laser-specific is so important. I know it works, and here are a couple of reasons why.

First of all, I have done it. Probably one of the first times I did it, I struggled. It took probably the better part of a year asking people. People want a quick response. They don’t get it in a week and so they give up. Don’t give up. Keep plugging away.

I remember the first time I really did this, I wanted to connect with Harvey Mackay. Harvey has written many, many best selling books, including Swimming with the Sharks without Getting Eaten Alive and a number of other books. His latest one is the Mackay MBA of Selling in the Real World. Harvey is a great guy, but I didn’t know Harvey. For a year, I put the word out there. “Does anybody know anybody know Harvey Mackay or who knows or Harvey Mackay?”

I kept putting it out, putting it out, putting it out. I could have given up after a month. After three months, after six months. I could have tried to cold call him, but getting to Harvey Mackay on a cold call is not easy. Not at all. So I just kept putting it out there. And lo and behold, one day, I hit pay dirt. It came in the most unusual way.

One day, I was visiting a region. A BNI member (not even a Director, a member) picked me up at the airport and took me to the hotel. After I was done with the events, he picked me up from the hotel and took me to the airport. Along the way to the airport, back from the meeting, he asked me a question. He said, “So what are you working on that you are trying to do? What’s coming up?”

I said, “I am working on a Masters series.” The book was Masters of Networking at that point. “So I am trying to get contributing authors.”

He said, “Oh yeah? Like who?”

I said, “One I really have been trying to reach but I just can’t get past his secretary- his secretary or assistant has not interest in talking to me about it- is Harvey Mackay. I would really like to be able to connect with Mr. Mackay.”

The member said, “Oh, I know Harvey. As a matter of fact, I know his assistant really well.”

I was like, “How do you know Harvey?” He wasn’t even in the same state, so it’s not like he has bumped into him anywhere. At least, he’s not in the same state, and he’s not doing business there.

He said, “I love to drive authors around, and Harvey was in town a couple years ago, and I volunteered to drive him, just like I am driving you so I got to know his assistant really well. I am on a first name basis with her. I have talked to Harvey many times. If you would like, I would be glad to make an introduction to the assistant so that she at least hears what you have to say and can see if Harvey is willing to contribute to the book.”

I was like, “Yeah. Please.”

Sure enough, it took one phone call from him. I had sent letters. I had made phone calls. But they were all cold calls and they fell on deaf ears. But one phone call from a BNI member who had talked to the assistant and was really helpful to her and had met Harvey was all it took to get in the door.

Since then, I have gotten to know Harvey pretty well. Harvey has contributed to several of my books. He spoke at one of our BNI conferences. Harvey is a great guy and I am glad to know him. It came because I kept putting it out there to people that I knew, to people that I met and were BNI members. I just kept putting it out there.

Let me tell you, I could have kept trying to cold call till the cows came home, and I would have never gotten through, I don’t think, to Harvey. But by continuing to try to use my network, eventually, I found somebody that opened the door for me.

So that is my advice. Be laser-specific about who you are looking for. Keep plugging away and you will be amazed in finding someone.

One last thought and then if you have any questions or comments- I have been recommending this approach for many years. Every time I do it and see a member actually stand up and say, “ I am looking for Sam Smith at XYZ company. Does anybody know somebody who can introduce me?” Inevitably, someone says, “Well, yeah. I know so-and-so.”

I remember in one case, a member stood up, who was the sponsor of the member, who brought the member into BNI. She stood up and said, “Sally, that person is my sister in law. I know her really well.”

I remember the member saying, “Oh my goodness. Why didn’t you tell me that?”

And what do you think the (other) member said?

Priscilla:
“You didn’t ask me.”

Ivan:
“You didn’t ask. You never asked. You didn’t ask. I didn’t know.” People don’t know unless you ask.

You have to ask a few times over a period of time and talk to everybody in your network, starting with people in your BNI network. So be specific. You have to ask. And remember the Harvey Mackay story. It’s a true story. These are the ways that you can avoid cold calling the CEO.

Priscilla:
Okay. Well, that is a great story. It shows that you never know who you are taking to, you know?

Ivan:
You don’t. You never know who knows somebody. Not in a million years would I have guessed that this BNI member knew Harvey Mackay. Just never would have guessed it. It’s just a great example of exactly what you just said, Priscilla. You never know who you people know.

Priscilla:
Yeah, exactly. Okay. Great.

Ivan:
That’s it for today. Thanks, Priscilla.

Priscilla:
Okay. That’s it for today. Thanks so much. Well, that’s it for this week, and I would just like to remind the listeners that this podcast has been brought to you by networkingnow.com, which is the leading site on the net for networking downloadables. Thank you so much for listening. This is Priscilla Rice, and we hope you will join us next week for another exciting episode of The Official BNI Podcast.

A BNI member named Gary asked Dr. Misner the following question:

I have passed a referral to someone on two occasions and they have not followed up on either. This happens to be someone in my own chapter. I am now wondering whether they actually want me to pass them more referrals or don’t want the work.

Following up on referrals is part of BNI’s Code of Ethics.

The first thing to do is talk to the member you gave the referral to. Clear, open, honest, communication is generally the best way to address a problem like this. It doesn’t have to be a confrontation.

Some of the possiblities are:

• It wasn’t a good referral, even though you thought it was.
• They lost the contact information or dialed the wrong number.
• They’re disorganized and haven’t followed through.

If it’s not a good referral, find out why. If the person hasn’t gotten around to following through, explain that when you give a referral, you give away part of your reputation. If the member still doesn’t follow up, you can contact the membership committee.

Don’t complain about this member to anyone BUT the membership committee, and don’t talk to the membership committee UNTIL you talk to the other member. Gossip will destroy the morale of a BNI chapter. Remember: clear, open, honest communication.

Brought to you by Networking Now.

Podcast intro recorded by Tony Wolfe.

Complete Transcript of BNI Podcast Episode 298 -

Priscilla:
Hello everyone and welcome back to The Official BNI Podcast brought to you by NetworkingNow.com, which is the leading site on the net for networking downloadables. I am Priscilla Rice, and I am coming to you from Live Oak Recording Studio in Berkeley, CA. I am joined on the phone today by the Founder and Chairman of BNI, Dr. Ivan Misner. Hello Ivan. How are you doing?

Ivan:
I am doing great, Priscilla, and I am at my office this week, sort of catching my breath from all my travels.

Priscilla:
That is nice.

Ivan:
I have an interesting topic this week. I had a BNI member some time ago, by the name of Gary, ask me a question which I am going to answer today on this podcast. I think it’s a question that’s really important and a lot of members run into this.

Priscilla:
Okay. What is it?

Ivan:
His question was, “I have passed a referral to someone on two occasions and they have not followed up on the referral. It happens to be someone in my own chapter. I am now wondering do they actually want me to pass them more referrals or do they not want the work?” I left a comment and told him I would do a podcast because I think this is really important question for many members to hear.

You remember, Priscilla. Can you imagine getting a referral- you join an organization that is about referrals. Can you imagine being part of an organization that is all about referrals and then not following up on a referral?

Priscilla:
It doesn’t make sense, does it? You are there to get the referrals. That is the whole point.

Ivan:
It doesn’t make sense. As a matter of fact, it is so obvious that members need to follow up on referrals- it is actually in our code of ethics. Number four of BNI’s Code of Ethics states, “I will take responsibility for following up on the referrals that I receive.” It is a core piece of the BNI program to follow up on referrals. So what if a member doesn’t? As Gary points out, he has a member in his group who has not responded to two referrals.

Here are my suggestions, and then, Priscilla, I would love to dialogue with you if you have any thoughts or questions. The first thing you should do, Gary, and for anybody who is listening to this and you get a referral and the person doesn’t follow up on it, the first thing to do is to talk to the person you gave the referral to. Clear, open, honest and direct communication is almost always the best way to address problems in a group- and this sounds like a problem when somebody doesn’t reply or doesn’t respond.

You’ve got to have a conversation. The conversation doesn’t have to be a confrontational conversation. It can be something like this: “John (or whatever the member’s name is), I gave you a referral a couple of weeks ago. They told me that you haven’t had a chance to respond. I am just following up with you. Is this a legitimate referral for you? Is it okay? And if it is okay, when do you plan to be getting back to them because they are asking me?”

There is nothing wrong with that type of questions. Oftentimes, you may find that it, in fact, wasn’t a good referral. You may have thought it was a good referral, but for whatever reason, that member may not feel it is a good referral, in which case, you need to know that. It could be that the person lost the contact info, which is unfortunate and not something that I would feel real good about if they lost the referral slip. But it could be something as innocent as that. Or it could be that they neglected to follow through and are disorganized, in which case you want to know that.

If that seems to be the case, and they say, “Oh yearh, I am sorry. I haven’t gotten back to them yet,” that is when you need to have a continued conversation with them of, “When I give a referral, I give a little bit of my reputation away. If somebody follows up, it actually helps my reputation, but if somebody doesn’t follow up, then it actually hurts my reputation. So I would really appreciate if you could follow up with them today because it doesn’t look good when I give a referral and somebody doesn’t follow up.” It doesn’t have to be confrontational,but you do want to be direct, open and honest.

If they do tell you it is not a good referral, you want to listen as to why it’s not.

Find out why he or she didn’t follow through. If they don’t have a good reason or you are not satisfied, that is when you ratchet it up a little and you have a conversation with the membership committee. But before you ever talk to the membership committee, have a conversation with the individual first. The conversation with the membership committee should go something like this: “I gave two referrals to John. He didn’t respond. I then had a meeting with John and I asked him to contact the referral and he gave me some reason, which is____________. That doesn’t feel legitimate, and it is part of our code of ethics for people to follow up. I am really concerned that we have a member in our chapter that is not following up, and I need to inform the membership committee, and ask that maybe you have a conversation with John.”

Then the membership committee has a conversation. If they feel it is necessary to put a member on probation for not following up legitimately on referrals, then they have the authority to do that.

That is really the mechanism. First, talk to the member. If you don’t talk to the member, it is your responsibility. The fact that the person didn’t follow through- you have some responsibility for not following through with them for not following through.

The worst thing that you could do is talk about John to anyone but the membership committee. If you want to undermine a chapter quickly, talk about each other, not to each other. If you want to have a healthy chapter, members, even when there is conflict, talk to each other and not about each other. The only time you should talk about a member is if you had the conversation with the member and then you feel it needs to go to the membership committee.

That’s my advice to Gary. What do you think, Priscilla? Anything that you would add to that?

Priscilla:
I think that is great, what you said. I think that sums it up. People get the wrong phone numbers, but I can’t imagine that they would ignore the referral. I think talking to the person is definitely the first step.

Ivan:
You bring up a good point. Sometimes they have the wrong phone number. I have actually seen people get the wrong phone number and then say to someone else, “I got a referral from Ivan, but it didn’t even have the right number on it, so I couldn’t follow through.” But the they didn’t talk to him and say, “Hey, this is the wrong number.” So this idea of talking about each other can go both ways. It can be the person who gave the referral, or the person who received the referral if they didn’t follow up with the person who fave the referral.

My position remains the same. You have to talk to each other. If you got a referral that didn’t feel legit because the phone number was wrong, talk to the person who have it to you. If you gave a referral and they didn’t follow through, talk to the person you gave it to. Clear, open, honest, and direct communication is the best way to handle most of these kinds of issues.

Priscilla:
Yes, I think that is true.

Ivan:
Well, that is my topic for today, Priscilla. If you are listening to this podcast, I think it would make a great discussion at a chapter. Education coordinators, in particular, should share this with the chapters because when members are talking with one another in a positive and supportive manner, many potential challenges can be worked through. So that is it for today, Priscilla. Thanks.

Priscilla:
Okay, great, Dr. Misner. Alright. Well, I would just like to remind the listeners that this podcast has been brought to you by networkingnow.com, which is the leading site on the net for networking downloadables. Thank you so much for listening. This is Priscilla Rice, and we hope you will join us next week for another exciting episode of The Official BNI Podcast.

Dawn Lyons, co-author with Dr. Misner of the new book Room Full of Referrals, joins him on the podcast today to talk about assessing the value of your BNI Membership.

BNI members get more from their membership besides referrals and business. This assessment tool helps members realize how they have progressed in their businesses since joining BNI. Rate yourself on a scale of 0 (lowest) to 5 (highest) before BNI and now.

Some of the non-monetary benefits of BNI membership:

• Feeling like you have a team people helping you in your business
• Being able to speak clearly and confidently about your business
• Being able to ask specifically for the kind of clients you need.

Leadership teams, take note: a good time to ask members to fill these out is shortly before renewals are due!

Click the image to download the BNI Assessment.

Brought to you by Networking Now.

Podcast intro recorded by Tony Wolfe.

Priscilla:
Hello everyone and welcome back to The Official BNI Podcast brought to you by NetworkingNow.com, which is the leading site on the net for networking downloadables. I am Priscilla Rice, and I am coming to you from Live Oak Recording Studio in Berkeley, CA. I am joined on the phone today by the Founder and Chairman of BNI, Dr. Ivan Misner. Hello Ivan. How are you?

Ivan:
I am doing great, Priscilla, and it reminded me that I had somebody recently say, “Oh, BNI is in Berkeley, California.” No, that is where we are recording. You are located in Berkeley, but BNI HQ is actually located in southern California in Upland, and we do this recording through your studio remotely. For those interested, Priscilla is in Berkeley and BNI HQ is in southern California.

And you are in Dawn Lyons’ region, who is my guest today, right?

Priscilla:
I am in Dawn Lyons’ region. I am a proud member of her region.

Ivan:
Dawn is my guest today. Dawn has been a BNI Director for more than 12 years. She actually operates three franchises of BNI and is also the Vice President and partner with the Referral Institute, which is an international consulting and training company. Dawn is a contributing author to the NY Times best selling Masters of Sales, which I co-wrote. She is also a keynote speaker on networking and referrals. Dawn’s also my co-author of my brand new book, which just came out: Room Full of Referrals. Dawn, it’s a real pleasure to have you on the podcast today.

Dawn:
Yes. Thank you very much for having me.

Ivan:
I love the topic. The topic for today is about assessing the value of your BNI membership. You have put together some material, which for those of you listening to the podcast, there will be either a PDF or a Word file of this document that we are talking about. It will be available here on the podcast where you can download it and take a look at it while we are talking.

Dawn, assessing the value of BNI membership- can you tell us about how you put this concept together and how members can use it?

Dawn:
Yes, the interesting thing is that I know a lot of BNI folks actually get a lot of referrals and business and things like that out of their membership. At the same time, I really feel like there are so many other things that come from being a BNI member, no matter where they are in the world. I was sitting down one day and thought I wonder if there are some questions that we can ask our members, almost to take a poll or to learn from them what else have they gained from being a member of BNI?

We started to come up with some questions. I was sitting at my kitchen table and I thought, you know what? This would be a great assessment to help people understand where they were as a business owner before they got started with their BNI membership and where they are today.

Ivan, you know me pretty well. I am a results oriented type of person. I always want to see people succeed as much as possible, so I ask people to take kind of a reality check. Where are they right now in their business, where they were before- and kind of rate themselves. When the people who are listening to the podcast take a look at the form, there are two columns. “Before BNI” and you’ll give yourself a rating. Then where you are now after being a member of BNI.

I think it is just a great way to kind of rate yourself as to what BNI has done for you.

Ivan:
Some of the items, in case you are not in front of BNIpodcast.com and can’t download it but you are listening to this, some of the kinds of questions- and then I want you to talk, Dawn, about some of the ones you like. But two or three questions are like “I speak clearly and confidently about my business.” Before BNI and now, you are asking them to score on a scale of 0 to 5, 0 being the lowest and 5 being the highest.

Then other questions are like “ I have a deeper level of understanding of my business.” “I feel like I am better connected with local business owners.” The idea is to give BNI members an idea or sense of what it was like before you were a member of BNI and what’s it like now? Is that a good assessment?

Dawn:
Yeah. Absolutely. It was interesting because we did this during a leadership team training back in September, and as I was walking around the room, kind of peeking over people’s shoulders, looking at their assessment, you know, there were a lot of 1′s and 2′s on the left hand column and a lot of 3′s, 4′s and 5′s on the now column. To see that level of improvement in people is always a great thing.

Ivan:
Excellent. Now, there are a few that you particularly like, based on members in your region. Do you want to talk a little bit about that? I know that number 7 is one of them.

Dawn:
Yeah, number 7 is one of my favorites and it reads, “ I feel that I have a team of people helping me in my business.” For me, I have talked to so many entrepreneurs who have kind of done it all by themselves. They are trying and trying to make their business work and they are doing all of the work all by themselves. When we really take a look at referrals, with referral marketing, you just can’t do it alone. It’s impossible to do alone.

Once people really get solidified in BNI and start creating those relationships that you talk about all the time, they wind up feel like at last, they have a team of people that know some of their goals, and know where they want to go, that actually end up helping them in their business and helping them to build their business.

So I think it’s a real crucial aspect that you gained from BNI without knowing that, walking into signing that application for BNI.

Ivan:
Excellent. What are a couple of others that you really like?

Dawn:
I think the other one that I like is right underneath that, which is, “I have additional resources to share with my clients.” What I really like about this one is that when you are really well-connected, it’s actually an asset to your businesses.

I am not sure how well BNI members actually look at this as an asset, but let’s say I am a graphic designer. Somebody walks into my office that day- it’s one of my clients- and they are having a lousy day. I start to complain about their computer. Their tone isn’t so hot anymore. They’re stressing out the family and different things like that.

Anytime, I hear a complaint, I have the resources to refer them to other people. What that does for me as a business owner is I can help my clients in other areas of their lives versus what I do for them alone. I think it’s a really positive thing that after a while, our contacts actually end up contacting us for more resources.

I am sure you have a lot of experience with this as well. It is a huge asset to business owners.

Ivan:
I think it is a real benefit. I think sometimes people don’t really think about this benefit unless they have some sort of assignment to figure out what the benefits of membership in BNI. However, when asked, members almost always come up with this one: “ I have additional resources to share with clients” It almost always comes up. It’s interesting because it is not one of the reasons that I started BNI.

Dawn:
Yeah, exactly.

Ivan:
But it’s almost always one of the reasons that members give when asked what are some of the benefits for you as an individual.

There is another one on the list on #11. “I have strong presentation skills.” Before and after. It is certainly one that I have seen a huge difference before and after.

Dawn:
Absolutely. It is probably one of the strongest ones where it was very low in the “Before BNI “ column and then the “now” column is a lot higher. It is due to all the presenting that each of our members do every week.

Ivan:
Right. Many people have never had any kind of speech training or presentation training. They haven’t been active in groups like Toastmasters, which by the way, I highly recommend. Because of that, BNI is for many people, the only regular practice they have in doing regular presentation.

Here is another one that I really like- and by all means, if you have others, speak up. “I am able to ask specifically for the types of clients that I desire.” Wow. That one is so important.

Dawn:
With that one, when people start to do it every week, it is a great opportunity to help them get more and more specific. You talk about specificity so often when people are doing their 60-second infomercials and things of that nature.

Ivan:
We are almost out of time. Before I wrap up, though, tell me that you think in terms of best utilization for this kind of instruments is. Clearly, anytime for a chapter is a good time to have members do this, but there are a couple of opportunities in particular where you want to use this. Would you like to share one or two of those?

Dawn:
Yeah, what I loved the most is when we actually did this live at the membership team training, one of the members stood up and said, “Hey, would it be possible for us to get this form to allow membership committee members to use this about three months before somebody is going to renew their members?”

Guess what my answer was. Absolutely. I thought that was just perfect time frame for people to look at. Before BNI, here is where I was rating myself. And now that I have been in BNI for one year or five or six years, here is how I rate myself.

I think that was probably the most opportune point, as well as the educational coordinators who were really excited about using this as an educational moment.

Ivan:
I agree completely. I think both of those are excellent reasons. For renewals, I think that is a really important one. You want people to sort of assess the value of their relationship before they renew. I have found- I remember one person notably who was thinking about not renewing. Then she sat down and did this kind of assessment. It wasn’t using this form, but she kind of did this type of assessment. She realized she had so much business coming from BNI that she would be crazy to not renew.

This is the kind of thing that gets people thinking. It’s true- because you don’t always- we’re all busy doing what business needs to do to operate. We don’t always assess everything, so this is a great tool for that.

You developed the material. Assessing the value of your BNI membership, Dawn. Great job on this. I would like to see this used globally. If you are listening to this podcast, share it with your chapters. Dawn, I want to thank you very much for putting this together. Any closing thought before I turn it over to Priscilla?

Dawn:
I would just really recommend that people actually use it. I think it is a great tool and it will show people not just what they are gaining from BNI on a business level but also personally and how they are becoming a better leader and better presenter through many other questions that are present on this form.

Ivan:
Great. Dawn, thanks for your contribution. We appreciate it. For those of you listening to the podcast, if you have some observations, please leave a message here on BNIpodcast.com. Priscilla, back to you, thanks.

Priscilla:
Okay, great. Thank you both. That was wonderful. I happened to be there when Dawn presented that to the leadership training. So, I got to see the form and use it. I think that’s it for this week. I would just like to remind the listeners that this podcast has been brought to you by networkingnow.com, which is the leading site on the net for networking downloadables. Thank you so much for listening. This is Priscilla Rice, and we hope you will join us next week for another exciting episode of The Official BNI Podcast.

Synopsis

This episode has its origins in a video for Entrepreneur.com.

Everyone experiences fear of rejection. In Dr. Misner’s case, the overwhelming experience came when he was trying to persuade stores to carry his first book. He found himself afraid to get out of the car and walk into the store to ask.

Finally he realized that the worst that could happen if he asked was the same thing as if he did nothing at all: the store would not carry his book. So he picked up a copy of the book and went into the store. They asked for 20 copies.

When you ask people to do something—including joining BNI—some will, some won’t, and either way, it’s not a big deal.

Mark Goulston recently said, “We have a lot less control over winning or losing at something than we have over trying or quitting at something. If you always try, you’ll eventually win. If you always quit, you can never win.”

Success doesn’t necessarily go to the smartest person: persistence is critical. If you think you can, or you think you can’t, you’re right. So don’t let fear of rejection stop you.

Brought to you by Networking Now.

Complete Transcript of BNI Podcast Episode 211 -

Priscilla:
Hello everyone, and welcome back to The Official BNI Podcast brought to you by NetworkingNow.com, which is the leading site on the web for networking downloadables. I’m Priscilla Rice, and I’m coming to you from Live Oak Recording Studio in Berkeley, California, and I’m joined on the phone today by the Founder and the Chairman of BNI, Dr. Ivan Misner. Hello Ivan. How are you?

Ivan:
I’m doing great, thanks.

Priscilla:
I heard it’s your birthday tomorrow.

Ivan:
It is my birthday. June 30th is my birthday, so I’ll be 55. Everyone is going to be going, “Gee. I wonder how old he is.” I started BNI when I was about 28 years old.

Priscilla:
You are so young. That’s great. I hope you have a very happy day.

Ivan:
Thank you very much. I appreciate that. Today I am going to be talking about an interesting topic. It’s fear of rejection. I’ll tell you why I am doing this one. I am doing this one because I did a video for entrepreneur.com. They asked me to do something on fear of rejection. This is another one the staff saw and said I had to do this as a podcast. I was like, really? Why? I don’t know why BNI members would be interested in it.

I’ll tell you I am going to take the advice of my staff because the person who said to do episode 203, The Rest of the Story, where I talked about my background before I got BNI started–we had so many comments. I got a lot of emails and responses on that podcast, just talking about how I got to where I started BNI because most people know the BNI story but they don’t know the story before that. We had such a positive response.

This is a little bit different. It’s not about networking, but I think it will resonate with everyone. Fear of rejection. We all have all dealt with the fear of rejection. Maybe you haven’t, Priscilla.

Priscilla:
I have definitely had fear of rejection. I think that’s a great topic because I think it is universal. We all worry about it.

Ivan:
I think you’re right so I am going to take the advice of my staff and do the podcast today on this topic. They were absolutely right with episode 203. If you haven’t listened to it, go listen to episode 203. It’s really good.

So fear of rejection. What I did for Entrepreneur is talked about one of the more poignant  times in my life where I was really concerned about rejection. That’s when my first major book, The World’s Best Known Marketing Secret, came out in 1994. Let me tell you, if you ever feel like you are a big shot, write a book. That will humble you very quickly in terms of doing book signings and what not. Some people have heard me talk about some funny stories in doing book signings. The book came out  in 1994 and I was trying to get bookstores to carry it. A friend  of mine said there was a local neighborhood bookstore that didn’t have any copies. It was literally on my way home, and I stopped off at the bookstore and sat in the car paralyzed to go in.

I was supposed to go in and was going to ask them if they would mind carrying a few copies of my book.  I was just paralyzed. I sat there, like this was embarrassing. What if they say no? What if they said they didn’t want the book, thank you very much. It wasn’t a big bookstore. It wasn’t like these big giant bookstores that exist now. It was a smaller bookstore. I sat there and I swear I  almost put the key back in the ignition, turned it on and backed out. I was so close. Then I thought okay, if I don’t go in, what is going to happen? Chances are pretty good if I don’t go in that nothing is going to happen. They are not going to carry the book.  If I go in and they look at me and say they don’t want the book, what is going to happen? They won’t carry the book.

But what if I go in and ask and they say yes? Then something is going to happen. So really the only choice that would lead to a positive outcome was to go in. Doing nothing would get me the same thing that  I had now, which was nothing. So I literally sat in the car and said to myself, suck it up and go on in. This will be over in ten minutes. Nobody is actually going to get injured. There will be no hospitalization involved. It’s not that big a deal. It’s just a no.

So I went in. I brought a copy of the book and said, “I’m the author of this book. Some of your stores in your chain are carrying it. I live locally and just wondered if you would mind having a few copies, 3 or 4 copies. If so, I would be more than glad to sign them when they come in.”

They said, “Oh great! You’re a local author! We’ll get 20. Will you come back and sign them for us?” I was like, yeah, I’d be glad to come back and sign them. So they ordered 20 copies and they came back in a couple of weeks and I signed them all. It wasn’t a formal signing but what I call a drive by signing.  You drive by, sign the books and you leave. I did that and they carried way more than most bookstores.

I remember thinking back. That was sort of a nexus point in terms of rejection. I could do it or I could not do it. Not doing it would give me the same response as what I  presently had, which was no books there. So I tell people don’t let the fear of rejection stop you from doing what you are excited about. If you are excited about your business, don’t let rejection stop you. You have to just know that when it comes to asking somebody to do something, including asking people to join BNI–

Some will. Some won’t. So what? It’s not the end of the world. I  just had to put myself in the frame of mind that this is just not that big of a deal. If someone doesn’t want to do it, that’s fine. God bless them. I love them. It’s not that big a deal.

I just wrote a blog recently about a good friend of mine, Dr. Mark Goulston. Mark and I went out for dinner and he said something to me casually that literally made me reach into my pocket and scribble something down on the back of one of my business cards. It has to do with this rejection concept. Mark  has been a guest on my podcast before. Do a search on Mark Goulston. Mark has done at least one or two with me here. Great guy, psychiatrist, good friend. I  met him in doing research for Peter Guber’s book, Tell to Win. Mark and I were at one of the session with Peter Guber and working on his book.

Anyway, I wrote something down. He said, “You know, we have a lot less control over winning or losing at something than we do over trying  or quitting something. Always try. You can eventually win. If you always quit, you can never win.”  I loved this statement and  it completely resonated with me and what I have seen in relation to people being successful at networking or at anything for that matter. When people give  up, even in their thoughts, it’s game over.

I have always thought that I may not be the most successful man in a room. I may not be the smartest man in a room. But I am pretty confident that I am the most persistent man in the room—or certainly one of the most persistent men in the room. That commitment to trying has helped me succeed. I think it is one of the things  that consistently helps anyone have long-term success. The whole process  has to begin with the old axiom that if you think you can or if you think you can’t, you’ll be right.

So I say to people don’t let the fear of rejection stop you from what you are excited about. It begins with trying versus quitting. Keep trying and you have a chance at winning. That is my message for today, Priscilla.

Priscilla:
That is great. Can I just tell a little story?

Ivan:
Sure.

Priscilla:
When I was younger–I know you are a martial artist, and I also had studied martial arts. I was at a meet and I had never sparred before. It was a competition, and the grand master that I studied with wanted me to compete and I didn’t feel ready. So I said no. I wouldn’t do it. Afterwards, I suffered so much with regret. I decided from that point on that if there is ever a situation where I am either going to do it or not do it and I am fearful, I am going to do it because the regret afterwards is much worse than just failing. That’s what I decided.

Ivan:
I think you are absolutely right, especially for the return on the investment. The investment is just to get out there and try. Okay, maybe in martial arts, you get beat up a little bit, but in most cases, it’s not a physical issue. Even then, you are wearing gloves. I have been  in martial arts and have never been at a meet where anybody really got seriously hurt.

But you’re usually not talking about things like that. You are talking about simpler things–walking in and asking if they want to carry a few books. That is what most of us have to deal with in real life. Simple things like that. That fear of rejection freezes us from doing the things that we want.  You’re right. The regret can really last a long time. I am proud of you. You went out and did it after that.

Priscilla:
Well, I never forgot either. That is how deep it was. Okay.

Ivan:
Thank you.

Priscilla:
I think that is it. Thank you so much, Dr. Misner. I would just like to remind the listeners that today’s podcast was brought to you by NetworkingNow.com, which is the leading site on the net for networking downloadables. Thanks for listening. This is Priscilla Rice, and we hope that you will join us again next week for another exciting episode of The Official BNI Podcast.

Just a reminder that the new intro to the podcast was produced by Tony Wolfe.

Stewart Emery shared a story with Dr. Misner recently about a billionaire CEO who used the same company cafeteria as the rest of the employees. Prospective buyers of the company wanted that to change if they bought the company. The CEO halted the negotiations that day.

Chapters have a choice about whether to be inclusive or exclusive. The more successful you are, the easier it is to be standoffish. A good power team might be tempted to be exclusive, but a GREAT power team will be inclusive and share its success.

Leaders within BNI should be approachable. When the members understand that the people on the leadership team care about their success, it creates a healthy culture. Leading from among makes us better leaders in our own businesses as well as in our chapters.

Brought to you by Networking Now.

Complete Transcript of BNI Podcast Episode 295 -

Priscilla:
Hello everyone and welcome back to The Official BNI Podcast brought to you by NetworkingNow.com, which is the leading site on the net for networking downloadables. I am Priscilla Rice, and I am coming to you from Live Oak Recording Studio in Berkeley, CA. I am joined on the phone today by the Founder and Chairman of BNI, Dr. Ivan Misner. Hello Ivan. How are you, and where are you?

Ivan:
Hi Priscilla. I am doing great, and I am away this week at a retreat with my executive management team and the executive council of BNI. The executive management team who work for the company and the executive council are the top 7 countries for BNI. They re the countries that have the most chapters in them. We get together several times a year to talk about where the organization is going and improve it as much as possible.

I like to share that on the podcast so that you know the organization does a lot of planning and analysis. The key players of the organization do that regularly to keep BNI the largest and most successful networking organization in the world. So that is what I am doing this week.

Priscilla:
That sounds great. So what do you have to share with us?

Ivan:
Before I go into today’s topic, I want to mention again that we have a new opening to BNIpodcast.com. It was done by a good friend and BNI member, Tony Wolfe. For people who would like to see Tony and what he does, you can go to tonywolfe.com. Tony did the voice recording. Tony is the man of a thousand voices, and to get more information, please go to tonywolfe.com. Tony, thank you so much. Your voiceover work is great, and I am proud to have you do our opening.

Today, I’ll talk about leading from among, not from above. I got this idea- today’s podcast is going to be a little more seminal, a little more strategic. I try give a lot of hands on very technique oriented things as much as possible. Today is more conceptual, but I think it is really important.

I have a good friend by the name of Stewart Emery. Stewart has written many books like Do You Matter?, which is a book about branding. There is another book called Success Meant to Last. I think Stewart is one of the brilliant minds of our time. He was responsible for the “priceless” series of commercials with MasterCard.

He was over at my house a few months ago. At breakfast, he told me about an interview. He was talking to my wife, his wife and me. It was one that he did with a really well-known billionaire in the computer industry. The billionaire shared an intriguing story with Stewart about an experience he had when the senior executives of the company, interested in purchasing the billionaire’s company, visited his office to discuss a possible purchase.

At lunch, the billionaire- I am not naming him by name, but it would be a name that most people would recognize, told the senior executives that he was negotiating with that he was going to take them to the executive dining room for lunch. They followed him to this dining room. It was really nice but not extravagant. Interestingly enough, that wasn’t the big surprise. The surprise was that the dining room was a buffet line. The billionaire walked up to the buffet line, picked up a tray and stood in line behind everyone else. The executives looked around the room as it filled up and they realized that it was not the executive dining room. It was the company dining room- and the boss stood in line with all the employees.

He spoke to everyone. People came up and said hi to him. No one was afraid to talk to him. When I heard Stewart tell this story, it struck me that this individual didn’t lead by being above them. He led by being among them. Stewart told me that the billionaire said that the management team who was talking to him about buying his company was surprised by the fact that he and all the executives ate with the employees.

One of them commented that this would have to change if they bought the company. For the boss, it was a test. This was not the kind of company that he wanted to sell his business to. When they said that, the negotiations ended that day.

I believe that companies have a choice. Let’s drill that down. I believe chapters have a choice. They can move toward exclusivity in their culture or they can strive to commit, honor and embrace inclusivity in their culture as business professionals. Within BNI, inclusivity means being there to help and support everyone else. Sometimes the more successful someone gets, the easier it is to be standoffish. When you are successful, it is easy to think you are the kind of the hill, that you are doing well, and if people want help, they have to come ask you.

I see that with power teams. Chapters with real successful power teams become kind of cliquish within the group. On the other hand, chapters with great power teams with symbiotic professions that are working real well tend to be inclusive, and will say to other power teams to visit their team and see what they are doing so they can take it back and share with their groups..

Sometimes I talk about exclusive as membership. You know, you want to be picky about who you bring in. That doesn’t apply here. What I am talking about is a group of business people who feel inclusive for those people who are a good fit in BNI. Just because you are the president doesn’t mean that you are a better member. You are one of the members there who happens to be leading at that point, and the more engaged you are in the process, the better.

Sometimes when people meet me, I am always surprised when people say–and I am happy to say that I hear it fairly regularly– that they are surprised that I am approachable. I find that interesting. I think they feel this way because sometimes we as leaders act in a way that people perceive as unapproachable. We act better than to other people.

I believe people should be surprised when a leader is unapproachable, not when they are approachable. They should be surprised when they are unapproachable. The problem is that we live in a world where success sometimes creates a sense of separation with both the organizational leaders and the others. I believe that one of the key things to embrace in a successful organization is the sense that in a business environment, the boss, owner or senior executive–in a BNI environment, the leadership team, the president, vice president, secretary and treasurer (they are called different titles in different countries–chapter director, membership coordinator, secretary-treasurer). The membership team, the visitor host, the education coordinator–all of these people leading the group should be truly approachable and there to help.

One of the core traditions of BNI is people don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care. When members understand that people on the leadership team care about their success, it creates a healthy culture that enables people to understand that these leaders are working among them not above them. IT’s a simple concept that I think we all can strive to improve. It makes us better leaders in a BNI chapter as well as in our own businesses.

Priscilla:
That’s great advice. I like that.

Ivan:
I do, too, and it came from Stewart Emery. Stewart is a good friend. I have picked up some great ideas from him. He is a fellow member of the Transformational Leadership Council, which I am a founding member of. I have been there for almost ten years now. It’s a great organization. He always has wonderful ideas and I am sure he’ll have more in store over the years. That’s all for today.

Priscilla:
That was great. Thank you so much. That’s it for this week. I would just like to remind the listeners that this podcast has been brought to you by networkingnow.com, which is the leading site on the net for networking downloadables. Thank you so much for listening. This is Priscilla Rice, and we hope you will join us next week for another exciting episode of The Official BNI Podcast.

A BNI member asked Dr. Misner how to combine attracting and retaining new members with passing high-quality referrals. There are three factors in this.

System

BNI works best when you use the whole system as outlined in the manuals. If you remove too many pieces, the whole thing will fall apart.

Accountability

How many referrals is the chapter giving? How many do we want to be giving? Are they high-quality referrals? Are members attending?

Culture

Culture eats strategy for breakfast. The attitude of the group, the way it behaves, the way it feels when you walk into it. If people are laughing and enjoying their meeting and following the system, they have a healthy culture. One person can ruin a group’s culture.

Brought to you by Networking Now.

Complete Transcript of BNI Podcast Episode 294 -

Priscilla:
Hello everyone and welcome back to The Official BNI Podcast brought to you by NetworkingNow.com, which is the leading site on the net for networking downloadables. I am Priscilla Rice, and I am coming to you from Live Oak Recording Studio in Berkeley, CA. I am joined on the phone today by the Founder and Chairman of BNI, Dr. Ivan Misner. Hello Ivan, how are you and where are you?

Ivan:
Hi Priscilla. I am doing great, and this week, I am training new Directors – and Directors who are going back for a second time. Mostly new Directors in our Director Orientation that we have a BNI HQ. I have dozens of people from all over North America here for a three day training that we think is really important. I participate in it because I think it is really important to have people hear from me as to how we started and what the traditions of the organization are. So that is what I am doing this week.

Priscilla:
That sounds good. What is the topic here that you are sharing?

Ivan:
Today, I am going to be talking about how to attract new members and keep current members while giving high quality referrals. That second part is kind of important. The question came to be from a BNI member who emailed me and said, “How do you attract new members and retain current members all in the context of giving high quality referrals? That is really the reason we are all here.”

I agree. First of all, I think that there are three things to do. Sometimes people ask me if I have the one secret to be successful. I am going to give you the one secret to being successful at the chapter level. Are you ready to hear it?

Priscilla:
I’m ready to hear it.

Ivan:
The one secret is there is no one secret. There isn’t. It’s like the recipe for a great meal. There is more than one ingredient. There are multiple ingredients. I have narrowed it down to three and that is what I am going to talk about today. I am going to talk about system, accountability and culture.

When you get those three right- there are more, but when you get those three, I think “core”. When you get those three right, attracting new members is no big deal. Retaining current members is much easier and giving high quality referrals is very natural.

Let’s start with the system. I see some chapters- generally, highly successful chapters that are headed in the direction of becoming unsuccessful start taking apart the system. They like this but they don’t like that. They are going to do this but not going to do that.

I would equate that to a manufacturing plant producing cars. You know, the car is coming off the assembly line and you go, “Do I really need that bolt, or can I pop that off? And this isn’t absolutely necessary to the car. Let’s take that off.” At some point in the line, somebody decided that the wheels aren’t necessary and pulled those off. Somewhere along the line, you end up with a car that is not complete.

When I use this, people say that is just silly and nobody would do that. Well, they do it all the time on things like systems and networks like BNI. They start pulling out pieces of it and guess what- it fails and they can’t figure out why. They can’t figure out why because they are not seeing a complete car but they don’t realize that pulling those pieces out is making a huge difference.

Using the system is really important. Understanding the system is really important. It’s one of the reasons why we have manuals. We produce manuals so that people don’t have to reinvent the wheel.

On the leadership team, people will go through the leadership team and get a manual that is dozens of pages long and walks them through- now mind you, it doesn’t tell you everything you need to know, but it tells you a lot. There are downloadable sections on regional websites on BNI.com for much, much more content. These podcasts are additional content. There is a lot of stuff to help maintain the system.

There are Regional Directors, Director Consultants and Executive Directors. All of these people are there to help you with the system, to interpret the material. So use the system. Don’t pull out pieces from it. It’s like that great big puzzle, Jenga- remember? You pull out pieces and the whole thing falls apart. If you pull out enough pieces, I guarantee you that this will fall apart. The fewer things that you pull out, the more successful that you are going to be. That’s one.

Two, accountability. I have talked about this in previous podcasts, but you can’t talk about this enough. One of the strengths of a powerful network is that most of the members are friends. One of the weaknesses of a network is that most of the members are friends. Friends don’t like to hold friends accountable. This isn’t a friendship organization. This is a referral organization, and accountability is key.

Accountability starts with setting goals. Chapters should have some goals. How many referrals are we getting? How many do we want to be getting? Are they high quality referrals? Just the quantity is valuable, but it is not the most important. It is the quality that is even more important.

So are we giving good referrals and how many are we giving? That’s part of the accountability. Having a goal of this is how many we want to be giving and how are we going to get there? You want to reverse engineer your goal. Do you have members attending or do you have too many members absent- because there is a direct correlation between absentees and reduction in referrals, a direct correlation.

Are you holding each other accountable for the key things in making a successful chapter? This is a business organization, and it’s interesting that people with BNI will say it’s just too much structure and too many things that you have to be responsible for. They don’t want to join.

I am okay with that. I am really okay with that. BNI is not for everyone. It’s for people who are willing to make a commitment to the fellow members and will actually do what is necessary to generate referrals. We need people who are accountable to each other and willing to support each other. You don’t need to talk to anybody into joining BNI. If they think it is too much work, believe me, you don’t want them to join BNI because they will bring that into the group and start- guess what- pulling the engine tiles out because it’s too much. Accountability is the second.

Third, culture. Organizational culture. Culture eats strategy for breakfast. All we have talked about so far is strategy. It’s important.

It’s not that strategy isn’t important. I think it is important. Systems are important. I am a systems guy. Accountability- nobody likes to be held accountable, but the truth is that it’s what makes things work.

But culture is so incredibly important. You know, you can have the best strategy in the world but if you have really bad culture as an organization, you will fail.

Priscilla:
Can you tell me, what do you mean by culture? Be more specific.

Ivan:
The attitude of the group, the way it behaves, the feeling of camaraderie, the relationships that exist. These are all part of the culture, the way they operate. What does that look like? When you go into a group- you have visited various chapters, Priscilla.

Priscilla:
Yes, I have.

Ivan:
Have you ever gone into a group and you just got a bad feeling, a bad vibe? There was negative energy, people just weren’t happy?

Priscilla:
Actually, I haven’t but I am sure those exist.

Ivan:
I have, and that is part of the culture of that chapter- that there are just so many problems that it permeates the vibe of the chapter. I am sure you have gone to chapters where you walk in and there are people laughing, they are having a good time- you know, obviously very positive. They are generating a lot of business. They are following the system and generating a lot of business. You have seen that, right?

Priscilla:
Yeah, my chapter, for example.

Ivan:
And you have a lot of members in your chapter. What size is your group?

Priscilla:
We are at 35 now but we are trying to get back up to 42, which is where we used to be.

Ivan:
35 to 45 is a great size for a chapter.

You can tell you are in a good chapter and the chapter has a healthy culture when people are laughing, they are enjoying their meeting and they are following the system. It is a culture. Culture is all about the attitude and the healthy organizational environment. We don’t talk about that a lot in BNI but it is so important.

It’s one of the reasons why you want to be really picky about who you bring in. And you know, I think there is a podcast about who’s in the room. It’s one of those things that you want to be really picky about who you let in.

Priscilla:
Okay. Great. I would just like to remind the listeners that this podcast has been brought to you by NetworkingNow.com, which is the leading site on the net for networking downloadables. Thank you very much for listening. This is Priscilla Rice and we hope you will join us next week for another exciting episode of The Official BNI Podcast.

New podcast intro by BNI member Tony Wolfe.

Special guest Mark Goulston joins Dr. Misner on the podcast today to talk about his new book, Real Influence: Persuade without Pushing. Lasting influence

1. Go for great outcomes
2. Listen past your blind spots
3. Engage them in their “there”
4. When you’ve done enough, do more

If you can do these four things and listen without desire people will remember you for a lifetime.

Find out more at www.getrealinfluence.com.

Brought to you by Networking Now.

Complete Transcript of BNI Podcast Episode 293 -

Priscilla:
Hello everyone and welcome back to The Official BNI Podcast brought to you by NetworkingNow.com, which is the leading site on the net for networking downloadables. I am Priscilla Rice, and I am coming to you from Live Oak Recording Studio in Berkeley, CA. I am joined on the phone today by the Founder and Chairman of BNI, Dr. Ivan Misner. Hello Ivan, how are you and where are you?

Ivan:
Hi Priscilla. I am in New Hampshire this week doing a presentation on a book that I did a few years ago, Masters of Success, for an organization in that area. I am out and about and will be meeting with fellow BNI members while I am out here.

Today, I have a guest that I will introduce in a moment, but some of you will notice that I have a new introduction to the BNI podcast. We have used the same intro for many years and we have a BNI member who has been with the organization for a long time, Tony Wolfe, who does voiceovers. The new recording for podcasts was done by Tony. Tony, thank you so much for that opening. It is always great to use BNI members.

I have as my guest today a really good friend, Dr. Mark Goulston, who I met a few years back at a storytelling symposium. He has written six books, including an international best selling book, Just Listen, Discover the Secrets to Getting Through to Absolutely Anyone. I love that book. It was featured here previously on BNI podcast. If you do a search on Mark Goulston, you’ll find some of the other podcasts that he has done with me.

Dr. Goulston has been an executive coach for sales and leadership trainers. He speaks around the world. He is also a former FBI and police hostage negotiation trainer. He is a cofounder of the recently launched global community, Heartfelt Leadership. His mission is daring to care.

Mark is not too far from me in the Los Angeles area. Mark, welcome back to the podcast.

Mark:
I am so pleased to be back. But you should have spelled my last name when they search. That is the tough one. Goulston. That’s the name.

Ivan:
Mark Goulston. Mark is really good at what he does. He is also a great human. I really enjoy talking to Mark. He and I have a friendship which has lasted for a number of years now, ever since the symposium that we went to. Mark is a real genuine guy, great networker and it is always great to have him on.

Today we are going to talk about a new book of his, Real Influence: Persuade without Pushing. It think a great place to start with that, Mark, is how did your previous book, Just Listen, lead to this book that would make my BNI members who are networking want to pick this up? I know that they will, but you can tell them why this would be valuable to them.

Mark:
Thank you, Ivan. In Just Listen, the subtitle is Discover the Secret to Getting Through to Absolutely Anyone. It really is a book teaching you how to listen deeply into people and genuinely. That causes people open up to you, especially when they feel that you are there and that you are not going to hurt them.

What happened is that although people loved Just Listen, people said when people feel open up to you, you do need to get them to do things. It’s fine that they open up but you do need to get things done. My co-author, Dr. John Alman teaches at the Anderson School in UCLA. We interviewed over a hundred influencers, including you, Ivan, who persuaded them to do something important in their lives. A number of them arched their backs and said nobody persuaded them to do anything and they were entrepreneurs.

Then when we asked who positively influenced them, a number of them leaned back, put their arms behind their head and said, “Ah… That’s a different story.” What we have discovered is that positive influence can last a lifetime, whereas pushing persuasion sometimes doesn’t last to the end of the conversation.

Ivan:
Did you ever read the material by Frederick Fritzberg on how to motivate people?

Mark:
Say a little bit about that.

Ivan:
He was a published in the Harvard Business Review back in the ’30s. He talks about this in a slightly different context. He says that you can’t motivate people long term. You can provide an environment for them to motivate themselves, but what I thought was interesting with what you are saying. You can motivate people in the short term. He called it kita, which stands for kick in the anatomy. You can motivate people to do something in the short term about as long as the conversation, but being aggressing with them gets them pushing back and will often undermine you when you turn your back and walk out.

Mark:
Absolutely. In fact, of all the people that we interviewed, including you, I would imagine people would attribute- were all influencers. Many of them told us about people who influenced them.

What we actually discovered is that there seems to be four steps. I will mention them quickly. The first one is go for great outcomes. Two is listen past your blind spots. Three is engage them in their there. Four is when you have done enough, do more.

What we discovered is when you go for a great outcome and you are in a conversation talking, if you ask them what their goals are, you are like everyone else, but if you can listen into where they could be, where their company could be and who they could be, what will happen is people will look up at the ceiling, think about it, and get clear. When they come back and look at you, they will smile and it won’t be a transaction conversation anymore.

One of the examples of the best outcomes is Jim Cyniko, the former CEO of Costco. He calls himself a former juvenile delinquent who was a bagger at Fedmart in San Diego when legendary retail warehouse father, Saul Price, plucked him out and said he could do a lot more. What happened is Saul Price saw an amazingly great outcome of who Jim Cynico could be and the rest is history.

When you are with people, try to push them to thinking about what would be an amazing result at the end of this next year. Get them to think about it and be really clear about it and try to help them make that happen.

The second thing is listen past your blind spots. A lot of times when we have been that generous to someone else, we have a tendency to try to upsell them, which they are going to interpret as a bait and switch. If you have someone talking about this dream outcome and you try to upsell them, it is worse than if you never brought to their attention a great outcome. So be aware of those blind spots. Also be aware that all of us can have very wrong perceptions. We can see things and think it is very clear, but it’s like driving on the highway when you check your mirrors and swerve to miss a motorcyclist.

We all have blind spots like that. Try to be aware of them and what they might be. Even ask people what do you think are my blind spots?

The third is engage people in their “there”. Most of us are stuck in what we call your “here”, which means you are stuck in your agenda. You can have something that we call agenda blindness. One of my favorite quotes of all times comes from a psychoanalyst, Wilford Beauch, who said, “The purest form of communication in listening is to listen without memory or desire.” When you listen with memory, you listen with an old agenda. If you listen with desire, you listen with a new agenda. In neither case are you actually listening to the other person.

One of the best examples of this is tied to one of the most famous stories in record history, when Glen Barrof, CEO of Concord Records approached Ray Charles to do a duet album. He couldn’t get through because of who Ray’s handlers got through to Ray. What was clear was that Ray had been taken advantage of. Even though he was famous, he was not wealthy. What Glen did was give Ray control of the whole process and a great deal of control over the finances. The rest is history. And Genius Loves Company went on win the Grammy Awards and many more awards for that year.

After that, after you engage someone in their there, the final step is after you have done enough, do more. This is probably the most important thing for your BNI members. What that means is before you meet someone, be prepared. Read up on them. Read up on their company. Read up on their industry. Spend a little time trying to get where they are coming from and do that prep work.

The second thing is when you are there listening, do more. Try to get them to go deeper. When people talk to you and you sense there is an emotional spin on what they are saying, say, “Say more on that.” They will open up more. Then when they open up more say, “Really?” And they will say, “Oh yeah, it is just like this…” and they will open up even more. Then if you say to them, “What is the most important thing that I should get from what you are saying?” people will feel really heard.

Then, finally, do more after you meet them. I make an introduction everyday including Saturday and Sunday. They are getting scarily good because I am not only introducing people who are aligned in terms of business and their values, but I go the extra because I nag them a week and a half later. I ask if they met and say, “I have a little bit of ADD and I am just nagging. I wouldn’t put you people together unless there was something in it for you, so please connect.”

I think if you can do those four steps, I think you will have real influence and people will not only thank you, but they may remember you for a lifetime.

Ivan:
Mark, that is really good advice. An additional point: you talked about the importance of listening. I try to train members that a good networker has two ears and one mouth and should be using them proportionately. You have to pay attention.

I love your idea of listen without desire. I see over and over again people who are out there networking and listening with an ear of selling. They are listening and thinking this is a good opportunity here and they are ready to make a sale- instead of really hearing what that person has to say and being there to support them in some way. By support, I mean not trying to sell them something.

Those are great bits of advice. We are out of time, but I want to make sure that people know about your website for the material. It’s at www.getrealinfluence.com.

Mark, any closing comments before I wrap up here?

Mark:
Offline, I am going to send you a power thank you. You can never use a power thank you to excess. A power thank you is you thank someone for what they did. The second thing is you acknowledge the effort that it took for them to do it. The third thing is you tell the other person what that personally meant to you. Before I start to get choked up, I am going to do that one offline, Ivan.

Ivan:
Thank you, Mark. You absolutely walk the talk. We have known each other now for five or six years and you do the things that you are talking about here. I recognize them. You definitely walk the talk, and that is always the kind of person that you want to get advice from on how to improve your skill set. Thank you so much. I appreciate you being on our podcast again.

Priscilla, back to you.

Priscilla:
Okay. That’s great. Thank you so much to both of you.I would just like to remind the listeners that this podcast has been brought to you by NetworkingNow.com, which is the leading site on the net for networking downloadables. Thank you very much for listening. This is Priscilla Rice and we hope you will join us next week for another exciting episode of The Official BNI Podcast.

Synopsis

Phenomenal reviews can convince you to go to an out-of-the-way restaurant. Written testimonials can do the same thing for your business. Consumers trust testimonials from other people more than they do your own marketing materials.

BNI members can use written testimonials in several ways.

• Place written testimonials on your website.
• If your business attracts walk-in clients, display your written testimonials in a binder in your reception area. If you’re a salesperson, take a binder with testimonials with you when you call on prospects.
• Include testimonials and endorsements with your business proposals. Match the testimonial to the service you’re providing or the industry your prospect is in.

Using testimonials builds your credibility. Start by getting members of your BNI chapter to write testimonials for you. One place people can write testimonials for you is on Yelp.com.

Brought to you by Networking Now.

Complete Transcription of BNI Podcast Episode 110 -

Priscilla:
Hello everyone, and welcome back to The Official BNI Podcast brought to you by NetworkingNow.com, which is the leading site on the Net for networking downloadables.

I’m Priscilla Rice, and I’m coming to you from the beautiful Live Oak Recording Studio in Berkley, California, and I am joined on the phone today by the founder and the chairman of BNI, Dr. Ivan Misner.

Hello, Ivan. How are you, and where are you?

Ivan:
Well, I’m in your neck of the woods this week, Priscilla. I’m in the Bay Area for a big conference. I’m doing the key note presentation at a Referral Institute conference this week up in San Francisco Bay area.

Priscilla:
Well, welcome. I’m so glad you’re here.

Ivan:
This week I’m going to be talking about Asking for Written Testimonials. Endorsements and testimonials are very important in word-of-mouth. I was thinking about this last weekend when my wife and I were on a trip. And we wanted to go out to a really nice restaurant, but we weren’t really sure what was there. We weren’t familiar with the town we were in, and Beth perused the local magazine for restaurant reviews, and I logged on to the Internet to search for some top rated restaurants in the area. And we settled on a steak house that was more than a little bit out of the way and not real easy to get to. People might say, “Why? Why would you do that?” Well, it’s because the restaurant had phenomenal reviews both online and in the local magazine, and that was really enough to convince us that we should go there and try it out.

It’s like that, I think, in business. Before people come to you for a particular product or service, they often want the comfort of knowing what others have said about you. Testimonials carry a level of credibility because they come from someone who has direct experience with your product or your service. Consumers generally place more trust in a testimonial from another person than in the business’ own marketing message. That’s very true. They’re a little less likely to believe the marketing or sales than they would that testimonial or endorsement. They believe that the average person is unbiased, particularly if we’re talking to a friend.

And that’s why I think BNI works so well. It’s about people who know people, and they’re referring someone to someone they already know. So there’s a little bit of a relationship there. The person has nothing to gain from providing that endorsement.

Priscilla:
Right.

Ivan:
And the business really stands nothing to gain or lose, although, frankly, you do have something to lose if you give a bad endorsement or bad testimonial. You lose a little bit of your reputation. So people that trust others will take that endorsement, and I think that’s what so powerful about BNI.

So I wanted to talk about what you could do as a BNI member, and I think that written testimonials can be used in many ways to enhance your credibility, set you above your competition, and be used very effectively in BNI. And I have three suggestions.

One is, place endorsements or testimonials on your business Web site. Some Web sites have them strategically sprinkled throughout so there’s at least one testimonial on each page. Others have a dedicated page where a browser can view several endorsements or testimonials at once. That’s the first one, place some on your Web site.

Second is, if your business attracts a lot of walk-in clients, it’s helpful to display your written testimonials. Have them in a plastic sheath protector in a three-ring binder. Label them “What Our Customers Are Saying About Us,” or “Client Testimonials.” Keep the binder on a table in your reception area where customers can browse through it while they’re waiting for your services.

Priscilla:
That’s a good idea.

Ivan:
If you’re a sales person, you should have a binder that you take with you that has this content and information in it. It’s a good way to connect with your prospects and enhance your relationship with your current client.

The third thing is to use or include testimonials and endorsements with your business proposals. So if you have a proposal for business that you give out, a bid of any kind, include a handful of endorsements in a section of the bid or proposal, preferably one that’s specifically aimed at that individual. If you’re gathering many endorsements or testimonials and you can find some that somehow connect with this prospect, maybe it’s a similar industry or there was an endorsement or testimonial that addressed a similar issue, like quality of the product or customer service, and you do an endorsement, maybe that particular prospect is really concerned about your ability to deliver and provide good customer service, so you do some endorsements that apply to how good your customer service was. Make them specific to the prospect. That’s really, really powerful.

So if you make a standard practice to ask clients and contacts for testimonials, you’ll build your credibility and your business. What better place is there than BNI. Start, if you haven’t already, by getting members of BNI to do some of the endorsements for you, and use those in your proposals as you continue your business.

Priscilla:
We’ve done that quite a bit in our chapter. Are you familiar with the Web site by the name of Yelp.com?

Ivan:
Yes, I am. I am familiar with them. One of the senior executives just happened to contact me recently, and we will be getting sort of the beginning phases of relationship with Yelp in recommending Yelp. They are in most major cities in the United States. They have not gone international yet, but they are in most major cities. Yeah, I am familiar with them. Good program.

Priscilla:
Yeah, and that’s a perfect way to get testimonials up on your business and have them affect how many people contact you.

Ivan:
Well, I’m impressed with Yelp.com, and we may be doing some things with them as time goes on, and they certainly want to go international. We may be able to assist them with that. It’s ironic that you bring that up, because I literally just had a phone call with one of their executives just within the last few weeks.

Priscilla:
That’s great. Well, that’s wonderful. Do you have anything else you’d like to share before we end this podcast?

Ivan:
No, just to reiterate the three points that I gave. Place your endorsements on your Web site; have a binder; and use those endorsements in any proposals you give. You do those three things, start with BNI members and have it grow from there, and it’s a great way to help your prospects know about all the other people and what they think about your products and services. And that’s, I think, very important.

Thanks, Priscilla.

Priscilla:
Oh, you’re so welcome. Thank you, Dr. Misner.

I would just like to remind the listeners that this podcast has been brought to you by NetworkingNow.com, the leading site on the Net for networking downloadables. Thanks so much for listening. This is Priscilla Rice, and we hope you’ll join us next week for another exciting episode of The Official BNI Podcast.

Today’s podcast is a response to a new member’s concern that the current reporting system pressures BNI members into valuing the quantity of referrals they pass over the quality of those referrals.

“I believe I understand what a good referral is and is not, but the temptation to stick a fellow BNI member with an anemic referral increases with each PALMS Report. Perhaps a solution to this dilemma–at least in part–would be to replace the stuffing-of-the-big-envelope-with-referral-slips with a brief reminder of what constitutes a good referral and how to avoid bad referrals.”

So why can’t BNI adopt this suggestion? In business, you achieve what you measure. Goals without measurement are just wishful thinking. That does NOT mean you should give out bad referrals. What we should be measuring are legitimate referrals.

Here are 5 places you can go to learn more about what constitutes a good referral.

1. The orientation CD that every member gets in the New Member Packet.
2. The Member Orientation Guide, also in the New Member Packet.
3. The Member Success Program Training.
4. The book Givers Gain.
5. Dr. Misner’s article, “What Is the Definition of a Referral” in SuccessNet Online.

Brought to you by Networking Now.

Complete Transcript of BNI Podcast Episode 291 -

Priscilla:
Hello everyone and welcome back to The Official BNI Podcast brought to you by NetworkingNow.com, which is the leading site on the net for networking downloadables. I am Priscilla Rice, and I am coming to you from Live Oak Recording Studio in Berkeley, CA. I am joined on the phone today by the Founder and Chairman of BNI, Dr. Ivan Misner. Hello Ivan. How are you?

Ivan:
I am doing great, Priscilla, thank you very much. Today we have a great topic, the value of evaluating. It is based on an email I received from a BNI member. I am going to read part of the email to you that he sent so you understand where he was coming from and then you will get what I responded to him because I think this is of value to all members.

The member’s email said, “If I am not generating referrals, will it make me look like I am not a team player?” He said this is a flaw in the system because of the way we report stuff. He went on to say, “I am a new member and already a believer in the philosophy of givers gain, but my concern is that I have to hustle the referrals so I am not counted as a slacker. In my mind, this is reinforced by the weekly issuing of reports that publicly display the number of referrals.”

You can find that in the reports. You can find it in the thank you for closed business, which we did a podcast on with John Meyer just a few weeks ago. He says it’s being reinforced by the weekly issuing of reports. He went on to say that if he didn’t fill out a referral slip and he isn’t generating referrals, it would make him look like he is not a team player. He said there is a temptation to stick a fellow BNI member with anemic referral. That’s an interesting one, just to increase the palms report.

He was basically suggesting that we don’t do those reports. It’s not necessary because referrals are the lifeblood. We shouldn’t do reports because it makes people feel on the spot. So here is my response. I truly believe that you achieve in business what you measure. So goals without measurement is just wishful thinking.

So you have to have a way of measuring performance. Does that mean then that you should be giving out bad referrals? Absolutely not. I think that any interpretation of giving out bad referrals because of the report is a misinterpretation of the intention when I incorporated the report process into BNI. The truth is you do what to measure what is being generated, but you also want to make sure that it is legitimate referrals.

Saying we are not going to measure because it reinforces bad referrals is a bad idea. Giving inappropriate referrals so that you look good is a bad idea. A good idea is to measure referrals and to make sure that the referrals that are actually given are good. Not every act of giving can immediately be rewarded by the recipient.

One of the things that he said was I want to be a team player. He mentioned he was a new member. If you want relationship networking to work, you have to understand that the idea driving the philosophy is really the idea of giving without the expectation of an immediate return. In networking, it is called the law of reciprocity. The law of reciprocity differs from the standard notion of reciprocity in that the giver should not and does not expect an immediate return on his or her investment for another person’s gain. The only thing to be sure of is that over time with enough effort, the generosity is returned by others within the group.

I think sometimes new members get really worried that they have to give a referral because there are all these referrals being passed around. They might give a referral that is not completely legitimate. My suggestion would be to take a deep breath, get to know everybody better. The referrals will come. It’s easy to give referrals when you get to know and trust people.

And let’s say that you don’t bring as many referrals as someone else. So what? It’s not a contest. What you need to do is bring good referrals. If you can’t bring good referrals, if you don’t have that opportunity, that’s okay. We certainly want you to bring referrals. There are other ways that you can support the chapter. Bringing in legitimate qualified visitors is another way to really support a chapter.

We are just looking for support of the chapter. Visitors are one way. Referrals are another way. The last thing that you want to give is what you call an anemic referral. Bad idea. Never give those out.

He mentioned in there, and I don’t know if I read that part, is that we don’t talk about what is a good referral in BNI. We do. We talk about it a lot, so I am going to give you 5 or 6 places that people listening to this podcast can go to where we talk about what is a good referral. The orientation CD that every member gets in the orientation packet talks about what a referral is, the definition of a referral.

The member orientation guide begins with the phrase, “If you read nothing else, read this.” Then it gives the definition of a good referral. Member success program training that is done worldwide. IF you haven’t attended it you need to attend. If you have and it has been a while, go back. When you go back, ask the director to talk about what is a quality referral. What do you do when you get a bad referral.

I talk about bad referrals throughout the book, Givers Gain, the BNI Story. There are numerous podcasts on it. That’s in there. I have also done an article or several, one in particular, in our online newsletter, BNISuccessNet.com. I’ll make sure there is a link to that newsletter. That article was “What is the Definition of a Referral?”

To the member who asked the question and the others who are curious about the definition of a referral, things like palms report and thank you for closed business helps with accountability. One of the strengths of a group like BNI is that most of the members are friends. One of the weaknesses of a group like BNI is that most of the members are friends. Friends don’t like to hold friends accountable.

But this isn’t a friendship organization. This is a referral organization. In order to have success at referrals, it is really important that there be accountability. So the accountability comes through the measurement. Again, goals without measurement is just wishful thinking. You achieve what you measure in business. That is why we do it.

That doesn’t mean that you give bad referrals just because we measure it. To the contrary. You have to give good referrals but you want to measure good referrals. Anything that comes to mind on this, Priscilla? Or was that pretty straightforward?

Priscilla:
Yeah, I am thinking that it’s just a little bit of competition that is going on and really it’s not necessary because new members are going to have a little bit harder of a time coming up with referrals. Especially in the beginning. Then it will get easier, like you said, as you get to know people and what they have to offer because you don’t want to refer somebody with a service that you have never experienced or that you didn’t know that much about. It just takes time.

Ivan:
You are absolutely right. I think that sometimes particularly new members feel like they should be like this guy who has given five referrals today. He should be doing it. There is this natural inclination to give a referral even if it is not legitimate. That, in the long run, is a huge mistake. You may feel good, but I am telling you it will come back to bite you.

You want to give legitimate referrals. It is not a contest. It really isn’t. You want to give quality, not just quantity. Quantity is good, but quality is better. Focus on the quality of the referrals, and there are lots of places that talk about the definition of referrals. I have listed them here. Take a look at the definition on SuccessNet. Give legitimate referrals and engage and embrace the reporting process.

It will do nothing but improve the quality of your chapter as long as you are also focusing on making sure that the referrals being passed are quality referrals. That’s it for today, Priscilla.

Priscilla:
Okay, great. Thank you so much, Dr. Misner. I would just like to remind the listeners that this podcast has been brought to you by networkingnow.com, which is the leading site on the net for networking downloadables. Thank you so much for listening. This is Priscilla Rice, and we hope you will join us next week for another exciting episode of The Official BNI Podcast.

Synopsis

BNI conducted a survey for the book Masters of Networking that asked business professionals what the most important traits of a master networker were. The most important trait was following up on referrals. Not giving them, following up on them.

See Week 20 in The 29% Solution, “Follow Up Today,” for a networking follow-up report card.

Remember, the best system for following up is the one you’re going to use.

There are many kinds of follow-up. You should follow up when you meet a person, not just when you get a referral. Following up is part of building a relationship, not just closing a deal.

Leave us a comment to tell us about your experiences with following up.

Brought to you by Networking Now.

Complete Transcription of BNI Podcast Episode 138 -

Priscilla:
Hello everyone, and welcome back to The Official BNI Podcast brought to you by NetworkingNow.com, which is the leading site on the Net for networking downloadables.

I’m Priscilla Rice, and I’m coming to you from Live Oak Recording Studio in Berkley, California, and I am joined on the phone today by the founder and the chairman of BNI, Dr. Ivan Misner.

Hello, Ivan. How are you, and where are you?

Ivan:
Doing great, Priscilla! And this week I’m at the Transformational Leadership Council in Puerto Rico. This is Jack Canfield’s network that I was invited to many years ago, and I’ve been a member. We’re in Puerto Rico this week for their conference.

Priscilla:
That sounds great! Well, what do you have to share with us?

Ivan:
Well, today I want to talk about the Number 1 Trait of a Master Networker. Many years ago I wrote a book called Masters of Networking, and we did a survey. It was one of the contributions. My wife and I did this article that was in the book, and the article was based on a survey that she and I did almost 2,000 business professionals from several countries, and it was published in Masters of Networking. We asked business professionals what they felt were some of the most important traits of a master networker, and the number one trait that came back was that master networkers follow up on the referrals that they’re given.

So giving referrals, giving referrals didn’t even show up in the top five. But I thought it was interesting that the number one trait was following up on the referrals that you get, and the reason for this top ranking is that, in my opinion, if you present opportunities to someone who consistently fails to follow up successfully, whether it’s a simple piece of information, a special contact, or a qualified business referral, it’s no secret that you’re eventually going stop wasting your time on that person. They’re an embarrassment to you. Because when you give a referral, you give a little bit of your reputation away.

Priscilla:
Right.

Ivan:
If it works out well, it enhances your reputation. If it doesn’t work out well, it hurts your reputation.

And so following up is so, so very important. I talk about it in The 29% Solution at length, and I recommend, if you have a copy of the book, pick it up and take a look at Week #20, Week #20, which is on page 114 of The 29% Solution. And Week #20 is Follow Up Today. It talks about the fact that good follow-up is not just doing what’s required or what you’ve promised to do, it also involves going beyond what is expected.

One last thing, and then I’d like to maybe just open it up and chat a little bit about this, if we can. I’m often asked, Priscilla, “What’s the more effective system for following up and staying in touch with your clients?” Do you have any ideas, what’s the most effective system to follow up?

Priscilla:
I think I know.

Ivan:
What do you think?

Priscilla:
I would guess it would be a personal note.

Ivan:
It could very well be. Here’s my answer. It’s very simple, and it’s very surprising. The best and most effective system to follow up with and stay in touch with your contacts is the one you’re going to actually use. And I know I’ve talked about this on a previous podcast some time ago, handwritten notes are probably the best or notes on cards like Send Out Cards. I love the Send Out Cards and programs like it. I think it’s a great way to communicate with people when you can have it look like a handwritten note because you can do your actual handwriting with the Send Out Cards program. I love that, and I think it’s a very effective way to do it. The problem is I’m really bad at doing personal, handwritten notes. It’s one of the reasons why I like Send Out Cards, because I can do it from my computer. But handwritten notes, I’m really bad at; I just don’t do it. So is it the best technique if you don’t do it?

Priscilla:
No.

Ivan:
Clearly not. And so really, the best technique to follow up is the one that you’re really, truly going to do. And if I had to rank, order them in terms of the most effective would be that personal note, whether it be from a card like Send Out Cards or a handwritten note. That’s probably the most effective, but if you’re not going to do it, then clearly, it’s not the most effective. So if you had a great system and you don’t use it, you might as well have no system at all.

Priscilla:
Right.

Ivan:
That’s really important. If you have a great system and you don’t use it, you might as well have no system at all. So find a system that you use and that you’re going to use consistently.

In The 29% Solution, we have a real simple form called The Networking Follow-Up Report Card, and it’s very simple. It says, “Hey, here are the contact names. When did you first connect? What follow-up is necessary? When did you complete the follow-up? Did you follow up after that three months, six months, nine months? Did you follow up afterwards?” Any kind of system like that can be very effective to help track the connections and the referrals and the opportunities you have to reconnect with other people.

Priscilla:
Now, are you talking about the person who is fulfilling the referral? Like, I refer you to somebody and then you do the work and then you follow up afterwards? Is that what you’re referring to?

Ivan:
Well, there’s a lot of different ways; follow-up is important. In terms of the study we did, people were talking about following up on a referral they get. So if you gave me a referral and I didn’t follow up on it, it really made you look bad. If you give me a referral and I don’t follow up, you look bad. Of course, I look bad, too, but they don’t know me. So, it makes you look bad.

So from the study’s perspective, it was following up on the referrals they get, but the truth is follow-up as a technique, I think, is valuable in many, many different ways. It could be following up when you meet somebody. How many times do you meet somebody and they say, “You know, I’ll get back to you on that. Let me send you some information on that,” that then they don’t get back to you.

Priscilla:
Yeah.

Ivan:
I find that when I meet somebody that I’m often referring articles to them. I meet somebody; we talk; and I may reference some article I wrote or some article that was written by somebody else that I make reference to, and what I have a tendency to do, so I don’t forget, is I’ll say, “Hey, can I get one of your cards?” And then I’ll ask them, “Do you mind if I write on the back of your card,” which, by the way, doesn’t work in all cultures. There are many cultures around the world where writing on their card is not appropriate. You don’t want to do that. But in most North American and European countries, writing on the back of the card is no big deal. But I still say, “Do you mind of I write a note on the back of your card to remind me to send you that article?” And they almost always say, “Yeah, of course.” And I write the note on the back of their card so that when I get back to my office and I have their card and it says send them a like to such-and-such article, I remember to do that, and I do it.

As a matter of fact, if any of the listeners here have ever talked to me and I’ve said that I’d send them a link, I’d love for you to post up here, because I know I send out 99.999 percent of the articles that I say I’m going to send, and I’d love for you to be one of the people who say, “Hey, yeah, I asked him for an article, and I got that link.”

That kind of follow-up, I think, is what helps to make a master networker.

Priscilla:
Now, the question for me is, after you’ve followed up, then some times passes, and then you should follow up again is what you’re saying, right?

Ivan:
Yeah, you really should. If you’re trying to build a relationship and hopefully do business with them, you should follow up again, you should stay in touch periodically. And certainly, one way to stay in touch periodically is to try and find ways to help that person. And if you can build a relationship, ongoing referrals are based on building a relationship, and so what you want to do is follow up to build a relationship, not just follow up to close a deal. Because if you’re constantly trying to follow up to close a deal, they’re going to hide from you, but if you’re following up to help or assist or to build a relationship, then they’re going to want to stay in touch with you. Or if you’re following up to provide content and information, like newsletters or links to articles that maybe you send out to your contacts on a regular basis, that’s a value.

So there’s a lot of ways that are called touch points, how do you touch your perspective clients and existing clients. In the more ways you touch them, it’s one example of following up.

Priscilla:
Right. Okay, great! Well, would you like to add anything else to that?

Ivan:
Well, next week we’re going to do the follow-up to this, no pun intended, and that is So You’ve Got Follow-Up Covered. Now What? We’re going to talk about some of the other important traits of a master networker next week.

Priscilla:
Okay, great! Thank you so much, Dr. Misner.

Ivan:
Thank you, Priscilla.

Priscilla:
I think that’s it for this week, and I’d like to remind the listeners that this podcast has been brought to you by NetworkingNow.com, which is the leading site on the Net for networking downloadables. Thanks so much for listening. This is Priscilla Rice, and we hope you’ll join us next week for another exciting episode of The Official BNI Podcast.

This week John Meyer, U.S. National Director of Field Affairs for BNI and Executive Director of BNI Ohio, joins Dr. Misner on the podcast to talk about the Thank You for Closed Business (TYCB) system, which measures the business passed between BNI members.

Why do we report closed business on TYCB slips?

• We want to thank the people who give us referrals that turn into business and provide recognition.
• We want to make sure that members pass qualified referrals.
• We want to maintain accountability within the chapter.

 What is reported on TYCB slips?

This varies by type of business, but in general it’s the gross income to the BNI member as the result of the referral. For more details, click here to download the “Thank You for Closed Business” Explanation PDF.

How is TYCB reported?

You can either fill out a green TYCB slip at a meeting or online through BNI Connect, where you can also track your own closed business. If you are not on BNI Connect, or if the Member Module has not been enabled in your region, talk to your Executive Director.

Brought to you by Networking Now.

Complete Transcript of BNI Podcast Episode 289 -

Priscilla:
Hello everyone and welcome back to The Official BNI Podcast brought to you by NetworkingNow.com, which is the leading site on the net for networking downloadables. I am Priscilla Rice, and I am coming to you from Live Oak Recording Studio in Berkeley, CA. I am joined on the phone today by the Founder and Chairman of BNI, Dr. Ivan Misner. Hello Ivan. How are you?

Ivan:
I am doing great, Priscilla, thank you very much. I have a special guest with us here today, John Meyer. John is the US National Director for BNI. He is also the Executive Director for BNI Ohio, where he has under his management 150 chapters of BNI throughout Ohio with roughly 35 members. John is a contributing author to the NY Times bestselling Masters of Networking. He is an avid golfer and loves to travel. He is married to his lovely wife, whom I have met many times, Victoria. He has three stepchildren. John is on the Board of Directors for Davis College in Toledo, and he is also a member of the Business Industry Advisory Council in Ohio and has been involved with BNI now for almost 20 years.

I get so excited when I see Directors and members who have been on that length of time.

John, this is the first podcast that you are on. It’s a real pleasure to have you on. Thank you for all you do for BNI. You’ve made a big difference in the organization.

John:
Thanks Ivan. It’s good to be here. I am looking forward to this.

Ivan:
We have an interesting topic today. The topic is “thank you for closed business.” Some chapters may see it occasionally as TYFCB. That stands for thank you for closed business. For those groups, and there are some, who haven’t started using this process, can you start, John, by just telling everyone briefly what is the thank you for closed business system?

John:
I will. I would love to educate some people on this. This is a very near and dear topic to me. Thank you for closed business is simply a mechanism that we use in BNI to track closed business between members. We have a slips program that we can talk about, but ultimately, this is the way that we track how successful our members are in passing referrals.

Ivan:
Measuring is important. You basically achieve what you measure in business. That’s why it is important to do this.

John:
Absolutely. If it gets measured, it gets done and that is what we tend to find out in setting standards and expectations within chapters. We want to put forth the right expectations of our members.

Ivan:
So there are three things that I would like you to talk about: why we report it, what is reported, and how we report it. So let’s start with why do we report it- these things with these slips?

John:
We report it for a number of reasons. First and foremost, we want to thank the people who give us referrals that turn into business. A lot of times, people don’t actually have a formal way to thank them. This is a way to recognize the people who pass quality referrals in the chapter.

We also want to provide the recognition that they would receive then in the chapter. The whole givers gain mentality. People will see that they are giving good quality referrals that turn into business, so people will want to start to do business with them. And it’s about accountability. We want to make sure that members are passing qualified referrals. That it is not just information that is being passed or leads being passed. These are actual referrals, and thank you for closed business shows and reports the closed business going back and forth.

“Why?” has a multitude of reasons. The biggest one is thanking referral sources, recognition, and to keep the accountability within the chapter.

Ivan:
You have done a lot of work with the team at BNI HQ to develop the BNI slips program description. We have a pretty final version of that out, do we not?

John:
We do and it has actually been incorporated into the BNI Connect system as well.

Ivan:
For this podcast, I will include a PDF that people can download and take a look at. So if you have never heard of thank you for closed business, a description will be attached to this podcast. Take a look at it as we are talking.

So what exactly is reported, John? You talked about what it is and why we report it, but what is reported?

John:
That is the million dollar question that everybody asks. It is really somewhat of a gray area, but it is based on the type of business that you are in. In the document that you are going to provide with this, it covers the different types of businesses and what you are supposed to report for thank you for closed business.

Real briefly, if you are in a commission based business, you put down your gross commission figure. Service providers, you put down the gross amount you charged. Product providers- for example, promotional products, printing, those types of industries- you put down the gross product sales. The challenging one is banking. Bankers are kind of a unique breed, so we have stipulated what you should report. The whole key here is that we generate consistency here in the organization.

Ivan:
That’s the whole thing right there, consistency. Even if someone disagrees with the way it has been defined, what is key is that we be consistent. We know that there are some challenges like banking that you mentioned. But that consistency helps address the overall strategy.

That was important, by the way, on my doctoral dissertation, in which we tracked the value of business. One of the things that the professor said was everybody is always going to disagree with how you define a referral. The key is that you have a consistent application so that it is being done the same way worldwide.

John:
There were a lot of variations of what was reported and how it was reported. We just decided that we need to make this uniform throughout the organization and have everybody report on a level playing field. I believe that is what we have attended.

Ivan:
If I had to give a brief definition of how to measure it, is it still safe to say that you really need to be taking a look at the gross income to the business? So if you open up a bank account, that is not the income for the bank. It is whatever their investment is. If you get a mortgage, it is the money that you make from it. If you are a real estate agent, it is the commission that you get. Is that still a decent way of giving a brief synopsis of what you are measuring?

John:
Yes, absolutely. The reason we do it is fairly simple. If you look at if from a visitor perspective as well, a visitor comes into a chapter and they want to see what is in it for them. They don’t care what the broker who the real estate agent reports to is making. They want to know what is going into the Realtor’s pocket. When you talk about the commission, that is what the actual member is making when we get to that point.

That’s the main thing. We don’t want to inflate the numbers. We want to have realistic numbers that we can back.

Ivan:
For example, buying a home, if the home sells for $750,000, that is really not the value of the referral. It is the value of the sale in terms of buying the house, but that is not how much someone made on it. We don’t want to inflate the numbers. It is really complex.

For those of you listening to it, we are trying to make it simple, but it is really complicated and people disagree. We look at the income to the individual as a starting point and then the devil is in the details, and this document attached to this podcast will help explain in more detail. I know you spent a lot of time on this issue, John, and you really came up with a document that is invaluable.

John:
There was a great team on it and it was a lot of fun doing it, believe it or not.

Ivan:
We are almost out of time. There is another topic. How is it reported?

John:
Very simply. There is a process in the chapter with the green slips. The thank you for closed business slips. The member puts who they are thanking for closed business. They put the information down. The slips are very easy to fill out. Or we have even created the online slips program in BNI Connect where you can start to thank people electronically. You can also start to track your return on investment for your own closed business. We have the mechanisms in place to allow people to perfect this system.

Ivan:
Something else, Priscilla, if you are listening to this: Not every member, not every region is on BNI Connect yet, but the overwhelming majority are. If you are not on BNI Connect. Ask, “When will we be on BNI Connect?”

John, is this part of the member module, or is it in the primary system?

John:
It is part of the member module, yes.

Ivan:
Okay, so if you are a member of regions that don’t, they have not flipped the switch to turn the member module on. So you may be on BNI Connect but still don’t have access to what John just described. If that is the case, pick up the phone and call your Executive Director and say, “When are you going to flip the switch for the member module? I would like to have it.”

Some of them are waiting because they want to work out the training before they just flip the switch. That is legitimate. I can tell you this. Sometime this year, we will flip in on for them. Sometime in 2013, it will be on for everyone on BNI Connect, even if the Director doesn’t flip it. So we will flip it towards the end of the year.

Everyone is going to have that online thing that John just described. Otherwise, the manual process is included in this podcast.

John, is there anything that you want to add to thank you for closed business?

John:
I think the key is just to do it. You don’t have to buy the definition, but you just have to do it for a number of reasons. It is going to help you with your success in BNI.

Ivan:
I think you are absolutely right. I’ll tell you this. You have taken what I did years ago for my dissertation and have really honed it down to details that I think will help members. I have been using this basic approach back when I did my dissertation. I’ll tell you this: the media loves to poke holes in numbers. For almost 20 years, I have been giving a less complex, simpler version of this. This is even more sophisticated, and the media ha never poked a hole in this definition. They have always accepted it when they saw the data. So there is a history in using it.

John, you and your team have done a wonderful job in putting this together. Members, I really urge you to take a good look at this and then start to incorporate it. Members, if you don’t have access to these slips, please contact your local Director and tell them you want to participate in thank you for closed business. Please refer them to this podcast. We would love to work with them to make sure you have it in your chapter.

John, thanks a lot for being on the podcast today.

John:
Thank you very much.

Ivan:
Priscilla, back to you.

Priscilla:
Okay, thank you very much. Well, I think that is it for this week. I would just like to remind the listeners that this podcast has been brought to you by networkingnow.com, which is the leading site on the net for networking downloadables. Thank you so much for listening. This is Priscilla Rice, and we hope you will join us next week for another exciting episode of The Official BNI Podcast.

BNI Connect is a great way for members to connect world-wide, but the down side of BNI Connect is that it allows you to make connections and ask for business with other BNI members without a relationship. This amounts to spam–unsolicited commercial email. But it’s an easy mistake to make. A member wrote to Dr. Misner and said the following:

“I used your website to reach out to other chapters, only to be told that I should be reported for doing so: ‘You shouldn’t be sending mass emails like this, it’s unsolicited, it’s considered spam.’ Am I missing something here? I’ve been a model member since I joined a year ago. Is the attitude members should take?”

Nobody likes spam, but BNI members become apoplectic when they get it from other BNI members. BNI’s Board of Advisors has just created a  BNI Connect Code of Conduct. The very first item is Do not spam people. Do not solicit members outside your group for business unless you have their permission.

So how do you build a relationship with someone in another chapter?

1. Engage in the groups. Join an active group and start talking to people.
2. Visit the other chapter.
3. Develop relationships.

Brought to you by Networking Now.

Complete Transcript of BNI Podcast Episode 288 -

Priscilla:
Hello everyone and welcome back to The Official BNI Podcast brought to you by NetworkingNow.com, which is the leading site on the net for networking downloadables. I am Priscilla Rice, and I am coming to you from Live Oak Recording Studio in Berkeley, CA. I am joined on the phone today by the Founder and Chairman of BNI, Dr. Ivan Misner. Hello Ivan. How are you?

Ivan:
I am doing great, Priscilla. Happy New Year to everyone around the world. This is our first podcast of the new year, and we are looking forward to another year of podcasts. Thank you, everyone, who comes to these podcasts regularly. Today’s topic is an important one. BNI spam. What it’s about is connecting with BNI members globally without a relationship, which is basically spam. Now that we have BNI Connect starting to rock the world, our own system, it’s really easy to basically spam people and make connections and ask for business without a relationship.

I have talked many times about the VCP process here on my podcast and on my blog, businessnetworking.com. Do a search on VCP and find where I talk about VCP- building visibility, establishing credibility, and then profitability. Then you start asking for business. Doing it too early really creates problems.

Now, I am bringing this up because I got an interesting email from a BNI member. I am going to read it to you. It said, “I’m confused. I joined BNI to be able to grow my business through quality referrals.” Now that’s interesting, quality referrals. Okay, I am going to come back to that. “I used your BNI website,” I am assuming he is talking about BNI Connect, “to reach out to other chapters only to be told that we should be reported for doing so.”

Here is one of the responses: “You shouldn’t be sending mass emails like this. It is unsolicited. It is considered spam. You are lucky no one cared enough to report you.” A little harsh, but I am not surprised. I’ll tell you why.

He then says, “Am I missing something here? I have been a model member since I joined here a year ago.” He then says there aren’t any words for how many referrals he has brought in, he has been on the leadership team. Is this the attitude members should take? That’s basically his position.

Here is my answer to this: Don’t be surprised. It is completely predictable. Absolutely predictable. You want to let the world know about what you do. I get it. But doing it like this will predictably within the BNI context, and heck, even outside the BNI context- how many times have you gotten spam from someone and said, “Really? Who is this person and why are they trying to sell me something?”

If you do it in BNI, where it’s all about relationships, there’s almost a guarantee that people aren’t happy with it. Every time someone sends out an unsolicited request to do business with someone they don’t know on BNI Connect, the BNI website or any venue, the BNI members become apoplectic, okay? They go crazy.

Ironically, the Board of Advisers just dealt with this issue recently and they created a BNI code of conduct and the very first item on the code of conduct- you haven’t seen it yet. It’s going to be going out here in the beginning of the year, and it’s going to be available on BNI connect. The very first item in the code of conduct in operating in BNI is do not spam people. You can communicate with other members for official business, but do not solicit members outside your group unless you have their permission in advance, which means you have a relationship.

It’s all about relationship. If you are going to spam people- take spam out of it. If you are going to try to sell something to someone or promote your business to someone who doesn’t know you, it’s really predictable that they will be upset, whether you like it or your don’t. Having done this for almost three decades, I guarantee you that is what will happen.

Bottom line here is we really urge you not to do this because you will pretty consistently get this response. It’s the kind of response that this particular member received. And I believe this member didn’t do anything with any ill will in mind. They are excited. When you are excited about your business, you want everyone to know about it. I got it. Just take your time and build relationships. Go slow. You can build relationships even on BNI connect.

Priscilla:
Can I interrupt you just for one second?

Ivan:
Sure.

Priscilla:
Given that we don’t know the other people on BNI Connect, because they are not in our chapter, how would you advise us to build a relationship with someone in another chapter? What would be the rules for that?

Ivan:
Brilliant question. Really important. First, using “engage” on Connect. The best way to engage is in the groups. Creating groups, maybe, but we don’t need to reinvent the wheel. There are a lot of groups on BNI Connect. Join one that is active. Take a look at when messages have been posted. If you find some that are active, join that and start talking to people. It’s all about the relationships. I have been on LinkedIn, Facebook, other social media, eCademy, a great website, Chang out of Europe is a great site. I have met people by having a dialogue, by engaging in conversation. That’s the first step.

Here is the second step: If you really want to do business globally- you don’t have to do business globally to do what I just suggested. You might want best practices. You might not ever intend to do business in another country, but BNI Connect is still a great way to talk to people around the world who are doing what you do so that you can get ideas on how to make BNI work. It’s not just about doing business.

However, if you want to do business, you start with a dialogue. And then if you really want to do business, you have to go to that country. You have to go to that region within that country. You have to see people face to face. It will dramatically increase your chances of doing business. What I would recommend you do is start a conversation, meet a few people and then when you decide where you want to go, reach out and say, “Hey, I am coming to visit. I am going to London in a couple of months. I would love to visit your chapter.” Then go visit the chapter and create some relationships. Don’t say, “ I want business. Give me business.” Go and build a relationship.

Once you have had that face to face, you build on that before you ask business. VCP. Visibility, credibility, and then you get to profitability. It takes months. Online it takes even longer to get there. Wherever you are in the world, if you want to go someplace else, just think about it. You have an opportunity to connect with like-minded people of a similar philosophy. You can go to another region and have the red carpet rolled out for you and meet a ton of people in other chapters and have first contact- really not first contact if you do it through BNI Connect- make second contact. Start to build that relationship that can then lead to business.

Networking is more about farming than it is about hunting. I believe it starts with the groups on BNI Connect. If you have no idea what I am talking about, go to BNI Connect. Get your username and password from your Director/Consultant. Go to BNI Connect and join some groups. Here is a good one to start with: I have a group called From the Founder. Look for From the Founder and you will find the group that I created for talking about things that are going on in the organization.

That was a great question. Thanks, Priscilla.

Priscilla:
That was a great suggestion, too. That was very useful.

Ivan:
It is and I hope this helped the member know that it was not intentional, but I also know that it will happen 99.9% of the time. People are going to get that kind of response. It’s about farming. It’s about cultivating relationships. The better we do that, the more business we are going to get. Thanks a lot.

Priscilla:
Okay, perfect. Well, I would just like to remind the listeners that this podcast has been brought to you by networkingnow.com, which is the leading site on the net for networking downloadables. Thanks for listening. This is Priscilla Rice, and we hope you will join us next week for another exciting episode of The Official BNI Podcast.

Synopsis

It would probably surprise you to know about some of the influential people that some of your fellow BNI members know. Don’t assume that just because someone works in an unrelated industry, that person isn’t a referral source for you. It doesn’t take a corporate executive to connect you with a corporate executive. Members of your chapter have connections through their family, friends, and hobbies, as well as their clients and colleagues.

Never overlook the networking possibilities of an event or a possible BNI member, no matter what kind of event it is or how unlikely it seems. The dentist, the cosmetic salesperson, the gardener, may be the biggest source of referrals in your chapter.

If you have a story about someone walking away from business—or unexpectedly getting business—because they didn’t realize who another person knew, post it to the comments here.

Brought to you by Networking Now.

Complete Transcript of BNI Podcast Episode 206 -

Priscilla:
Hello everyone and welcome back to The Official BNI Podcast brought to you by NetworkingNow.com, which is the leading site on the net for networking downloadables. I am Priscilla Rice, and I am coming to you from Live Oak Recording Studio in Berkley, CA. I am joined on the phone today by the Founder and Chairman of BNI, Dr. Ivan Misner. Hello, Ivan. How are you?

Ivan:
Doing great, Priscilla. I’ve got an interesting topic today. You never know whom they know. We don’t walk around wearing signs displaying everyone that we know. It would probably surprise people to know about some of the influential people that your fellow BNI members know but haven’t told you about. You can assume that your BNI members, family, friends, acquaintances, referral partners do have powerful contacts that can help you and help you in a number of ways, but they may not have shared that for a number of reasons. It could be they don’t know you real well yet, and these are their best customers or clients. Or could be that you haven’t asked, which I think is really important.

It always surprises me when I do that exercise in a chapter, we get really specific and we name somone that we have been trying to get to. It always surprises me how somebody says, “Oh, I know that person,” or, “That person is my relative.” That was one of my favorites. “That is my sister-in-law.” I was like, “Really? You never told me.” “You never asked.”

You never know who people know, and you never want to underestimate the depth of the contact pools that your fellow members are swimming in. There is a great story that I heard about a project management consultant who did business with large manufacturers and was asking for referrals. He was talking with a woman who owned a small gift basket business and she expressed interested in helping the consultant. Haughtily, he said he didn’t see any possible way she could help him, this gift basket person. She said, “I don’t know. Tell me what you do.” He said, “I go to manufacturers and help them with their processes. I am sure that you have never heard of any of the people who I need to meet.” He turned and walked away. He was just like, you know- we’ve seen people like this.

Priscilla:
This is a real story?

Ivan:
This is a real story, yeah. He just basically said, “There’s nothing you can do. Thanks but no thanks.” He left, and the gift basket woman, who was a BNI member, smiled and said nothing. She basically had a secret that she didn’t share. That was that among her clients were several large manufacturing companies. She knew them personally, including many executives at higher levels in the companies because they had used her business. More importantly, her father-in-law owned the largest manufacturing company in town. She was a great referral source for this consultant, but he was basically rude to her, turned his back on her and walked away without realizing how much money he just left on the table.

That is the kind of thing that we have to be cognizant of. You just don’t know who these people know. The value that you bring to a referral network or to a strategic alliance is directly related to the number of relationships that you have and the quality of those relationships. In a typical referral networking group like BNI where you have 20-40 people, the number of referrals that can be created among all the possible contacts within one or two degrees of separation is almost incalculable. It doesn’t take a corporate executive to connect you with another corporate executive, or a rich person to introduce you to another rich, influential person. That’s not the way the world always works. Quite honestly, I’m not sure that it ever has worked that way.

I had a BNI Director who told me about a high end property developer who was invited to a networking group- it wasn’t a BNI group. He was invited to a networking group’s gold tournament as a guest to see what referral networking was all about. He came but only because he loved golf. As a big money developer, he didn’t need to network. He came to the awards dinner afterwards only because his foursome won. At the dinner, he happened to be seated next to a financial advisor who had grown wealthy through the referral networking process. This was a BNI member. He had become a property investor. Through conversation, the guest mentioned to this financial advisor that he was having trouble getting a bank loan on a property deal. The financial advisor said he might be interested in investing. Over the next few days, the two were negotiating a six figure deal.

The moral of the story is you always pursue the networking opportunity of an event. You never know who you are going to sit next to. I have had that exact situation happen to me personally at a networking group many, many years ago. You just don’t know who you are sitting next to, and you just can’t determine whether they are going to have a great contact or be a great contact just by the professions that they are in.

I could spend time giving you more and more stories, all similar, about a gardner, a cosmetics consultant. I think I shared a story on a podcast some time ago about a dentist who gave one of the biggest referrals in the history of BNI. We have some groups that say, we want business to business. We don’t want a chiropractor, a dentist or a cosmetics person. And yet, a couple of the biggest referrals I have seen given were by a cosmetics person and a dentist. You just don’t know who these people know. The key to building a powerful personal network is to surround yourself with quality business people in diverse professions.

I’ve been doing this 26 years. I still get people who don’t get that. They still go, “Yeah, but I need to meet the CEO of whatever organization.” Well, the CEO doesn’t want to meet you. They are hiding from you. They are. Listen. They say they want to get in this organizations, but the CEOs aren’t in the organizations that you can get into. There are organizations for CEOs. There are several that come to mind. I don’t want to name them on the podcast, but they cost more than $1000 a month to participate in and you have to prove that you are the CEO of a multi-million dollar company. Otherwise they don’t let you in. Period. So they are hiding from you.

Forget about that. That’s not the best way to build your business. Surround yourself with quality people in a lot of different professions because you never know who those people know. When people get that and understand that networking is more about farming than hunting and it’s about cultivating those relationships with people in diverse professions, those are the people who do well in BNI.

Priscilla:
And it has to do with your attitude towards people in general. That’s very attractive and can bring you all kinds of referrals just by showing the kind of person you are.

Ivan:
Yeah. And being professional with people even when you don’t think they have something to give you. What happens is some people look at others and go, “This person can’t do anything for me. I’m out of here.” You know, to be honest with you, those aren’t the people who I want to network with anyway. They just don’t get it as evidenced by a couple of stories that I have shared here today on today’s podcast.

Here is what I would like from today’s listeners. If you have a story, something that happened to you or someone you know, maybe another BNI member, about not knowing who somebody knows, share that here on the podcast. Tell me a brief story that has happened to you or someone you know where somebody walked away from business because they didn’t realize this person had that contact or they someone stumbled upon it, that this person had that contact. Anything relating to the subject. I would love to hear more stories. Please put them up here on BNIpodcast.com.

Priscilla:
Okay. Perfect. Thank you, Dr. Misner.

Ivan:
Thank you, Priscilla.

Priscilla:
I think that’s it for this week. I would just like to remind the listeners that this podcast has been brought to you by NetworkingNow.com, which is the leading site on the net for networking downloadables. Thank you so much for listening. This is Priscilla Rice and we hope you will join us next week for another exciting episode of The Official BNI Podcast.