This is a rebroadcast of Episode 152.

About 20 years ago, Dr. Misner met a commercial light bulb salesman who wanted to join BNI. He was a little concerned that a person in such a unique profession might not do well, but the prospective member had no doubts.

First, he wanted people he could refer his clients to, because that would strengthen his relationship with them.

Second, he knew he was the kind of networker who could get business anywhere.

He was right. During his first year in BNI, 40% of the sales he got came from referrals from his BNI chapter.

Success in BNI doesn’t depend on the profession, but on the person. If you’re willing to give and help and learn, you’ll succeed in BNI.

Read the transcript in the Episode 152 show notes.

Brought to you by Ask Ivan Misner.

In the course of research for his book Business Networking and Sex (Not What You Think), Dr. Misner found that people who had a system for tracking the money they generated were more likely to feel that networking played a role in their success.

(Click to see a full-sized image.)

Without a system, it’s very hard to tell how successful you are. BNI has developed a protocol to measure referral success in a way that doesn’t inflate the numbers. You can click here to download it from SuccessNet.

Read Dr. Misner’s post about this topic on SuccessNet.

Brought to you by Networking Now.

Complete Transcript of BNI Podcast Episode 243 -

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 in Omaha, Nebraska. It’s my first visit to BNI groups and I am really excited to be here.

Priscilla:
Great. What are you doing in Omaha?

Ivan:
I am doing a presentation. I am speaking to members, meeting members, that kind of thing. It’s one of the great things that I do in this business, for me, is to go all over to BNI groups. We mentioned in a previous podcast that one of the reasons why I have you ask me where I am at is I want members to know that I am not sitting in my office in some big ivory tower.

I am out there visiting and meeting members as much as possible. It’s really a pleasure to come out to different regions. If I come out to your region, please come up to me and let me know that you are listening to these podcasts. I always get really excited when I have people come up and say, “Hey, I listened to this podcast or that podcast and it really helped.”

Priscilla:
Okay. So what are you going to share with us?

Ivan:
Well, today I am going to talk about an article that I wrote for SuccessNet back in January. You achieve what you measure. Tracking your referrals is really important in BNI. You achieve what you measure. This is pretty close to the new year still. It’s a great time to do some vision making on what you want your networking efforts to yield over the next year. This generally involves setting some goals and objectives. It’s not too late in the year. But you can’t really gauge your success in something unless you measure your progress. Hence, you achieve what you measure.

Now, I have collected a lot of hard data on this topic. I would like to share it in this podcast. Some of it comes from my new book which was just released, Business Networking and Sex. For the record- I think I mentioned this in a previous podcast. For the record, the book is about gender as it relates to networking. But a book called Business Networking and Gender, well, you can hear the crickets chirping now. Nobody is going to pick that up. But it’s about the different between men and women.

In this book, one of the things that I highlighted was tracking business and how that relates to networking success. The book was based on a survey of 12,000 business people from all around the world. In the book, we show a table. Maybe we can do a podcast to that article on SuccessNet online. We had a table that we asked people- they were responding to a question where we asked them if they track the money that they generated and we cross tabulated that by were they successful in their networking efforts.

The chart is pretty darn clear that people who had a system to track their business were more likely to have felt that networking played a role in their success. Even more notably, those who did not feel that networking played a role in their success were almost twice as likely to not have a system for tracking their business.

With the respondents, those people who said no, networking hasn’t played a role in success, 66% of the respondents didn’t have a system to track the money that they generated. 34% said yes, that they did have a system. And the opposite is true of those people who did have a system. A substantially higher number of them had achieved success through networking.

So you achieve what you measure. This isn’t just Ivan talking. We have some hard data on this. I think that is really important. Clearly, those people who do not use systems to track their businesses are much more likely to feel unsuccessful in their networking efforts.

What does this mean to you as BNI members? Well, simply you have to track the referrals you get and the value of those referrals. Even better, you should get your entire BNI chapter to join you in this endeavor. To help you do that, we have developed a thorough description of how to go about that in measuring this process. And either here on this podcast, we can have a link to it or if you go to the SuccessNet online article of You Achieve What You Measure, which was a January 2012 article, you’ll find a protocol. It’s a Word file. It’s the BNI protocol for measuring and tracking the value of the referrals you get. It also tracks some other things like your number of one to ones and the kind of education that you are getting in the BNI group. But the key is that it tracks the referrals.

If you would like to have your best year ever in BNI, then you really want to sit down and track the business that you are getting. This isn’t just advice. I am telling you we have examined it. The evidence is clear that those people who track their business are much more likely to be successful.

Let me just go back to the protocol briefly. In there, we have a description of how do you measure the value of a referral? It’s a little bit complicated but it’s pretty thorough. I will tell you there is no clean answer, Priscilla, in how you measure the value of a referral. How a banker measures the value of a mortgage that he or she sold is a lot different that an attorney measuring the hourly amount that they charge a client. It’s hard to determine a number that works across the board. But we have done that in this document. Although it is not perfect, we urge people to follow this protocol because it’s not only the way we measure it globally in BNI but it’s also the basis of several doctoral dissertations that were done with BNI, mine being one of them but several others and it was the way we measured what the value is of a referral.

I mention the doctoral thing because if a doctoral committee evaluates this information and says that yes, this is valid and replicable, then you know you have some quality control that has been done in the process. This protocol has gone through that, so I recommend that you use that.

Priscilla:
Can I interrupt you for one moment?

Ivan:
Sure. Go ahead.

Priscilla:
So when you are talking about measuring your referrals, I am immediately thinking that’s easy. You just code your invoices and you are just measuring dollars. But you are talking about something in addition to dollars, right?

Ivan:
No, I am talking about dollars, but here is where it gets complicated. If you are a real estate agent, what do you measure? You sold a house that is worth $500,000. Was that a $500,000 sale? Was that $500,000 in business? The answer to that is no. We feel that would inflate.

We don’t want to inflate the numbers. We want numbers that are reasonably accurate. When we say that we as an organization generated billions of dollars worth of business the previous year for our members, we want that to be an accurate number. So you have to look at different things. We recommend that for somebody like a real estate agent, that they measure the gross commission. That could be anywhere from 1.5% to 6%, depending on whether they are the buying agent, the seller, whether they are the broker. There is a number of variables, but it is the commission.

If you are talking about a service provider, like a website designer, business coach, chiropractor or photographer, it’s what you charged for your services. It’s the hourly rate or the gross amount.

Priscilla:
What do you do if you are a contractor? That’s really complicated because if you track the whole job, and most of it is going to pay your subs, there it gets confusing.

Ivan:
That is an issue. That came up recently. But you still do in that case, the gross. If you have a job that was worth $10,000, that’s the job. You say that you have to pay some of your subs. That’s true. But let me ask you a question. When you do recording, don’t you have people that you have to pay?

Priscilla:
Yeah. Absolutely.

Ivan:
We all have people that we have to pay, unless you are a single entrepreneur by yourself. Even then, you still have to pay printers, your telephone and other out of pocket expenses. So we could go to net profit. That was one of the things that we talked about at length. That would certainly take into account contractors and every other business.

Here is the problem with net profit when we tried doing it many, many years ago. People don’t like telling you their net profit. They don’t. I know this is a shock. They are going to fib. Some people will tell you they make less than they really do because they don’t want you to know what their net profit is and what their earnings are. Other people will tell you more because they are embarrassed about their net profit. Net profit is a hard thing to measure accurately. People don’t want to give that information.

But a repair by a contractor, the number is what the number is. We understand that there are costs. There are costs to everybody. That real estate agent who gets the commission- is that 100% profit for them? No, they have costs that they have to take out of there. We all have costs. So it’s a complex issue.

We have a several page document that walks you through and tries to explain that. That’s the protocol. Take a look at that and the most important thing is start to measure your chapter referrals. Measure the value. You can achieve what you measure so you want to measure this and set goals for the chapter. Make sense?

Priscilla:
Yeah. I think it’s good.

Ivan:
Well, that is my message for today. So listen, if you have listened to this podcast and your chapter has measured the amount of business generated, I want to hear from you. Why has that helped your chapter? Explain to everybody why this is so important. It’s a lot of work to do in a chapter. I want you to explain to everybody why this is so important and why it makes a different. That’s it for today, Priscilla, thanks.

Priscilla:
Okay. Great. Thanks, Ivan. 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.

This week Bob Burg, author of It’s Not About You: A Little Story About What Matters Most in Business, joins Dr. Misner in honor of International Networking Week.

Bob reminds us that people only do business with those they know, like, and trust. While they might do business with you for a while if they don’t like you, as soon as they find a competitor they like better, they’ll switch.

Trust puts you ahead nine steps in a ten-step process. People need to trust both your character and your competence. Competence is in greater supply than character, so your character has great economic value.

It’s also important to understand the difference between price and value. Value is what brings worth to a product or service—the reason people are glad to exchange their money for it. We need to give our clients more in value than they pay in money.

So if it’s not about you, who is it about? It’s about those whose lives you choose to benefit.

You can download the introductory chapter to this book and 3 others at www.burg.com.

Brought to you by Networking Now.

Complete Transcript of BNI Podcast Episode 242 -

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 at BNI HQ this week because it is International Networking Week. It was started by BNI. It was an initiative of BNI’s. We started it a few years ago. If you are listening to this podcast, go to InternationalNetworkingWeek.com. You can find out more about it.

We have as a guest on the podcast this week- I can’t think of a better guest to have than Bob Burg. Bob shares information on topics that are vital to success for today’s business person. He regularly addresses audiences of anywhere from 50 to tens of thousands of people. He was for many years known for his book, Endless Referrals. But over the past few years, his business parable, The Go Giver, authored by John David Man, has really captured the attention of readers. Of course, any book called the Go Giver has to resonate with BNI members and our philosophy of Givers Gain.

Bob has another book, It’s Not About You. Hopefully, we’ll have some time to chat about that. He has been on a number of best sellers’ lists including the Wall Street Journal. He and John David released their newest book, which is a parable focusing on influence and it called It’s Not About You. Bob is an advocate and supporter of the free enterprise system and has been a real friend to BNI. He is one of a few people who have written books on networking that I highly recommend. You have to go out and buy one or all of his books on business networking. I promise you it integrates very well into what we do in BNI.

Bob, welcome to the BNI podcast.

Bob:
Hey Ivan, it’s so great to be with you. Thank you for having me.

Ivan:
If anyone wonders, wow, Bob has a great voice, that’s because you used to do television, didn’t you, Bob?

Bob:
Yes. Enough people said that I had a great face for radio that I had to get out of television.

Ivan:
That’s not true. That’s not true at all. But very funny. So, Bob, every book you write, you manage to include what you believe is the key to effective networking, what you call the Golden Rule of Business Networking. That is what we titled this podcast. We are going to cover a couple of things, this being the first. What is the golden rule of business networking and why do you feel that way?

Bob:
Basically, it’s simply that all things being equal, people do business with and refer business to those people they know, like and trust. I think we can take all three of those words. It’s fairly intuitive. Obviously, people have to know you or at least know who you are in order to do business with you. Likeability is very important, and yet, that is where the disclaimer “all things being equal” comes in. You might say, really, do that have to like you to do business with you? They don’t have to.

If you are the only game in town and they just absolutely want, need and have to have what you sell, no they don’t have to like you, but there inherent challenges with that. One is you are probably not the only game in town, not these days. But two, they will only do business with you until someone else comes along who has equal to or even close to equal to what you have and then that person who is nicer will get the business. Third, and the most important reason, Ivan, is the people who are listening to this are nice people and you want to like those who you are serving and you want them to like you.

Likeability is very important. In his great book, Influence: Science and Practice, Dr. Robert Chaldini talked about likeability being one of those six keys, and I think for very good reason. And we talk about trust. I think really, it comes down to in a low trust world, that person who can very quickly and effectively inspire trust from others, I think that person is really nine steps ahead of the game in a ten step game.

Ivan:
When it comes to trust, talk about character and competence because those are very important and our mutual friend, Stephen MR Covey discusses that in a new book that he’s got, Smart Trust. So talk a little bit about character and competence and how you think that would apply to my audience, which are people who are out there everyday.

Bob:
Sure. Well, you know, Stephen’s books are so great. The Speed of Trust. I think he has a new one that was just released, Smart Trust. He talks about character and competence. Really, trust is defined as the assured reliance on the character, ability, strength or truth of someone or something. We can take those first two, character and ability, and we can say character and competence. That is really what it is about. Stephen talks about both of them, character and competence, being important. I really think it is. If someone is going to buy from you, they need to, assuming the product or service is of any kind of significance, they need to have trust both in your character and competence. If you are considering buying from someone and you think that person has very high character but low competence and just don’t know what they are doing, you are obviously just not going to buy from them.

On the other hand, you can feel as though they have very high competence. They really know what they are doing. They really know their stuff. But they have very low character. Well, you are certainly going to have real feelings about doing business with them. You are probably not going to.

So I think we really have to have both. We talk about there being real economic value in trust. Well, there is. I think that while both are important, competence and character, competence is simply the baseline item. It’s that thing that puts you into the game. It matters. But you know what, it’s really a dime a dozen. A lot of people have competence, although we can always persuade and we see all sorts of blog posts that these days, people can’t do anything right. Well, you know what, there are a lot of people who can do things right. There are a lot of talented people. Competence just kind of gets you in the game. A lot of people have it.

Character, though, is that rare precious gem in a sense and anyone who possesses it is worth a great deal to the world around them. Why does character have more economic value than competence? Because competence, while it is in demand, is also in pretty great supply. Character, however, while it is these days, I think, more than ever in great demand, it is not in as great of supply. Supply and demand says that when people really crave something and it’s not really in great supply, the economic value, it’s worth, goes way high. I think that is where it’s at right now.

Ivan:
The word “value” has become almost a buzz word, whether someone is creating an amazing number of referral relationships through BNI, meeting people in situations in current everyday life, or even in various social networks. Isn’t providing value really what it’s all about?

Bob:
Yeah. It really is. The big thing is understanding the difference between price and value. Price, as you know, is a dollar amount. It’s finite. It is what it is. Value, on the other hand, I would define as the relative word for desirability of a thing to the end user. In other words, what is it about this product, service, concept or idea that brings with it so much worth that someone will willingly exchange their money for it and be absolutely glad, absolutely excited that they did?

There is an economic law that is immutable. It is unchangeable. It says people exchange their money for that which they feel is of equal or greater value than the money they are exchanging it for. What we need to do is make sure that we are that added value. We find ways to make that exchange even more valuable on that other person’s part.

Just a very quick example. Let’s say someone refers an accountant who is in their BNI organization. This accountant takes on a client and they charge the client, we’ll just use round figures, $1000 to do their tax returns. That is their price or their fee. But for this $1000, they save this person $5000 in taxes. They save them 30 hours of work and provide them with the piece of mind and security of knowing it was done correctly. So what this accountant did was he or she gave more end value than they took in payment. So the client just feels great about it and the accountant made a very, very nice profit.

That’s the kind of relationship that we want to have with anyone when we do business. We want to give them so much in value or use value that they feel terrific and we make an excellent profit. Really, the way we do that is, as you teach in BNI, is to focus on providing value to that other person. We know that money is simply an echo of value. It is the thunder to value’s lightning.

The way to do that, obviously, is rather than focus on the money, focus on providing value to that other person. When you do that, the person is going to feel so good about you. They are going to know you, like you, trust you, respect your judgment, and they will exchange their money for the value you provide.

Ivan:
This is a great message for BNI members. The whole idea of focusing on the value that they bring to the table. Great message. I am going to change lanes on you here, and we only have about a minute left. Your book, It’s Not About You- I have to ask you a question. If it’s not about you, who is it about, Bob?

Bob:
That’s a great question. I think the answer is all about what BNI and Givers Gain is about. It’s about everyone whose lives you choose to benefit and add value to. Of course, it can include family, friends, employees, team members, committee members, whomever. What we have to understand, of course, is when we say it’s not about you, that shouldn’t be confused with being a doormat, martyr or self sacrificial in any way. It’s not about that. It just means when you focus on others, when you focus on providing value, that is simply a good and effective way to build others, which ultimately helps you accomplish your own goals.

Of course, the key to this is that it needs to be done with a genuine, authentic caring about others, never manipulative or with impure motives.

Ivan:
I couldn’t agree more. Your message is so powerful for BNI, Bob, and I really appreciate you being on this podcast. I want to let all of the BNI members know that they can actually download an introductory chapter to this book and to some of your other books by going to www.burg.com. You have a great blog there. I visit it. You get a lot of action on your blog. I’m really impressed. There are a lot of comments. It’s quite impressive.

Bob:
Especially when I interview you. We got a lot of hits on that. Congratulations on your newest book. That is absolutely a terrific book.

Ivan:
Thanks, I appreciate it. BNI members, go to www.burg.com. Take a look at what Bob has. His message clearly, if you’ve heard this podcast, fits with BNI very will. Bob is one of the few guys I have met who is a public speaker with well-known great books and absolutely walks the talk. I love working with you, Bob. I would love to do more with you. Thank you so much for being on this podcast today.

Bob:
Thank you so much. I’m honored, Ivan.

Ivan:
Thanks Bob. Back to you, Priscilla.

Priscilla:
Thank you so much. That was just great. 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.

According to one of the surveys conducted for Business Networking and Sex—Not What You Think, referral networks have an 82.8% success rate in terms of generating business, while online networks only have a 27.4% success rate. (See graph below.)

One reason for this might be that many entrepreneurs don’t have a plan for their online networking. If you’re not sure how to use networks like LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and BNI Connect to your advantage, ask one of the many social media experts in BNI.

Brought to you by Networking Now.

Complete Transcript of BNI Podcast Episode 241 -

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:
I am at BNI HQ this week and we are bringing in Directors from all over North America and training them, new Director consultants. We’re training them at BNI. I made sure to be here whenever we do a training here at HQ because I think it’s really important to be part of the training process. I think education is a leaky bucket.

Priscilla:
What does that mean?

Ivan:
People put information into the bucket. There are holes. Some of it doesn’t stay in the bucket. When you train somebody, information leaks out. When you are training two or three generations- if I train somebody in how to do something and they train somebody how to do something, after two or three generations, you have half a bucket of information. What happens when you have what appears to be half the information? You start putting your own stuff in. It may not be the right stuff. So I am a real firm believer in education and getting it directly from me whenever possible. So there are elements of the consultant Director training that I still do to this day after 27 years. We’re doing it here at HQ now.

Priscilla:
That’s good.

Ivan:
Yeah. So this week I want to talk about online networks lagging behind. It’s based on an article that I wrote for Entrepreneur. I want to just tell everybody right up front. There was a lot of data that I was able to collect for the book, which I have mentioned in previous podcasts, that just came out, Business Networking and Sex, Not What You Think. There was a lot of data there that we couldn’t use in the book because there was just so much. We literally had hundreds of tables.

I wanted to use some of this in other places. I want to talk about it in other places, other than the book. You can’t find this information in the book, but it is based on the survey that we did of the 12,000 business people from all around the world. One of the questions that we didn’t use in the book was what kind of organizations do you belong to? They could pick more than one. We had a list of things like referral network, contact networks, online networks, social groups, women’s business groups, and service clubs. We also asked a question in the survey that was used in the manuscript in several places. That is has networking played a role in your success?

We got interesting findings when we cross-tabulated those two questions with one another. When we said has networking played a role in your success and what kind of organizations do you belong to? We expected the casual contact networks like the Chamber of Commerce and that referral networks like BNI would do fairly well, and they did. However, we were a little surprised with some of the other results. I thought it might be interesting to talk about that and why.

So here’s the bottom line. Don’t shoot the messenger here, those of you who are listening to this podcast. Don’t shoot the messenger. Online networks did pretty poorly in the survey, with only 27% of the respondents saying that online networking has played a role in their success.

Priscilla:
You’re talking now about things like LinkedIn and Facebook.

Ivan:
Yeah. LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter. Compare that to referral networks, in which 82% played a role in their success. Casual contact networks were like 51%. Even professional associations. Priscilla, is there a professional association for broadcasters?

Priscilla:
I am sure there are, yeah.

Ivan:
Okay. Even an association like that. They did better than online networks. They scored 33.7%. So online networks did pretty poorly with only 27% saying that it has played a role in their success. Now, women’s business organizations did worse, with 17.7%. Service clubs came in last with only 17.2%. That is, in relation to the question has networking played a role in your success, only 17% of women’s organizations and service clubs, people where in those groups said it played a role in their success. I am going to come back to those two in just a minute.

Let’s talk about what all of this means. Overall, people who got the most of results from their networking efforts seemed to participate in face-to-face casual contact networks like a chamber or referral networks like BNI. To a lesser extent, professional associations, like any professional body or society representing a particular industry. While online networks, women’s business organizations and social service clubs rated very low in success related to their networking, I think there is- I wouldn’t throw them out with the bath water.

I think there is still some benefits to participating in those kinds of organizations. Even though they didn’t fare well, I am quite and advocate for online networks, women’s business organizations, and service clubs. I think I will continue to be so. I did some thinking on the survey and why these groups came in with such low percentages compared to the casual contact and referral networks. In this podcast, Priscilla, I will give you the graphic so people can see what it is that I am talking about.

I’m inclined to believe that women’s business organizations and service clubs don’t so as well because they have another really important purpose that takes precedence over networking. Women’s business organizations often provide a place where women will support and educate each other. The mission of service clubs is primarily to provide service to the community, with networking opportunities being more of a byproduct. In terms of tangible success in members networking efforts in much more subtle groups like this may be one of the main reasons they didn’t do quite as well in the survey.

I have spent a lot of time thinking about online networks and their disappointing standing in terms of the respondents’ ranking of successful networking efforts. The results I think are indicative of a comment I have heard from many business owners who being to market their businesses via the growing number of online business networking sites. They will say something like, “I’ve got a profile and 1000 connections. Now what? What do I do now?”

I think a lot of our contributors jumped on the social media networking bandwagon and spent a lot of time and effort building their online social capitol in Facebook, Twitter- but they didn’t have a plan in terms of turning contacts into actual customers. I think it’s one of the areas that many entrepreneurs struggle with. By the way, I have had consultants- we have a lot of members who are social media experts. I have talked many of them. They are really good in BNI. They can give good info. I urge members to talk to those advisers and ask if they have any suggestions.

Another issue in the addition to internet marketing, including online networking, exponentially increased the number of marketing messages that the average person sees everyday. Literally thousands. You know, whether you are online chatting on Google Talk or looking up friends’ photos on Facebook, or watching a Twitter feed, you get this “Read this. Buy this. Try this. Connect with me. Like my business.” It’s easy to get distracted by these messages, particularly because those who have the time to put up the most messages drown out the smaller businesses or individuals.

I am a fan of online networking. As many members know, we have been developing an online network, BNI Connect. I believe it is the wave of the future. I believe you are going to see better results in the future, not only for programs like BNI Connect, which we are adding to and enhancing, but continued to programs like LinkedIn and Facebook. I think these are great organizations, and it’s a great place and one of the venues to market your business. But based on current results, they definitely lag way behind. I was a little surprised on their success according to 12,000 people who took the survey.

Priscilla:
I think it is confusing to know how to use online networks. I mean, I would love for their to be a podcast about how to use BNI Connect as a way for us to find each other and do business with each other.

Ivan:
You know, there absolutely will be a podcast on that. There are some things that we have been working on to get the program on the administrative side up to snuff and the social media side of it kind of had to take a back burner. But in 2012, the social media side of it is going to absolutely be developed to a much greater extent. When we are ready to really – when it’s really shining at the level we want it to be, I would love to do a podcast about it then.

Priscilla:
Okay good. We will look forward to it.

Ivan:
That’s all I have for today, Priscilla.

Priscilla:
Okay. Thank you, Dr. Misher. 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.

International Networking Week will take place February 6-10, 2012. There are events around the world, focused on bringing people together to network with each other.

Visit www.internationalnetworkingweek.com to find out more or watch our YouTube video:

You don’t have to have a big event to recognize International Networking Week. We recommend Meeting Stimulant #41: Bring one of your best clients to a BNI meeting. This person doesn’t have to be a prospective BNI member. The idea is to strengthen relations between you and your client.

Brought to you by Networking Now.

Complete Transcript of BNI Podcast Episode 240 -

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. This week, I am with my Executive Management Team. I bring the Executive Management Team together from all over the world together a couple times a year to talk about where BNI is going. That’s what we are doing over the next several days. We’ll be doing strategic planning. Every company needs to spend time looking at what they as an organization want to do. This is one of those times that I do that with BNI.

Priscilla:
That’s great. So are you going to share with us?

Ivan:
Well, I would like to talk about International Networking Week. It’s a little bit early. It’s a couple of weeks before International Networking Week, but I wanted to give a heads up to all the BNI members. International Networking Week for 2012 is February 6-10. We are about a week and a half away, but I wanted to give everyone a heads up about it, so you can go into your BNI meetings prepared for International Networking Week.

For anyone who would like some additional information about it, there is a website, www.InternationalNetworkingWeek.com. International Networking Week will feature some events around the world. The goal for International Networking Week is to celebrate the key role that networking plays in the success and development of businesses around the world. The focus for these events will be to bring people together- business officials, even government officials, the community to network with each other and understand the benefits of good networking.

The big events will have speakers and International Networking Week is open to all people. It’s an initiative of BNI. IT’s our initiative, but it is open to all people. If you are not doing a big event in your region, we invite you to make sure that you are meeting the week of February 6 and that you talk about International Networking Week.

There is a video up on the BNI official channel of YouTube. You can also get to that video by going to InternationalNetworkingWeek.com. It’s about a 9 minute video. I would recommend if you have the ability to show the video at a meeting that would be great. If not, that’s fine. It’s a great concept. We talk about- I’ve got people on the video with me, Frank Giraffle and Hazel Walker, who co-wrote with me Business Networking and Sex, the book about gender. They talk about the material in there.

So this is a great opportunity. We would love for BNI chapters all around the world to make sure and recognize that week. One of the things that we are recommending you do for International Networking Week 2012 is to utilize meeting stimulant #41. That is bring one of your best clients to a BNI meeting. That’s why I wanted to do this podcast early. I wanted to just let everybody know that this is a great opportunity to bring clients to your meeting during International Networking Week.

We all know that it’s good to bring visitors because they add significant value to a chapter. We talkned about that, a little bit about that with the podcast we did with Linda Macedonio. So it’s very important to bring people in and it’s a great week to do it. We recommend that you find one of your best clients and invite them. They don’t have to be a prospective member. That’s important for this. Generally, visitors really should be prospective members. But here, they want you to bring in your best clients just to show another side of what you do. We want to give members an opportunity to show their clients how BNI networks.

We want to be able to strengthen the relationship between members and their clients. We want to create increased networking opportunities for everybody. That’s what this meeting stimulant is all about. It also gives members a way to say thanks to one of their best clients and publicly recognize them, so I would recommend that you bring in that client, and when you have a chance to introduce them, say, “This is my client. I love working with them. They are great and here is their business.” Then give them a chance to speak, just as a visitor would normally do.

Again, it’s meeting stimulant #41, so we can put an attachment in the podcast so you can see the whole meeting stimulant there. What I would suggest you do is take it to your chapter president and see if they would do that. You have enough time still before International Networking Week. Do that in your chapter.

We will literally have thousands of events all over the world. Big events and then regular chapter meetings where we are recognizing International Networking Week.

Priscilla:
Well, that sounds great. Dr. Misner, you are my best client, so I was wondering if you could come to my chapter that day.

Ivan:
I love it. I’ll tell you what, I’ll do a webcam with you.

Priscilla:
Really?

Ivan:
Absolutely. Any time

Priscilla:
Oh that would be very cool. Okay. I will have to see about that.

Ivan:
It would be my pleasure. A lot of regions are doing big events. We had over a hundred big events last year, where the region would do a big breakfast meeting or a lunch or evening meeting. We have had thousands and thousands of people go to the big events, and then, of course, thousands of regular BNI meetings. You don’t have to have a big event to recognize International Networking Week. I think a regular BNI meeting is great. Just do something special that week and bring in your best client.

Thank you for saying I am one of your best clients. I appreciate that.

Priscilla:
Definitely.

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

Priscilla:
Okay good. Well, 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.

Today Linda Macedonio, Executive Director of BNI Rhode Island/SE Mass, joins Dr. Misner to explain why bigger is better for your BNI chapter.

In one region of Massachusetts, the average of the top 5 chapters was over 50 members and the average business generated per member was $34,000. The average size of the  bottom 5 chapters was 19 members and the average amount of money generated per member was 12,000.

Chapters that double their size consistently triple the number of  referrals in their group.

So why does this work? It has to do with the 80/20 rule.

Chapters with fewer than 25 members spend 80% of their time inviting and recruiting new members just to stay alive and only 20% on building relationships and passing referrals. Groups with more than 25 members can spend 80% of their time on passing referrals.

Larger chapters also have more and stronger power teams, so one referral can go to multiple people.

Let us know how much business your chapter is generating and how big it is.

Brought to you by Networking Now.

Complete Transcript of BNI Podcast Episode 239 -

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. How are you and where are you?

Ivan:
Hi Priscilla. This week, I am in Hawaii, visiting the BNI region here and doing a presentation for the new book that came out. We have with us a guest from the other side of the country. She is from Rhode Island. Her name is Linda Macedonio. Linda, welcome to the podcast today.

Linda:
Thank you very much.

Ivan:
Linda has been an Executive Director in Rhode Island and Massachusetts since 1998. She became involved in BNI as a member first. Almost all Directors were members first. She was representing her bookkeeping business. She currently oversees about 60 chapters and 1500 members. Over the years, BNI has helped her overcome her shyness. Linda is very nervous for this. She was a contributing author to Masters of Networking. If you have a copy of that book, she did the shy bookkeeper piece in that book. She’s also a contributing author to Masters of Sales. Linda really enjoys helping people in BNI and helping them achieve success. She is a great Director for the organization.

Linda, welcome to the podcast. You have an interesting topic. Bigger is better. Do you care to explain that to everybody?

Linda:
I would be happy to. As BNI Directors, oftentimes, we are talking to chapters and to members about growing their chapter. Sometimes we actually get feedback where they think we want them to grow the chapter to help BNI and this presentation was actually designed by Reed Morgan in Tennessee. It makes the point that when a chapter is larger, it is helping the members more than it is helping BNI as a whole.

What we did is we ran some number showing the financial return on investments for the members and kind of showing them by numbers that it is a numbers game and that bigger really is better.

Ivan:
You have some numbers that you are going to share with everybody, right?

Linda:
I do. I want to clarify that even though we talk about the chapter and the numbers, it’s never sacrificing the quality of the membership and the system just for the sake of a larger chapter.

Ivan:
Listen, you bring up a really good point. It’s not just about the number of people, the number of warm bodies, but quality people. You have to be focused on bringing in quality members into the organization. Otherwise these numbers don’t hold up, unless you are talking about quality people.

Linda:
Absolutely. We share that information as well. We do have some data from a few regions. One particular region, looking from the top 5 chapters and looking at the bottom 5 chapters of that region. The average of the top 5 was over 50 members per chapter. It was about 18 or 19 members in the smaller chapter. The difference in the amount of money generated per member per year is tripled. It’s under $12,000 per year for a member in the smaller chapters for the money that they are making compared to almost $34,000 per member per year in the larger chapters.

Ivan:
Let’s just recap that for everybody. I think it is important for people to hear this. This is a region in Massachusetts where they top five chapters in that region, a big area, the average number of members is about 50 members per chapter. They were tracking the amount of business they got, and they tracked that the average amount of business per member was almost $34,000. The bottom five chapters in that same region averaged about 18.5 members, and their average was under $12,000 per member. It was almost 3 times difference, certainly over two times the difference between the top five chapters and the bottom five chapters.

I think that is probably indicative of many regions. I think in your region, the numbers are similar, at least twice the amount of business is generated in a group that has 30-40 members compared to a group that is around 15 members. Is that your experience?

Linda:
It has been. There is another statistic with that regarding visitors. In the larger chapters, they have about 2.5 times the number of visitors come to their chapter. That is additional exposure for the member. Visitors will oftentimes make referrals of themselves or others. I think that also contributes to the amount of money that the members are making.

Ivan:
This has been a consistent number from the beginning of the organization, that chapters double their size from 15 to 30 will triple the amount of referrals that are generated in the group. That is a pretty consistent number over the years. Having dollar numbers to go with it, like you have done, and Patty tracking in Boston and Reed tracking his numbers, I think just gives credence to what we are saying in that bigger truly is better, as long as the bigger is quality members. Yeah?

Linda:
That’s true.

Ivan:
You have a few reasons why you think this works. Do you want to talk a little bit about that?

Linda:
I do. I think most people have heard of the 80/20 rule. This actually can apply in this case as well. Typically chapters that are under 25 members will spend about 80% of their time on inviting and recruiting and in some cases, just for the chapter to stay alive. Then only 20% of the time is spent passing referrals. To flip that, chapters that are over 25 spend about 80% on building the relationship, passing the referrals, generating the dollars and 20% of the time on inviting or recruiting.

Ivan:
That makes sense to me.

Linda:
Yeah, I think that kind of speaks volumes in where the focus is depending on the size of the chapter. Another piece with that is the contact spheres, it really does make everything easier for generating referrals and business. Again, bigger is better in that regard.

Ivan:
For contact spheres, we use the terms, both contact spheres and power teams in BNI. Contact spheres is a group of professionals who have a symbiotic relationship with each other, just for the listeners, in case you don’t know- like a lawyer, an accountant, a financial planner. They all refer business to each other. Contact spheres is the group of professionals who could potentially be symbiotic to you.

The power teams are the groups of business professionals that you have a relationship with. Within BNI, you are going to have a formed power team. The point I think you are trying to make, Linda, is the more power teams you have in a group, the more successful that chapter is going to be in generating referrals. Correct?

Linda:
Correct. We have actually noticed that it seems that probably close to 70% of the business that is being done in a chapter, especially with the stronger contact spheres and power teams, are coming from within their own power team or contact sphere.

Ivan:
You know, one of the reasons for this is that sometimes one referral can be for two people. If you have a really strong power team, and you’re talking about a wedding power team, if somebody comes in with a referral for somebody who is getting married, that may be able to go to the caterer, the florist, the photographer. It might go to two or three people. Sometimes one referral can go to two, three or four people. The stronger your chapter, the bigger the group, the more likely you are to have power teams that are bigger, where one referral can go to multiple people. That is one of the reasons why you see that. There is a real logical reason for the increase in the amount of business generated.

Linda:
Absolutely. That is exactly what we found. It comes down to working smarter, not harder, and that there is strength in numbers.

Ivan:
Listen, I think you have given a pretty compelling argument on the return of investment, what’s in it for a member to bring a chapter up. We talked about groups of 30, 40 or 50 members. It’s really at 20 members where there seems to be a critical mass point, where things start to come together. When you get groups that are around 30 or 40 members, that’s when the numbers begin to almost grow exponentially. Would you not agree?

Linda:
I would agree. One way to look at it as well is every member is attending a 90 minute meeting. Would you rather make $12,000 or $34,000?

Ivan:
I think most people would rather make $34,000. No doubt about it. Groups that have that size membership are definitely doing that. This is really helpful information, Linda. Is there anything that you would like to add before we wrap up?

Linda:
No, I think we have pretty much covered everything. I appreciate you having me on the podcast.

Ivan:
Listen, it’s my pleasure having you on. You’re a great Director for the organization and I think you are one of those classic examples of somebody who has come into BNI and was nervous about standing up and doing presentations, as you were. Yes?

Linda:
You knew me when.

Ivan:
And you now stand up and do public presentations at BNI conferences. You have done this podcast. It’s one of the things that I really love about BNI. You see people who develop a skill set that maybe a few years ago, they didn’t think they would ever want to or could do. I think you are sort of the poster child for that in the organization.

Linda:
Well, thank you.

Ivan:
Well, listen, we really appreciate what you do, Linda. This was great information. For those of you listening, just a recap. Groups that are 40-50 members are passing two to three times the amount of business and generating two to three times the amount of referrals. It isn’t just in these two or three regions that we are talking about. It’s multiple regions. It’s all over the world. It’s a consistent number. Linda, thanks for bringing that to our attention. We appreciate it.

Linda:
Thank you very much.

Ivan:
If you are listening to this podcast and you’ve had a similar experience, we would love to hear your comments. Drop us a note here on bnipodcast.com and let us know how much business you’re generating and what the size of your BNI chapter is. Thanks a lot. Priscilla, back to you.

Priscilla:
Okay great. Thank you so much, Linda, and 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.

Dr. Misner is about to start his book tour for Business Networking and Sex—Not What You Think, which is about gender differences in networking. One of his co-authors focused on the man’s perspective, one on the woman’s perspective, while Dr. Misner took the networking expert’s perspective.

One of the important questions the book addresses is “Are men and women really so different?”

Both men and women want business from networking and both are willing to work hard to get it. But they approach it in different ways, and need to learn the style of the opposite sex.

Here are some tips for women dealing with men:

• When asking for help, communicate clearly what you want
• When speaking to men, try to impress them and share your accomplishments
• When spoken to inappropriately, speak up immediately. Don’t accept it.
• Convey an image that you’re a serious business person at all times.

For men dealing with women:

• Slow down. Build the relationship.
• Don’t assume that women don’t take their business seriously.
• Edit what you’re about to say. Filter out anything that’s not business-appropriate.
• Remember that women are at networking events for the same reason you are: to get business.

Find out more about the book here.

Brought to you by Networking Now.

Complete Transcript of BNI Podcast Episode 238 -

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:
Hey, I am doing great. I wanted to remind everyone I did a podcast a few weeks back, #234, as to why I mention where I am. I think it’s really important for members around the world to know that I am out visiting you, visiting regions, talking to members. I am not sitting back at BNI HQ in an ivory tower. I am getting out there. It’s actually one of the fun things about what I get to do.

This week, I am in the Bay area for a conference and for the beginning of the Business Networking and Sex book tour.

Priscilla:
I am going to see you then.

Ivan:
That would be great because you are in that area.

Priscilla:
That’s right.

Ivan:
I would love to see you. Now, what I wanted to talk about this week was the title of the book: Business Networking and Sex. The subtitle is Not What You Think. I know a lot of people are going to be disappointed because it’s really not about sex. It’s about gender. It’s a really interesting book, and I think that this book is going to help give a lot of exposure to BNI (no pun intended), a lot of branding for the organization because this is one of the best books that I have done. What I wanted to do today is talk about some of the content.

There have been a lot of books written about business networking and referral marketing. I have written quite a few of those myself. There have also been a lot of books written about the difference between men and women, which is what this book is really about. However, it dawned on me and my co-authors a few years ago that no one has ever made the effort to combine the two subjects. So that is how this project got born. Business Networking and Sex, Not What You Think is all about the difference between men and women.

Over a 4 year period, we did a survey of more than 12,000 business people, including the analysis of it. We surveyed 12,000 business people and we asked a couple of dozen questions. After analyzing the results of the survey, which was open to the public and we had respondents from all over the world, every populated continent. We took these survey results and developed the book because of it. My fellow networking experts, Frank Girafle, he writes from the male perspective. Hazel Walker writes from the female perspective. I take the expert prospective. So every chapter is kind of split into three sections: The Survey Says, which is my content, which I try to do as much as possible in a gender-neutral way. Then Frank talks about the He Says. He does anything but gender neutral. He takes the male perspective. Then Hazel does the She Says. Again, it’s not gender neutral. She talks about it from the female perspective.

Priscilla:
What are some of the questions that you asked?

Ivan:
There were a lot of questions that we asked. Most of the questions really didn’t apply to gender so much. They were about basic networking. How much time do you spend networking? What kinds of organizations do you belong to? Where are you located? How many hours do you spend? How much business do you generate? Just basic networking questions that we wanted to compare and contrast the differences between men and women.

It was our desire to understand the communication issues that occur between men and women in the networking process. The three of us focused on combining our personal networking experiences and the data to interpret it in a way that gave meaning to the readers. One thing that we explored in depth was the following very basic question. This isn’t a question that we asked people but a question we went into the book with. Are men and women really so different? Or do we have a tendency to focus on what makes us different instead of how we are similar? Coming to an answer that we could all agree on probably became the foremost concept of the book.

As it turns out, men and women are alike in many ways, as it comes to business networking. They just seem to get to the same place using different roads. If men and women could just understand some basic fundamental points of their different styles, then they can certainly be more successfully when referring the opposite sex.

It’s interesting that our study revealed two very distinct facts, seemingly at odds with one another. The first is that men and women want to get business from networking and are willing to work hard to get it. The second is that they seem to make things so difficult for themselves by only networking in the style that their own gender prefers and understands. This is counterproductive as a professional relationship between a man and a woman based either on what the man wants and is looking for or what the woman wants or is looking for. If they both want to stay connected, they quickly figure out that it takes more to make the other person work effectively with them than what it would seem at first glance.

A lot of men need to get to the point where they no longer offend women. These are some of the things that we came up in the book with- or are no longer misunderstood. Until that happens, they will continue to miss out on the potential to do business with women. The fact that almost half of the world’s population obviously is women and more and more women own businesses and work in companies as sales people.

On the other hand, the guys may sometimes act offensive. Most women need to realize that they play a big part that enables men to continue that behavior without even realizing it. Here is where some of the stuff gets a little controversial with the he said/she said. They certainly play that part every time they have been offended by an off-color comment and yet said nothing and sulked away. They do it when they have been ignore, discounted or rudely referred to but instead of speaking their mind, they just vowed not to do business with that person any more. They do it every time they have ever worn an inappropriate outfit to a business function and then felt offended that no one was taking them seriously, or worse yet, people were asking them out on dates instead of listening to their business ideas.

These are some of the things that we talk about in the book, so it’s a little controversial. We started out with a warning that this book may push some buttons. I just did an interview with a newspaper and the reported said, “Wow. You have tackled issues head on and give a pretty unvarnished position on not only the survey results but the male and female perspective.

What I am sharing with you here, Priscilla, by the way, is not just my perspective. It is the perspective that Frank and Hazel bring to it. I actually have the easy stuff. I am just talking about the data. They get to talk about the more controversial things.

Here are some tips that we give in the book to help people in their networking with the opposite gender. Women, when asking for help, communicate clearly exactly what it is that you want. When speaking to men, try to impress them and share your accomplishments because men have a tendency to impress one another. We talk about that in the book. They start a conversation with what they do, who they are. Women don’t tend to do that, so to deal with men sometimes they need to do that a little more directly. When spoken to inappropriately, speak up immediately. Don’t accept it. Convey an image to others that you are a serious business person in all that you do.

For men, slow down. Build the relationship. Don’t assume that women don’t take their business seriously. Edit what you are about to say using filters to sift out what is not business-appropriate, and comments that aren’t business-appropriate just virtually never go over. It’s interesting that some guys just don’t get that. Remember that women are at networking events for business just as they are. They are looking to generate business just as men are, and they need to be treated the same way in terms of a networking perspective.

Those are a handful of the recommendations that we have. I would invite members listening to this podcast if you think the topic sounds of interest to you, take a look at BNI.com for the book, or Amazon or local book stores. It literally comes out this week, and I think this will be a huge brand builder for BNI because I will be, along with Frank and Hazel, doing literally hundreds of interviews over the next 6 months to a year. Anytime we do an interview, we’ll have an opportunity to mention BNI. This is going to be great exposure, no pun intended, for the book.

Priscilla:
That sounds great. What an interesting book. I am looking forward to reading it.

Ivan:
Thanks. We were pretty excited. It was a lot of fun to do. It was really interesting to do. Just interviewing people for the book was really so interesting. We interviewed John Gray, who wrote Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus. He is in the book and also did an endorsement of the book. We have many other people, people who have been on my podcast and good friends of the organization, like Susan Roane. She contributed to the book. We interviewed her. She gives some great insights. One of the things that we put in the book from her was that women have a tendency to- she in particular reads the sports page everyday. I may have talked about this in a previous podcast, but she reads it everyday so that she can have a conversation with men. Men don’t do that kind of thing. We got that concept from Susan.

A lot of great stuff. We tried to integrate some data in there. For example, one bit of data that we think is really important is how much time should you spend networking? We found that people who are successful at networking spend an average of 6.5 hours a week. The people who are not successful in networking spend less than 2 hours per week. Men or women. It’s pretty consistent, although one gender spends a little more time than the other. I plan to talk to you about that in a future podcast. On average, it’s about 6.5 hours a week for people who are successful in networking.

There is a lot of great data in this book, integrated into it. We ended up taking on almost 90% of the tables that we had produced because we didn’t want it to be a book on just statistics. There is not a lot statistical stuff out there, but there is some and it really substantiates or supports the positions that both Frank and Hazel take in their gender perspectives.

That’ all I’ve got for today, Priscilla, other than I want to give a website out to the listeners: www.businessnetworkingandsex.com. If you want to get more information, a free chapter of the book, and listen to some of the stuff that Frank and Hazel say, go to that website. Thanks Priscilla.

Priscilla:
Thanks so much for sharing that. 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 power team is a group of professionals in BNI who work in non-competing, related fields and have developed relationships so they can refer customers to each other.

Here are ten questions you should ask potential members of your power team to strengthen your connections and make it easier to pass referrals.

1. How did you get started in your business?
2. What do you enjoy most about what you do?
3. What separates you and your company from the competition?
4. What advice would you give someone starting out in your business?
5. What are the coming trends in your business or industry?
6. What strategies have you found to be the most effective in promoting your business?
7. If there were anything about your business or industry you could change, what would that be?
8. What is the next big event coming up for you?
9. What’s your biggest challenge at the moment?
10. What type of customers are you looking for? How will I recognize a good prospect for you? What kind of situations are your prospects facing?

Brought to you by Networking Now.

Complete Transcript of BNI Podcast Episode 237 -

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, and happy new year to you.

Ivan:
Thank you, Priscilla. I appreciate it.

Priscilla:
So you have something to share with us about power teams. What might that be?

Ivan:
I do. I think with the new year and the beginning of the new year around the world, it is a great topic to start the BNI year with. That’s power teams. Power teams can really make a difference in a BNI chapter in terms of the success of that chapter. We have found that several strong power teams tend to generate more business within the group.

A power team is a group of people that are in complimentary professions. They work with the same client but they don’t take business away from each other. Great examples of these are found in the real estate and wedding industries. A realtor, a mortgage broker, a building inspector, title agency, real estate attorney. All service clients looking to purchase property. Now, a wedding planner, a photographer, and a florist all cater to the bride to be. If these professionals form a power team, when one person in the team gets business, then he or she can refer the client to every other member in the team.

Now, many people have heard me talk about power teams and contact spheres. A contact sphere is like a concentric circle. The contact sphere is all of the professions that are symbiotic to you. They are compatible, noncompetitive professions. The power team is the group of people that you actually have the relationship with, So contact spheres are basically a list of professionals that you may have that are symbiotic to you. The power team is the list of professionals who you have a relationship with, you are in a referral relationship with them.

Successful members in BNI have the ability to select and cultivate those mutually beneficial relationships with high quality strategically important business categories. I think it’s an important core competency for success for many members in a BNI group. The question is how do you cultivate those relationships? It’s really important that you find out as much as possible about those referral partners so that you can send the the right kind of business.

In one of our podcasts, we talked about transaction versus relation. This podcast is all about how you go deeper in building the relationship with your power team. The referrals will come as sort of an outgrowth of that relationship. As you build the relationship, you want to help one another, you’re working with one another and you’re finding out about one another. The referrals will come, but first you have to build the relationship. So I am going to give 10 important questions that you should ask your power team partner as well as some tips for the full advantage of information you gain.

This comes from the book, Money on the Table that was co-written with Lee Abraham and I. Lee did a wonderful job of putting together a lot of great content and I contributed to the book with my content as well. From this, we have these ten questions. If you have a chance, take a look at the book, Money on the Table. These questions come from there. When you sit down with your power team partner, here are the questions that you ask:

1. How did you get started in your business? This is a great ice breaker question. Sometimes knowing what motivated your partner to get into their particular business enables you give stronger testimonials about him or her. For example, I met a chiropractor once who told me he had gotten into chiropractics because of the serious injuries he had and how he couldn’t get well until he started seeing a chiropractor. Chiropractic care got him into that industry. That was a very compelling story. If you didn’t know that you wouldn’t fully understand what a believer this guy was in the power of chiropractic care.

2. What do you enjoy most about what you do? Telling a power partner about what you love and why you love it in detail is really important in helping people understand how to refer one another. If you can understand where they are coming from or what they love about what they do, it is easier to refer them.

3. What separates you and your company from the competition? That’s a good one. Now you’re getting a little deeper after hitting those ice breakers. You’re looking for bullet points that can be told quickly and easily to the prospect to illustrate why you can be trusted to do a good job. So remember when you are asking these questions that you are getting this information. Why? So you can refer your power partner. You are getting this so you can refer them. The more you know about them, the easier it is to refer you.

4. What advice would you give someone starting out in your business? Asking for advice shows respect and it’s essential for building credibility, I think, with your networking partner on the road to driving to profitability in the VCP process.

5. What are the coming trends in your business or industry? This is a really good question because it enables you to find out things that maybe you didn’t know about that business. If your power team partner gives detailed information and strategies on how to profit from upcoming trends, you may learn something of value from your own business. Remember, you are in compatible professions. The things going on in their industry could help you or harm you in some way but knowing about it is very important.

6. What strategies have you found to be most effective in promoting your business? That’s a really important one because again, you are in symbiotic businesses. This question leads to brainstorming for each other’s businesses and stimulates the exchange of marketing and promotional ideas as well as business building in general.

7. If there were anything about your business or industry that you could change, what would that be? That’s a really interesting question because it gets people thinking, really thinking. This question in addition to building rapport allows your power team partner to discuss business freely and provides you with the opportunity to suggest solutions or at least gain a better understanding of what challenges that individual may have.

8. What is the next big event coming up for you? This question almost always results in referral opportunities if it is followed up correctly. It could be an event like a trade show, but it could be a holiday, a season that they often do or don’t do business in. Any of those things that I am talking about, what is coming up for you seasonally, or an event.

9. What is your biggest challenge at the moment? The answer will provide insight into your networking partner’s business and what is going on in their business life. It will help you understand him or her as a person as well as possibly uncovering some money on the table in terms of referral opportunities with that person.

10. The last question that you want to ask is: What type of customers are you looking for? How will I recognize a good prospect for you? What are some of the specific situations that your targeted prospects are experiencing? These are all related questions. There is really more than one question there, but in essence, it is the vivid picture that your networking partner paints about who and what they are looking for. The more they do that, the greater the probability of you recognizing their targeted prospects. They are all part and parcel. You’re basically trying to find out what the ideal customer is for your power partner.

If you sit down and have this kind of conversation- we’ve talked about the GAINS Exchange in another podcast. That’s a real good opener for the average person that you are doing a one to one with. But these questions, I think, are the go to questions for your first meeting with a power partner or potential power partner in a BNI chapter. I urge BNI members to print this out and take it to their BNI meetings and start talking about these to they can build the relationship. Remember, it’s not the transaction. It’s the relationship that gets to the business.

Priscilla:
Beautiful. I think those are great questions. The only thing I would add is that using someone’s services in some way or another really is revealing and you get firsthand experience of what they are like to be worked with or receive something from. I find that to be really useful.

Ivan:
Yeah, that firsthand experience is important. You bring up a good one. The power partner may not have actually used the service at the point where they are having this conversation, but if they had, that is something that should be added to the equation. The good and bad. I think if you really have a power partner that you trust, you want to hear what went well and what could I have done better?

Priscilla:
Yeah, right. You could get feedback. Okay. Great.

Ivan:
That’s it for this week, Priscilla. Thank you very much.

Priscilla:
I hope this is a beautiful year for you, Ivan.

Ivan:
As well for you. I just want to say I appreciate all the work you have done over the years. You produce a great podcast, and I thank you. I look forward to another year.

Priscilla:
Okay great. Well, you are my favorite client.

Ivan:
And this is about relationships, not transaction. Remember that, Michael.

Priscilla:
Okay great. That is it for this week. I would just like to remind you 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.

Scott Simon returns this week to talk about how to cultivate business relationships in your BNI group.

To paraphrase Stephen Covey, you cannot talk yourself out of a situation you behave yourself into without far greater consequences. So here are some guidelines for behaving your way into visibility and credibility in BNI.

1. Showing up early
2. Being prepared
3. Dressing professionally
4. Talking about business during open networking
5. Passing quality referrals
6. Following up on referrals you receive
7. Attending Member Success Program and advanced training
8. Givers Gain mindset
9. Inviting visitors
10. Productive one-to-ones

Many people don’t understand how important the MSP training and the one-to-ones are. The people who do the most one-to-ones are the ones who are making the most money. (See episode 191.) But the most-overlooked behavior is probably showing up early, which shows how much you care.

Nine behaviors that destroy your credibility are

1. Arriving late, leaving early, or not showing up at all
2. Unprofessional or unprepared sales presentation
3. Wearing yesterday’s clothes
4. Airing your grievances during open networking
5. Wasting your referral partners’ time with leads instead of quality referrals
6. Not following up on referrals
7. Poor service quality
8. Having no visitors
9. Trying to sell to members and guests

Too many people use networking as a face-to-face cold-calling opportunity, and that is not the way to build a powerful personal network. Remember that even though everyone wants to buy, nobody likes to be sold to.

The most surprising behavior among BNI members is not following up on referrals.

Brought to you by Networking Now.

Complete Transcript of BNI Podcast Episode 236 -

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:
Doing great.

Priscilla:
Do you have a guest with you today?

Ivan:
I certainly do. We brought Scott Simon back to talk a little bit more about BNI behaviors and your credibility. To remind everyone, Scott is an Executive Director in the four-state area for BNI. He didn’t mention this last week, but he has a bachelor’s degree in marketing and an MBA in finance from Central Missouri State University. He has been a Director with us for a long time, since 1994. He runs a really big region for the organization and has over 100 groups. By the way, about 80% of our countries have less chapters than Scott and his wife have. It’s a big region for the organization with over 2500 members.

This week, we are going to talk about BNI behaviors and credibility. Scott, let me turn it over to you and I will jump in as you go.

Scott:
Thank you, Ivan. Business relationships are really something that we have to cultivate. A lot of people think that they can just join a BNI chapter and sit back and start to reap the harvest of referrals that will come their way. But in all relationship development, it takes time in order to be able to do that. In order to do that, you have to have certain behaviors that will increase your credibility within a chapter. At the BNI International Conference, I heard Stephen Covey say something to the extent of- I am paraphrasing because I didn’t get it exactly. He says you cannot talk yourself out of a situation that you behaved yourself into without finding far greater consequences.

Since everybody who is a BNI member has certain behaviors within a chapter, they are going to reflect upon who they are. We can talk about some of these specific items that will help them build good visibility and good credibility within the chapter.

Ivan:
You have 10 behaviors. Walk through them one at a time real quick and then maybe we can chat about some of them

Scott:
Let’s see. The 10 of them I had real quickly are: showing up early at the meeting, being prepared, dressing professionally, talking about business during open networking, passing quality referrals, following up on the referrals you received, attending MSP and advanced training, givers gain mindset, inviting visitors, and productive one to one.

Ivan:
We could probably do a whole podcast just on one. Ten are great here. Each of these in your opinion, when you do this effectively, it increases your credibility. I agree, by the way.

What would be two or three that would jump out at you as being really important? To me- by the way, MSP is Member Success Program training, which is called that in most countries around the world. That is sort of the orientation for new members. For me, that and productive one to ones are two that I think are not understood fully in just how important they are. Would you agree, or are there any others that you think are as critical or more critical?

Scott:
Well, I certainly agree because this is really about education and MSP is about educating the individual member as to how to be successful in BNI as well as in word of mouth marketing. Those productive one to ones are really educating members on how we can be of service to them and how we can help them build their business. There definitely a correlation between the two. As we are seeing in BNI, those who are doing the most one to ones are the ones who are making the most money.

Ivan:
That is absolutely true. I had a podcast a few months back about that very thing. A person who did the most one to ones had the most referrals and had his best year ever. That is actually pretty consistent. Anything else that you want to say about that before we talk about behaviors that destroy your credibility?

Scott:
I think one of the other ones is so basic that people sometimes miss it. It’s showing up early. If you show up early and help your leadership teams get the room and the meeting set up, if you are there to meet and greet all of the members and the visitors, that really says that you care. As you have always said, nobody cares how much you know until they know how much you care. I think that is certainly one way of doing that.

Ivan:
Yeah. I think that certainly increases your credibility. If you do it well, you will really increase the credibility that you have in your chapter. But there is a flip-side of that. There are behaviors that can destroy your credibility, and you have nine behaviors that you want to mention that destroy your credibility. Do you want to just rip through the nine behaviors and maybe we will do the same? We’ll pick out a couple and talk about it.

Scott:
Sure. Arriving late, leaving early or not showing up at all, unprofessional or unprepared sales presentation, showing up in yesterday’s clothes, airing your grievances during open networking, wasting your referral partners’ time with leads instead of quality referrals, not following up on referrals, poor service quality, having no visitors and trying to sell to members and guests.

Ivan:
Let’s start with the last one of trying to sell to members and guests. Too many people use networking as a face to face cold calling opportunity. They will meet somebody and say hey, let’s do business. That clearly is not a way to build a powerful personal network. Which ones jump out at you as being ones that really drive you crazy?

Scott:
Well, the one you mentioned is, I think, my real pet peeve because I think that goes back to one of BNI’s goals, which is teaching members that it’s more about farming than it is about hunting. Nobody wants to be sold to, but I think everybody would like to buy. When you go in trying to sell your products or services versus developing those relationships, people get turned off.

But I think one of the other ones that’s really interesting is just not following up on referrals. You would think in BNI that would be a non-issue, but I did read a study in American Marketing Association said that 87% of people who receive a referral don’t even follow up. That is the kiss of death in BNI.

Ivan:
It really is. It amazes me when I see members who didn’t follow up on a referral. You are spending some money and a lot of time. Why would you not follow up on a referral?

So these behaviors definitely destroy your credibility, and the first set of behaviors increase your credibility. We have just a couple of minutes left. You had some rhetorical questions to help build credibility. Do you want to throw a couple of those questions out at us here?

Scott:
Sure. When you really think about building relationships with the best customers, perhaps you can ask yourself are you ever late for a meeting with your best customer? Do you ever leave a meeting with a client early due to a scheduling conflict? Do you ever talk to others or not listen while your best customer is addressing you? Do you ever not prepare for a presentation with your best customer? Is it logical to expect your customer to automatically purchase from you before you ever earn their trust?

Those are just a few of the highlighted points that we have.

Ivan:
Sure. I think these are good questions to ask yourself. It think the importance is to do these consistently. Nobody can hit all cylinders all the time. But the more you do some of the things that you’re talking about, the more likely you are to build your credibility. This is a great list. For those of you who are listening, we talked about what behaviors increase your credibility- things like showing up, passing quality referrals, making sure to go to Member Success Program Training, the givers gain mindset, productive one to ones, and that’s not all of them. That’s most of them.

What behaviors destroy your credibility? Thins like arriving late, not being prepared, not following up on referrals, not bringing in visitors, trying to sell to members and guests.

Then we just talked about some rhetorical questions to ask yourself to help build your credibility. Scott, this is really good content. Any closing thoughts before we wrap up today?

Scott:
I think mainly in today’s fast paced world, be best thing is to slow down and do business the old fashioned way, by word of mouth and relationships. BNI is a mechanism that can best help business people work smarter versus harder and help them build credibility.

Ivan:
I agree completely, my friend. You had great content, valuable insights for BNI members. I think this podcast in particular is a great dialogue podcast. Education Coordinators should have a dialogue in their chapters about this content. What are we doing well? What is this chapter doing really well to increase our credibility and in what areas could we improve on? Talking about what destroys your credibility, what areas do we need to work on because it could hurt our credibility?

I think that would be a good dialogue to have in chapters. Remember, you got it from Scott Simon, Executive Director in Missouri. Scott, thank you so much for being a guest on the podcast today. We appreciate your work. Priscilla, back to you.

Priscilla:
Thank you, Ivan and thank you, Scott. 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.

Scott Simon of the Metropolitan St. Louis BNI, who manages more than 100 BNI groups, joins Dr. Misner to help show BNI members how to work smarter, not harder.

Here’s some important background information:

• According to Stephen Covey, who spoke at the BNI International conference this year, trust is an economic driver. It speeds up the sales process. (See the book The Speed of Trust for examples.)
• Most companies spend almost all their money on traditional marketing and advertising when a small fraction of that money spent on networking would get the same results. (It takes 200 cold calls to get an appointment.)
• 98% of businesses rely on referrals, but only 3% have a strategy to get them.
• Since most people know about 1000 people, joining a BNI group with 24 members is like having access to 24,000 people.

An examination of chapters in Scott’s region showed that participation in BNI yields an average of 1 new customer per 5 hours invested versus 1 new customer for every 32 hours expended using traditional methods.That makes BNI membership 6 times as efficient as cold-calling—and a lot more fun, too.

Brought to you by Networking Now.

Complete Transcript of BNI Podcast Episode 235 -

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:
Hi Priscilla.

Priscilla:
Do you have a guest with you today?

Ivan:
I certainly do. I have a good friend and long term director, Scott Simon. Scott is an Executive Director of BNI in metropolitan St. Louis area and actually the four-state area. Scott handles a very large area with his wife, Teresa. He has over 100 BNI groups. He manages over 100 chapters. Since 1994, Scott has been an Executive Director. He has over 2500 members. Scott, you told me before we went on, quoting here, your region did over $373,000,000 in sales. Is that right?

Scott:
That’s correct. It’s actually a 73% increase over 2008, so our region is very proud of that.

Ivan:
You should be. That is truly amazing. Because of that and your success with BNI, we wanted to ask you to come on the podcast and talk to members a little bit about some of the things that you teach there in your region that I think can help to get those kinds of numbers.

Today we are going to talk about working smarter not harder. Let me jump right into it. How is it that members can work smarter not harder? What in particular are you suggesting they do?

Scott:
It was really interesting at the BNI International Conference when Stephen Covey was speaking. It gave me one of those aha moments, one of those thought provoking concepts when he said that “trust is the economic driver.” He went on further to explain that when there is low trust, it takes more time to build rapport between people, which increases the time and dollar expenses of the transaction. Conversely, when there is high trust in a relationship, it takes less time and fewer dollars expended to actually consummate that sale. He went on to give an example of Warren Buffet closing a $23,000,000,000 acquisition in 29 days with absolutely no due diligence done because he and the seller had implicit trust in each other.

You know, Ivan, I spent 20 years selling commercial real estate and our average sale contract was 70 pages long, took 18 months to close, and unfortunately, none of those sales that I brokered ever came close to $23,000,000,000 in sale. The moral that I got from that story is that trust is the foundation of relationship, and because people prefer to do business with people they like and trust, it inevitably saves them time and money.

Ivan:
If I can just come in. I think that was an amazing story. It is in his book. If members want to pick up that book, I highly recommend it. It is called the Speed of Trust. I believe he talks about that very story in the book. Sorry, go ahead, Scott.

Scott:
No problem. Also in another book that you had co-authored with Jay Abraham, Money on the Table, Jay says and I quote “Most people spend all of their time, effort and money on conventional, externally focused advertisement marketing program when a small fraction of that time and money would give them many times the results if they developed a formalized referral system.”

When mentoring business people today, I often hear them complaining about how they are so busy that they need 25 hours in a day, so I ask them to describe their daily activities. Inevitably, they tell me that they spend the majority of their marketing efforts cold calling. To that I say yuck. To which I ask, how has that been working for you? Like pavlov’s dog, they often say, “It’s working okay.” Then they qualify it with, “Well, sort of okay.” Deep down they understand that it is a time-intensive and psychologically degrading process.

I know few people who wake up in the morning, look in the mirror and say, “I love rejection.” The American Marketing Association polled some top performers in the financial services industry that use cold calling as a primary way of marketing their services to determine how much time they spent to close one new customer. Here is what they found out.

On average, they may 50 calls per day. It took them 100 calls, two days’ worth of phoning, to get one appointment. On average, it took them two face to face meetings to make one sale. Therefore, it took them over 200 phone calls, two appointments and four days to secure one new customer. Traditional marketing methods like cold calling, in my opinion, is hard work.

Ivan:
And not fun. A lot of people don’t know this, but I used to teach a sales force in the computer industry cold calling. I taught them how to cold call. I think you will agree it works. It’s just a lot of work and it’s no fun. Who wants to do that? I don’t.

Scott:
Absolutely. As you well know as the father of networking, BNI has been a pioneer in relationship or referral marketing since it is taught in few places versus traditional marketing methods. Yet it is the number one way in which people want to do business. As a matter of fact, 98% of businesses rely on referrals to gain new business but only 3% of businesses actually have a strategy for obtaining those referrals.

Here’s how BNI is actually changing the way the world does business: First, let’s consider in Entrepreneur Magazine, there is an article that said on average, an individual knows about 1,000 people. That’s what’s known as their social capital. The average chapter in our region has over 24 members. Because referral based marketing is not about who the members are but who the members know and how well they know them, it translates to a chapter of 24 members times 1000 people in their network. It’s actually like having 24,000 people in the room.

Ivan:
A lot of people don’t understand that, Scott. I think that is a critical point because they look at it like there are 24 people in the room and that’s not enough. It’s not the people in the room, it’s the network of the people in the room that makes any personal network powerful. You have just done the math to show just how powerful it can, in fact, be. Go ahead.

Scott:
Isn’t that absolutely amazing? Most interestingly about that, I wounder how long it would take someone to go out through normal networking events and meet 24,000 people. And how much longer it might even take them to build actual credible trust with them so that they would want to do business with them.

What we did in our region is take a look at the average BNI member who’s practicing giver’s gain. Here is the time investment that they had. They practiced two hours before, during and after their weekly meeting. In addition, he meets with another member outside of the meeting to get to know them better and for that member to get to know him better. That averages out to about two hours. Finally, they will spend time inviting visitors to meet their other referral partners at the meeting and/or generate a referral for another member. Therefore, he expends maybe one hour marketing his partner’s businesses to his social network. That is a total of 5 hours per week.

The results that we found is that he generates 1.5 referrals per week with over a 70% conversion ratio, amounting to closed business. That equaled to about one new customer closed transaction per five hours invested doing BNI through relationship or referral marketing versus the 32 hours expended using traditional methods such as cold calling.

Isn’t it amazing that BNI utilizes 1/6 the amount of time or develops 6 new customers in the 30+ hours spent otherwise?

Ivan:
It is to me. I think it’s an important thing. You are talking about the average. So people who have been doing this longer get better at it. Their average, I would guess, goes up as you get better at building the relationship. Do you not agree?

Scott:
Absolutely. In BNI studies that we have conducted, we find that a member who just stays a member into their second year will do far greater than what they do in their first year.

Ivan:
Very true. Well, we are running out of time, Scott. Do you want to wrap up this discussion and then we will talk very briefly about what we are going to discuss next week because I will have you back next week to talk about a little more.

Scott:
Absolutely. I have to finish by saying that is why I always smile when a perspective member tells me they can’t afford time to attend one more meeting, to which I always reply, “Have you ever considered working smarter versus harder?”

Ivan:
That’s what we are trying to do in BNI, get people to work smarter not harder and work smarter by building relationships and generating their business through referral, which takes less time to find a prospect and has a higher closing ratio. Agreed?

Scott:
Absolutely.

Ivan:
It’s just great stuff. I like the math that you put to it. I think it’s very powerful. I want to bring you back next week because you have more material and we didn’t have enough time in just one podcast. Next week we are going to talk about BNI behaviors and credibility. Do you want to just give us a real quick preview of what that discussion will include?

Scott:
Absolutely. You coined the phrase a long time before I was even part of BNI. That phrase was, “BNI is not net-sit, nor net-eat but network.” Today I get that saying. It means that you have to work the network in order for the network to work for you. So there are certain things that you have to do in order to be able to reap that harvest.

Ivan:
That is what we are going to talk about next week. BNI behaviors that increase your credibility, destroy your credibility, and questions to help build your credibility. Scott Simon, thank you so much. Executive Director for four states for BNI. I appreciate your information, and we are going to have you back on next week to talk about those other subjects. Priscilla, back to you.

Priscilla:
Thank you, both so much. 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 survey of 12,000 businesspeople that Dr. Misner conducted for his upcoming book, Business Networking and Sex (Not What You Think), showed that people who focused first on relationship and then on business scored much higher in success than those who focused first on business and then on the relationship.

Also according to this survey, men are much more transactional than women are, which is why women are usually more successful at networking. This is part of why Dr. Misner created the GAINS Exchange: because he’s not good at being relational. And the reason Dr. Misner starts each episode by saying where he is that week is to show members that he takes meeting BNI members in different chapters seriously.

Networking expert Susan RoAne reads the sports page every day in order to be able to start conversations with men—even though she hates sports. How many men read Cosmopolitan or Home and Garden in order to be able to talk to women? But if you make an effort to be more relational, it will pay off in your networking.

Brought to you by Networking Now.

Complete Transcript of BNI Podcast Episode 234 -

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:
Thanks, Priscilla. I am doing great and I am going to tell you where I am at the end of my podcast today because I want to talk a little bit about why I say where I am and why I think it’s important. I am going to connect that, believe it or not, to this topic. Transactional vs. relational.

I recently got a message on this podcast from Michael. I won’t give his last name. You are going to love this one, Priscilla. This is an interesting one. He says, “You people are real blowhards. I don’t need to hear you people bloviate about your navel.” By the way, very good vocabulary, Michael. I am very impressed with your vocabulary. “ I don’t need to hear you bloviate. I know you think you’re important. I don’t give a care where you are, what you are doing or anything else about your life. All I need to know is the information, not how important you find yourself.” How do you feel about that, Priscilla?

Priscilla:
Oh wow.

Ivan:
If it’s any consolation, he is talking mostly about me.

Priscilla:
No, I think he is talking about us and our little banter back and forth.

Ivan:
That’s possibly true. First, I want to talk about why and then I want to come back to another email I got, interestingly enough, on the same day. That will take us to our topic of transactional versus relational. So why do I say where I am in the world? Let me tell you why. It’s done on purpose. I, for a long time, would have members send me emails and they would be really upset and talking about where are you and how come I haven’t met you? Where are you? Are you in your ivory tower in BNI? Are you on the beach drinking margaritas? No! I travel a lot. I think it’s really important to meet directors and meet members. It’s part of the job I love. I love traveling around and telling people how they can increase their business.

So the reason I start off every podcast with where I am is to give people a sense of just how much I travel to regions and care about and want to connect with members around the world. Listen, anybody who has done business travel really knows I’m not bragging. Business travel isn’t a lot of fun, but it’s the career I have chosen, and I love doing it. I want members to know that I am out there meeting people almost every other week, sometimes every week for months at a time and that’s really why I say it.

But I think there is a deeper issue here that I really want to talk about. That is the transactional versus relational approach to networking. That exact same day, Priscilla, no kidding, I received another email from Tammy. It was a longer email. Let me read a sentence out of it. She thanks me for BNI. It’s her third year in BNI and she says, “BNI has taught me how to talk to complete strangers and to be interested in their lives instead of trying to sell something to them.”

Now let’s compare and contrast. The first email was “just give me the facts”. It was almost like Dragnet. People listen from around the world who don’t know what Dragnet is. It was a great TV show. I loved the TV show. What did he always say? “Just the facts, ma’am. Just the facts.” That’s what Michael’s approach is. Just give me the facts. I don’t need anything else. I don’t care about where you are at. Just tell me what I need to know. The second email is what I love about BNI is it has taught me to be relational. It has taught me about relationships.

I wanted to compare and contrast the emails because interestingly enough, we have a book coming out in January, Business Networking and Sex, Not What You Think. Long title, talking about some of the findings. It’s based on a survey we did of 12,000 business people. We found that people who focused first on relationship and then on business scored much higher in success. They said that they were much more successful at networking than people who focused first on business and then relationship.

Here’s the real kicker, Priscilla. You’ll like it. I hate it.

Priscilla:
I think I know what it is.

Ivan:
Women scored better.

Priscilla:
Right. Of course.

Ivan:
They did. They scored better. They were a little higher on the relational side than men, but when it came to the transactional side, men were definitely higher. If you said you were not successful in networking, you were 60% likely to be a man.

Priscilla:
Oh really?

Ivan:
Yeah. 60% of those who said they were not successful at networking and were transactional- focused on the business first- were men. Men tend to focus more on transactions than relationships. Now look at these two emails that I just got. Same day. They were about two different podcasts but same day. One says I don’t care anything about you. I don’t care anything about where you are at. You are just bragging. Just give me the facts. That’s all I want. The other says, you know what I’ve learned is that it’s all about relationships. Who wants the facts? The man. Who wants the relationships? The woman.

Now, one thing that I have learned over the years is that my natural tendency is to just go for the facts. Just give me the facts. The truth is that is not good in networking. That is a bad networking practice. It has taken me many years to learn how to ask more questions and to try to find out about the person.

You know, the reason I wrote the GAINS Exchange, that acronym for Goals, Accomplishments, Interests, Networks, and Skills is that I can’t do it naturally. I am not good at it naturally. So by having a GAINS exchange, it gives me a system to find out about the person. Not just the facts- not just the front of the card but the back of the card. What’s behind the person.

I think that is a really important concept that is identified in these two emails. One from a man who wants nothing about the facts and is all about the transaction. One from a woman who is more relational. Guys, don’t get mad and send me hate mail. I am not saying all men are this way, but the data is the data. It is what it is. It shows that the women tend to be more focused on the relationships.

Let me tell you a couple of things out of the book that I am going to share in advance. The book is not out yet. I interviewed Susan Roane who is an expert on networking. Great lady who wrote many books. Here is something she says that she does, Priscilla, that you might find interesting. I put this in the book. She says she reads the sports page everyday.

Priscilla:
Oh, so she has something to talk about.

Ivan:
Yeah. She hates sports. She said she reads the sports page so she can have a conversation with men in networking environments because they focus on sports so much. She reads the sports page so she can begin the conversation. So let me ask you a question, Priscilla. How many men do you think read Cosmo so they can have a conversation with a woman? Some women are out there going, Cosmo doesn’t represent me, but I did a Google search. Toptenreviews.com said Cosmo came out as one of the top magazines for women. Homes and Gardens another. So how many men are out there reading Homes and Gardens or Cosmo just so they can have a conversation with women?

I would tell you very few. So why is that? Because men tend to be transactional. Just give me the facts, ma’am. And women tend to be relational. When it comes to success at networking, the data is what the data is. And that is relational is better that transactional.

Priscilla:
Women are trained to be relational. That’s how women do business as mothers. They get together in small groups and talk about each other and who does great work. They trade referrals of babysitters and this and that, where to get bargains, and that’s what women do. They are the original networkers and relational networkers.

Ivan:
And it’s all about trust. We have talked about that in other previous podcasts and we have quoted Steven Covey in the Speed of Trust. If it’s all about trust, trust only comes when there is a relationship built, a plausible, credible relationship. So if trust is only going to come when there is a relationship, if you are focused on the transaction, you are never going to get to the relationship, you are never going to get to the trust and you’re not going to generate as much business.

While women have scored better at it in terms of the survey we did, and we have anecdotal information to support that, the bottom line is everyone who focused on relationships versus transaction, whether you are a man or a woman, scored higher. Forget about gender. If someone looked at the question of has networking played a role in your success and focused on business versus relationship, they were twice as likely to say no. About 110% more likely to say no if you focused on business first and relationship second. You were less than half as likely to be unsuccessful if you focused on relationship first.

Even if you take gender out of the equation, it is all about. Tammy, thank you very much for recognizing that it is all about relationships. I love that she said “it has taught me how to talk to complete strangers and be interested in their lives.”

Michael, I have to thank you for you as well. Thank you for reminding me why it is important to tell everyone where I am. I do it because I want people to know that I am out visiting and connecting with members all around the world.

To end the podcast, Priscilla, I will tell you that I am home for a few weeks spending time with my family, reintroducing myself because I have been on the road so much meeting with members all over the world. It is good to be home, but come January, I am hitting over 30 cities next year to meet BNI members all around the world. This was, I think, one of our more interesting podcasts, Priscilla, and I apologize for those things that Michael said. I think you are wonderful and anything but a blowhard. I love working with you.

Priscilla:
Thank you, Ivan. I think you are a really fun person to be with. And thank you, Michael, for the feedback. I think that might be it for this week. Thank you so much. 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.

There’s no need to wait for a class reunion to network with your former classmates. Admittedly Dr. Misner has never passed a referral to any of the other 9 people in his first graduate school class, but he’s more connected to his high school classmates today than he was 10 years ago, thanks to Facebook and Twitter.

Here are three steps to help you reconnect to old school friends.

1. Contact your school’s alumni services department
2. Reconnect using online networks (e.g. LinkedIn, Facebook)
3. Seek referrals GENTLY. People will un-friend you if you adopt a pushy, hard-sell approach. It’s usually safe to announce a special event occasionally.

Brought to you by Networking Now.

Complete Transcript of BNI Podcast Episode 233 -

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 have kind of an unusual topic from what I normally do.

Priscilla:
What is this about?

Ivan:
The full title is Don’t Wait for a Reunion to Network with Former Classmates. A lot of what I talk about on these podcasts are really aimed at what members can do a lot of times within the context of BNI. Here we are reaching out a little bit- and a number of my podcasts do reach out. This is reaching out beyond BNI. Here’s a technique that BNI members can use that doesn’t apply to BNI specifically, but it applies to networking and of course, the bigger, broader and deeper your network, the more effective it will be for you and BNI as well.

Priscilla:
Okay, how does it work?

Ivan:
It relates to your former classmates. Every year during the back to school season, I often recall my first day in graduate school in southern California. I was pursuing a doctorate with an emphasis on organizational behavior there. On the first day- it was an 8- hour class once a week, if you can believe that. There were two professors in the class, ten students. Two professors in every class for this course, by the way, for every one of the class sessions. Ten students. There was no place to hide. One of the professors spent the first two hours of class talking about the elite network of peers that we were going to be working alongside for the next two years and how we were going to make relationships that would last the rest of our professional and personal careers.

The sad news is that even though I ended up founding an international networking organization, I have never passed a business referral to or received a referral from one of these high-level classmates that I had. Instead, after graduation, we all spread out to chase our professional goals without really any context with which to keep in touch. We live in a different world today and I feel it is a real advantage to new college graduates and it’s easier because of the tools that are out there. But for us older guys and ladies out there who may have graduated some time ago, the technology that is out there is still helpful for us to connect with classmates. As a matter of fact, I am more connected to my high school classmates today than I was ten years ago because of Facebook, Twitter and other online technologies.

I was working on my doctorate in the early 80′s. Finished it in ’93 well before social networks and web services were available to help people keep in touch. Today there are a multitude of options to help you maintain the relationships that you make as you pursue a college or university degree and after you’ve completed high school, college or university.

I want to talk about three steps to help you reconnect with old school friends and convert those old relationships into current relationships. The first things is to contact your school’s alumni services department. They will be besides themselves to connect with you. Alumni departments really want to find out what is going on with students who have graduated there. Colleges and universities have been creating networking affinity groups and other opportunities to help students stay in their relationship with each other as well as their universities for years. So you can share news about your business that may catch the eye of your fellow graduates. You can also develop that network of current and former students to find out who you want to connect with.

I have found that by getting back involved with universities and sharing my story, I have gotten published in the alumni magazines. I’ve been recognized as an Alumni of the Year. All of that has happened because I reconnected with the universities that I went to, both undergraduate and graduate. As a matter of fact, two of the colleges asked me to speak at a commencement.

Priscilla:
Nice.

Ivan:
Yeah, yeah. I thought it was amazing. So reconnect with your alumni services department. That is the beginning.

Second, reconnect using online networks. LinkedIn, for instance, is the largest business only social network and you will likely find a lot of your former classmates there. And then there is Facebook. Facebook is the perfect social network.It exploded into an international network from students to parents from entrepreneurs to brands to friends to family and much more.I hear stories all the time about how people have reconnected with friends they haven’t seen in a long time. I am an example of somebody who has reconnected with somebody I hadn’t seen in years and years and years. I even did an alumni party at my house because I got on Facebook and started connecting with old classmates.

So we did a party at my house. It was overlapping years, so I met students who were younger than me when I was there, older than me when I was at my high school. So use online networks. Once you start connecting with those classmates, it’s important to keep track of those valuable contacts by setting up and maintaining a database in addition to the standard contact databases that you see in Microsoft Outlook or the most robust contact management system such as ACT. There are web based contact storage where you can store contacts in the cloud. There is Gmail, Yahoo!, or you can use your LinkedIn account or other online address books. There’s a lot out there. So that is number two.

First, contact your school’s alumni network. Number two, connect with other using online networks. And number three, seek referrals gently. That’s important. Ask for referrals. Ask for references. But do it gently. Once you have built and organized your network, the next step is to tactfully tap into your social capital. But be careful. If you conduct a constant hard sales effort aimed at your network, people might drop you or unfriend you. As a matter of fact, they will drop you or unfriend you.

I think of social networks as a brand building tool. But using it to turn followers into sales is possible if you do it tactfully. Do this by asking your contacts if they know anyone who might be a potential customer for a type of business. You can occasionally announce a special deal or announce a special event. I find that really helpful. If you have some special event that you are doing, your contacts are much more willing to promote that than, “ I have a special on my product…” They don’t like that. But an event, a lot of people come.

You can offer something like that directly to your network. A successful offering might not only encourage those in your network to show up, but they will share it with other people who show up in their networks. So it’s okay to ask but remember that VCP always applies. Visibility, Credibility, Profitability. Before you start asking for referrals, you have to be at credibility with people. They will jump before you build that credibility.

Don’t wait for a reunion to connect with former classmates. Do these three things. Contact your school’s alumni services department. Reconnect using various online networks and eventually seek referrals but do it tactfully and do it gently.

Priscilla:
All very good recommendations. I have one question. Some of the contact information that you put in the article that was the basis of this podcast, I read that. It gave some specific information about tagging your contacts and I’m wondering if you are a Mac user if there is anything that you could recommend or you think that the contact information services that you suggest would work for us.

Ivan:
Absolutely. I do have a Mac at home with my kids for their artwork that they do. I don’t use Mac a lot but there is no reason why- the Mac database is as good as any. So using that database is important, although I mentioned Microsoft Outlook and ACT, although ACT probably is for the Mac. It’s not so much the database. It’s the concept. Whatever you like to use is what you need to use. Tagging people- in the article that I wrote, I did mention tagging people. If you have a smartphone, to keep contacts organized, there are tags like go2 tag mobile application allows you to create customized tags for your contacts.

A program that I recommend: www.relate2profit.com has a lot of features in it. For example, VCP is part of that system so that you can say where am I with this person? Am I at visibility, credibility, or profitability? I have talked about them on other calls. Great system. Whatever you use, use it wisely and effectively.

Priscilla:
Well thanks. I think that might be it for this week.

Ivan:
That’s it. If you have some other ideas and are listening to this podcast or reading a transcript and have an idea on not waiting for a network to connect with former classmates, put it up here. I would love to hear more ideas on how you can connect with other people, your former classmates, whether it be high school or college. Put it up here at BNIpodcast.com. Thank you very much, 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.

This episode is a rebroadcast of Episode 203.

The title of the podcast comes from the late Paul Harvey’s radio broadcast. It’s “the rest of the story” about Ivan Misner and the founding of BNI.

See the complete transcript on Episode 203.

Brought to you by Networking Now.

Exceptional performance is not achieved by looking for exceptions. You won’t get great results without great effort. You can’t win the Tour de France without riding a bike, or the Nobel Peace Prize without changing the world. Musicians and athletes need to practice. So do businesspeople. Without discipline and a focus on the fundamentals, you won’t achieve success. There are no shortcuts.

Have you run into people like this, either in BNI or elsewhere in business? The ones who want to read advice on how to be successful, but not to follow it? What has your experience been like.

Brought to you by Networking Now.

Complete Transcript of BNI Podcast Episode 231 -

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 actually at BNI headquarters this week training National Directors for BNI. I have some National Directors from around the world here at BNI. They are going through some training to open up new countries. We are in almost 50 countries now and we’ll be opening up more countries next year, too.

Priscilla:
That is amazing.

Ivan:
Yeah. It really is. It’s very exciting.

Priscilla:
So what do you have to share with us?

Ivan:
Well, the topic for today is You Don’t Become Exceptional by Looking for Exceptions. I have touched upon this some in other podcasts, but I have additional information that I think is of value because over and over again in my life, I am reminded that exceptional performance is not achieved by looking for exceptions. I’ll be really honest. I don’t feel very diplomatic today so I am just going to say it like it is. I am really tired of dealing with people who want great results but they don’t want to put any great effort.

I honestly think that if people spent half as much time focusing on the fundamentals of success in the area they are interested in, they would get twice the results of what they are actually getting. I am not aiming this message at BNI members. I am aiming this message at business owners worldwide, any business professional. This isn’t just BNI.

In fact, I think in many ways, BNI members are better at this than the average person. But I do find over and over way too many people around the world that I talk to who are searching for ideas and then arguing with people about what works. So they will ask for an opinion and then argue with people who have been successful in that area.

Let me give you an example of what I am talking about. Earlier this year, I read an article by a really good friend of mine, Tony Alessandra. Dr. Alessandra. He wrote the material on the “platinum rule.” The platinum rule talks about the fact that you treat people the way that they want to be treated, not the way that you want to be treated. It’s not quite the golden rule, which is treat others the way that you want to be treated. You treat others the way that they want to be treated.

It’s an important concept and his piece was well-written, Tony’s material. It explains that especially when it comes to business, it’s not about how you want to be treated. It’s how they want to be treated. They have needs, desires and wants that may be different from yours. So understanding them is very important. He did a very non-controversial posting, this friend of mine who posted on Tony’s material. He caught some guy- this was on an online network. He got some guy who posted a comment that this was a horrible idea because people don’t always know what is best for them. I’m thinking, really? Really?

That seemed crazy to me. But he said he thought perhaps he was overreacting so he thought he would check some of the other guy’s writings. He started looking at he other guy’s writings and other comments that he had posted, and he was always the guy taking the opposing position. He disagreed with virtually everyone about virtually everything. Then I started looking at his original posting and this guy is a total loser. He clearly jumped- this is the part where I said I was not going to be real diplomatic today. He clearly jumped from business to business. He didn’t appear to be successful in anything. The best thing this guy seemed to do was- wait for it, wait for it- yes, argue about everything. He argued about everything.

Soon after I read my friend’s article about the platinum rule, I received an email from someone who visited one of the BNI chapters. I wrote about this in a Success Net article some time ago. He said, “I am interested in how I can provide my extensive list of contacts to a local networking group without actually having to attend the weekly meetings. We only want to attend once a month for meetings, but we still want to adopt the group’s ethos as well as their well-structured program.”

I’m like, really? This is what I mean. You don’t become exceptional by looking for exceptions. “ I want all the results but I don’t want to do all the work that is necessary. I want to read advice on how to be successful but I don’t want to actually follow it.” That’s the kind of thing that got me thinking. I would really like to win the Tour de France, but I don’t like riding bikes.

Priscilla:
That would be a problem.

Ivan:
I always thought it would be amazing to win an Olympic medal, but really, all that conditioning- is it really necessary? I would have liked to have become a medical doctor but I’m really not so good with all the blood and internal organ stuff. I would really love to be a military general, but boot camp- really? Do I have to do boot camp? But the most coveted of all: a Nobel Peace Prize. That would be really amazing but then I would actually have to change the world in some incredibly important way. Surely there is something less I could do and still get the same results, right?

If all this wishing made it so, but it doesn’t. Looking for exceptions to what has been proven to work seems many times to be the norm with some people, those who go around constantly searching for exceptions to validate reasons why the disciplined hard work that has made others successful won’t work for them. In my experience, you will only find one truth and that is that successful people only find success through consistent, disciplined action. They are, in fact, the only real exceptions to the norm. They have that consistent, disciplined action.

I would love to hear about this. Have you seen people like this in BNI or outside BNI? Have you seen people like this? This is one of the reasons that BNI works so much. It’s the discipline and accountability and the people who come in and understand that. I don’t like having to get up every week and go to a meeting. I would say that now some of us like it. There are crazy people out there who say this is fun. They love early morning meetings. But I’m a realist. I get it. It takes hard work. It takes discipline. But the results speak for themselves. To me, that is why I think BNI has been so successful- the discipline. I would love to hear from people who listened to this podcast or read the transcript of the podcast. Have you run into people like this? What has been your experience? Not just in BNI- anywhere in business. Let me step off of my soapbox now.

Priscilla:
You’re done?

Ivan:
I’m done.

Priscilla:
Okay. I think that’s great, and I think you’re right because discipline is the hardest thing to integrate into your life. But it really does get the best results. If you look at musicians that are very accomplished or athletes, it’s just very obvious that they are consistent and they do the hard work. So I think you’re right.

Ivan:
They do. A musician- isn’t that a great example? You’re not going to be a concert pianist is you don’t practice regularly.

Priscilla:
You’re right. And the more time you put into it, the better it gets.

Ivan:
Very true. Very true. So if you want to be exceptional in business, don’t look for the exceptions. Look for the rule and what other people are doing consistently. Be willing to do the hard work. Drop me a comment here on this podcast. Thanks, Priscilla.

Priscilla:
Ivan, thanks 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.

We mentioned exit interviews in Episode 222; in this episode, Dr. Misner explains how exit interviews came to BNI.

Many years ago a terrific BNI member, someone who really seemed to love BNI, quit unexpectedly. Dr. Misner designed an exit interview and found out that the real reason the member was leaving was because another member had behaved unethically. The membership committee confronted this other member and removed the person from the chapter, allowing the first member to stay.

Here are some of the questions in an exit interview:

• What are your reasons for leaving?
• Did you find that BNI was beneficial to you?
• What did you like most about BNI?
• Was there anything you disliked about BNI? If so, what was it and how would you change it?
• Did you feel you were well-informed about the activities and benefits of BNI?
• Did you meet for lunch with other members of the group? How often?

Take this podcast to your leadership team. And download your own copy of “The Significance and Value of the Exit Interview” below.

Download (PDF, 209.89KB)

Brought to you by Networking Now.

Complete Transcript of BNI Podcast Episode 230 -

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 come 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. This week I am at the international BNI conference in Long Beach. I talked about it in last week’s podcast. We have hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people coming here now. The conference starts tomorrow. We do this every year. It’s like going to a UN conference. It’s really an amazing experience. Members are welcome to come on the member’s day, which is on Friday every year. So just look at BNI.com in November of every year and if a BNI member anywhere in the world would like to come, you are welcome. We had somebody from Africa come last year.

Priscilla:
Wow. I know it’s very interesting to meet all of the people from all over the world. It gives you a real sense of how big the organization is.

Ivan:
It really does. No question about it. Today I am going to talk about the value of exit interviews. I thought I would start with a couple of things. First of all, I made reference to an exit interview in episode 222, Why Do People Leave? So if you have a chance and are listening to this podcast and you have not listened to episode 222, I think it goes hand in glove with this podcast. So take a look at that.

In that podcast, I talked about the fact that we started doing exit interviews a number of years ago, but I don’t think I gave the story about how they came about. So I thought I would open it up with this story as to how exit interviews began. What happened was that we had somebody quit a chapter and they were a great member. They seemed very, very happy. They really seemed to like the organization. So somebody said we should really ask them why. I said we should do an exit interview. They asked what that is. This is years ago, Priscilla, I couldn’t have had more than 40 chapters.

One of the kinds of things that I did as a management consultant was I designed exit interviews for companies. I said it was just a list of questions that you ask somebody when they leave. So I wrote this up for a specific member. I called him and said we are starting to do exit interviews. I didn’t want to say it was because he is leaving. That’s what I did. We were starting to do exit interviews. I just had a few questions. We asked why the person was leaving. I asked the question a couple of times in different ways. I found out, Priscilla, that the person was leaving because they were mad at another member.

Even though they said that business was really booming, business was great and they couldn’t handle it all, I found out that that wasn’t the real reason. The reason was that somebody else had kind of ripped him off in a chapter. That’s when I had an opportunity then to do some consulting, some mentoring. I said if they really wanted to leave because somebody has done something inappropriate? We should deal with that and not have you leave. He said he didn’t want to make a big deal out of it.

The thing about this guy was that I knew he was a real ethical person. I guilted him. I’ll be honest. I guilted him. I said, “If you leave, do you think this guy is going to do the same thine to someone else?” He said yes. I said, “ Then let’s do the right thing together and let me help you with the membership committee. Let’s bring this to the membership committee so that they know what happened and they can make a decision. The membership committee heard the issue and they removed the other person. So guess who stayed. The guy who was going to quit. It all started because of this exit interview.

In this podcast, I am going to review what the exit interview consists of. There is going to be a downloadable so that members can download this on their own, although this is available to leadership teams and directors. Any member can download this. I urge chapters to use this when you have people leaving. Not just anybody, but I recommend that you use it consistently in your chapter.

Priscilla:
I think it’s a great idea.

Ivan:
One of the things that we say is that the value of the exit interview is directors- but more than just directors, I think members can do this as well. I don’t recommend that it be any member. I recommend that it be the leadership team, somebody from the leadership team, or somebody from the membership committee. Anyone in authority who regularly performs exit interviews, there is a number of benefits. It allows the chapter to figure out if maybe this isn’t the right chapter.

Maybe a different chapter might work for them because of a personality conflict. It provides insight as to what a member’s impression is and how BNI can serve more effectively in terms of quality control. It can help chapters take ownership for the quality of their members and avert potential problems.

Exit interviews are a very powerful tool that I think are not utilized as much as they have been in the past in some reasons. I would urge you to have somebody in your group be responsible for doing exit interviews. Here is what the exit interview consists of. Then maybe, Priscilla, we can just chat for a few minutes if you have any questions.

The exit interview basically consists of you putting down who is interviewing, who you are interviewing and you ask them what is the reason for leaving? Do you mind telling me why you are leaving? What are the reason/s for leaving? Do you find that BNI is a benefit to your profession?

We found this in studies that we have done in the past that 20% of a chapter will leave for reasons that a chapter can’t control. I have talked about this in a previous podcast. Health problems, changing careers, moving- you are going to get 20% turnover, so if you have 40% turnover in your chapter, half of that is going to be for stuff that you can’t control. So when you ask if they feel it has been of benefit and they say yes, you find out maybe that they are leaving because of something that is really beyond your chapter’s control.

Ask them no matter what they said- whether they are leaving because they are unhappy or happy- what did you like most about BNI? Another question is was there anything that you disliked about BNI, and if so, what is it and how would you change it if you could? Did you feel that you were well informed on the benefits and activities offered to you by BNI?

Then there are five questions that are asked in the last question, sort of a yes or no. This gives you a sense of the kind of activity that the member engaged in, so if they say they didn’t get any business out of BNI, you can get a sense of whether they were engaged in the kind of activities that they needed to be in. For example, did you meet for lunch for other members of the group? Yes or no, and if so, roughly how many? Were you specific about expressing what a good referral for you was? Did you ask members if the referral you gave worked for them? Did you prepare your 60 second presentations? Did you feel you had good communication with your chapter and its members?

Really the idea is just to get people to open up and talk. Here’s and old- this isn’t in any other written material. I am going to give you and old technique as an old HR guy who has worked with human resources and studies and surveys. A concept called semantic differential questioning, when you basically ask the same question in different ways. Asking why somebody left using different words will oftentimes get different answers.

What was the reason for leaving? What was one of the most important factors in your decision to leave? You don’t do this one right after the other. You might do one in the beginning, throw another one in the middle and one at the very end. What’s the bottom line, Priscilla, on why you left? You only do that when you have somebody whom you think has another reason for leaving than what they are saying.

By using semantic differential questioning where you ask the same question in two or three different ways, I know it sounds silly, but you will get, many times, a different answer. When they say to you, you know what, you kind of asked that and they kind of answered that, then you are probably getting the answer that’s true. Again, I wouldn’t use that technique on everyone, but when you think you have someone who is not being completely candid for whatever reason, it’s a great way in an exit interview to get the bottom line, to get the information.

Knowledge is power. If you know why people are leaving, you can impact it. I highly recommend exit interviews, so go back and listen to episode 22 and put them together.

Priscilla:
Episode 222

Ivan:
Episode 222 will tie together with this episode. 22 was a long time ago.

Priscilla:
I want to just say a few things. One is that I think we definitely lost a very positive member due to something that was personal between members. He just did not want to deal with it. I think it’s really a shame because had perfect attendance, had been a member for years, and was a really great person. I think if we had done something like this, maybe we could have avoided it. He just felt really uncomfortable. He didn’t talk about what the reasoning was but it was definitely a conflict with another member. So I think it happens more often than you may think.

Ivan:
It does and people- oftentimes, there are a lot of reasons why they don’t talk about it. It may be that they just don’t want to cause waves. It might be that they don’t want to have a battle. It might be that they are just so frustrated that they don’t ever want to sit in the same room with the other person.

Priscilla:
I think it was that.

Ivan:
In a way, that is the wrong way because now you leave the person who created the problem in the chapter. Good people will do the right thing when you present it to them properly. Do you think that that person is going to do the same thing? They will often say yes. Then let’s do the right thing here and tell somebody about this.

Priscilla:
That’s a great idea. I am definitely going to take this back to my chapter and get it started because we have a very god chapter that is eight years old, but we are losing some of our newer members, so we have to figure out why.

Ivan:
That’s important. I recommend that everyone listening to this podcast, take this podcast to your leadership team. Tell your leadership team , “This is a podcast you need to listen to. I think this chapter should consider doing them.” Every chapter doesn’t need to do them. This is one of those techniques, Priscilla, where this is not BNI 101. This is BNI 401. If you don’t do this, it’s not the end of the world but if you have a really good chapter and you just want to make it better and you want to do some things- you’re already a good chapter and you want to get even better, this is a technique that really, really works.

Of course, it works on the chapters that are struggling as well, but it’s a little more complicated to deal with and it’s a little more commitment.

Priscilla:
Okay great, Ivan. I really like that.

Ivan:
Well, thanks a lot, Priscilla.

Priscilla:
Okay 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.

Bruce “Woody” Woodcock from BNI-IL Central joins Dr. Misner today to share ideas to increase your branding recognition. Many people join BNI without really knowing how to advertise themselves or what they do from a branding perspective.

You need to answer the questions “What do I do that keeps clients coming back to me? Who, what, where, why, and when?”

Identify three professions that you service and three people within those professions by name. What do you do for them? Reduce it to the ridiculous: if you’re available 24 hours, how? By phone? Land or cell? If you provide great customer service, how?

The more specific you can be about both what you do and who you’re looking for, the more referrals you’ll get.

Brought to you by Networking Now.

Complete Transcript of BNI Podcast Episode 229 -

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

Ivan:
Hi Priscilla. I am doing great. I am preparing for the International BNI Conference which is next week in southern California. We hold it in November every year. It will be on the 10th, 11th and 12th of next week. Members are welcome to come, by the way, to the International Conference. It’s a little short notice if you are hearing this for the first time, but if you are interested in coming to the International Conference, take a look at BNI.com and see what we have going on. Members are welcome. We have a member’s day on the 11th, and we do get members from around the world and certainly around the US, but any member is welcome to come on member’s day.

Priscilla:
I’ve been to the conference, Ivan, and it’s super fun. I really enjoyed it.

Ivan:
It is. It’s kind of like going to a United Nations thing, isn’t it? Flags from around the world and all these speakers with all these different accents. It’s exciting. I have a guest today on the show, Priscilla. He is a friend and Executive Director for BNI. He is Bruce Woodcock. He goes by “Woody.” Woody has a degree in psychology. He is a 17-year member of BNI and an Executive Director for Central Illinois. He has been doing that and he is also the District Director for BNI, meaning he handles a number of states around the country, about 9 states, where he works with the Executive Directors. He’s both a BNI member and Director and has been involved with the organization for 17 years. Woody, welcome to the podcast.

Woody:
Hi Ivan. Thank you.

Ivan:
It’s great to have you on here. You have clearly been in the organization for a long time. You have an important role with BNI as a District Director. Many members may not know what a District Director is. It’s really a per counselor for Executive Directors throughout a region through the United States. Some countries have District Directors but as other countries get bigger, more and more will have District Directors.

Your topic today, Woody, is ideas to increase your branding recognition. I love the topic. Let’s start with the first point that you want to make, and that is in branding to niche market your company or business. Tell us about that.

Woody:
I found that individuals have been coming into the BNI chapters, and a lot of times, they don’t really know how to advertise themselves or what they really do from a business perspective. I’ll give you an example. Anita has a business called Gifts by Anita. She had twelve different pokers in the fire all going at one time and didn’t know which way to turn. So she asked me if I would be willing to help her identify what is going on. In doing so, we determined that she just had too many things going on and she really didn’t know who she was, which is part of branding- identifying what you really do. In doing that, we determined that she has a specialty.

Whereas, if I am a brand new client of yours, Ivan, you would go to Anita and say, “Woody is a brand new client. Here are some of his personality traits. Here’s his business. Here’s what he does. Would you provide him a gift basket as a form of thank you and follow up with him on what I’m doing (in other words, what you, Ivan, are doing for me as a new client for them).” The niche here came in as able to always work around to come up and the end and oh, by the way, would you happen to know of three other people at least who would like to partake of Ivan’s business or specialty that would get the same service that he is providing you right now? And then take that referral process back to you, which would then help you expand your business. That was her niche in doing the gift basket business.

As a result of that, her business has been growing. She put a few other things in proper priority. She’s doing some event planning and has formed a mastermind group of businesswomen within the Springfield, IL area where she is from

Ivan:
Interesting. Anything else you would add to that in niche market your company or business.

Woody:
I would say that you have to really reduce it to the ridiculous and identify what you do. There is a technique that I’ll explain in a couple of minutes on how to do that.

Ivan:
You talked a little bit about incorporating that into your 60-second time slot. Do you want to talk any more about that?

Woody:
Yeah, what happens is as you are identifying- I tell people to start out with at least three professions that they service. Then from those, they identify each profession- a butcher, a baker, and a candlestick maker- three of their clients within those professions by name. Mr. X, Ms. Y, if confidentiality is an issue or Company XXY, but specifically by name. Then they have to identify what to they do for that specific client that keeps them coming back to them as opposed to going to their competitors. They keep taking that out and working it out all the way until they can’t answer the questions anymore. Basically who, what, how, when or why do I service those clients and keep them coming back to me?

Ivan:
That’s where you talk about reduce it to the ridiculous. So tell us more about that.

Woody:
An individual may be using some different terminologies or different techniques. I provide a 24 hour service for them. Well, how do you provide a 24 hour service? I am available on the phone. What kind of phone? Cell phone? Landline? Internet?

Ivan:
Or Skype. More and more Skype is becoming important.

Woody:
Absolutely. And video cams, now, too are very much in. So how do you maintain that contact? Let’s go back. What else do you do for them that keeps them coming back? We provide good customer service. How do you do that? What techniques do you use in order to do that? And then just keep answering those questions again until you can’t answer them anymore.

Ivan:
It’s counter-intuitive. I have talked a lot about this on the podcast. It’s counter-intuitive because people say, “We do it all. Whatever you want, I can do.” What we in fact find is that people who get more referrals are actually more specific. The idea that specific is terrific. The more you narrow it down in your discussion of what it is that you do, the better you are able to educate people how to refer you.

If somebody says, “I am a full service whatever. I can do any of these things,” you have really not planted any seed in their minds as to how you do that. When you get really specific, you have now planted a story in their mind that they can repeat and remember easier. Is that a good way of describing why it’s important to reduce it to the ridiculous?

Woody:
Absolutley. I have seen people who are more specific in what they do get more referrals because their referrals team (which is the BNI chapter) fully understands what you as a sales manager is looking for that week. For example, if I identify that this week, the ideal client for me is Customer X and this is what I do for them, so who do you know who would be like Customer X? That’s who I want to talk to this week. By identifying those professions and all those customers, I don’t care if it’s 3 professions or 33 professions, each week you can then go in with a different infomercial based on each of the respective customers that you have so that you can be specific, tell a success story and then ask for what you want.

Ivan:
Being specific about Customer X, being specific means, “I’m looking for Mr. / Mrs. So and So,” a specific name. Nothing wrong with that. That’s even more powerful, don’t you think?

Woody:
Absolutely.

Ivan:
I may have mentioned this in a podcast before, but I did that in southern California with what we call the reciprocity ring, which is an exercise. Somebody said, “I need to meet Marty Rodriguez, the number one Centure 21 real estate agent in the world for that last 20 years. I can’t get past the secretary and I don’t know anybody who knows her.”

I thought wow, that’s specific. I don’t know how lucky the person is going to get. And one of the other members stood up and said, “Sally, Marty is my sister in law. You didn’t know that?” “No, I didn’t know that. How come you never told me that?” The woman said, “ You never asked.”

Woody:
The key is that not enough of our people ask specifically enough for what they want. Too many generalities.

Ivan:
This is great material, Woody. Is there anything that you want to say to summarize what you are talking about today?

Woody:
I think the key is just take the time. Use your BNI members as a sounding board. Do the cards with them to help analyze your business. Take a look at it and then be as specific as you can on what do you want.

Ivan:
I like the concept of reduce it to the ridiculous. I use specific is terrific. I think both get you to where we are trying to get members to go to. The more you can do these things, the more you are going to be successful in this organization. I appreciate the material. Priscilla, any comment from you o question for Woody?

Priscilla:
No, I think it was great information. Thank you.

Ivan:
I agree. Woody, thank you so much. Thank you for what you do as an Executive Director and District Director for the organization. I would love to have you back on the podcast sometime.

Woody:
Thank you, Ivan. Thanks, Priscilla.

Priscilla:
You’re welcome. Thank you, Woody, and thank you, Ivan. I think that is it for this week. 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 again for listening. This is Priscilla Rice, and we hope you will join us next week for another exciting episode of The Official BNI Podcast.

Many people who attend Dr. Misner’s keynote presentations congratulate him on his “overnight” success—which took more than 20 years of hard work. Very few people achieve success overnight, and even fewer can hang on to it. How many one-hit musicians are there? Sustaining success over time takes continuous work. Mark Twain claimed it took three weeks to prepare a good impromptu speech. Even people who seem to achieve success overnight have usually been working in obscurity for years.

You can watch Dr. Misner’s speaker’s reel and read more about overnight success on the Business Networking Blog.

Tell us what success means to you in the comments.

Brought to you by Networking Now.

Complete Transcript of BNI Podcast Episode 228 -

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 what do you have to share with us today?

Ivan:
I am doing great and today I want to talk about the myth of overnight success. It came as a result of me doing a blog at businessnetworking.com where I shared my speakers reel. I do a lot of keynote presentations. By the way, sometimes members are mistaken and think that I charge when I come to visit BNI regions. I never charge BNI to do keynote presentations. I do charge when I go to other organizations, but if you ever see me in your region, I don’t charge anything, including my travel.

I do a lot of keynotes for other organizations and I have a speakers reel that I posted up at businessnetworking.com and I think we will have the link in the podcast. During the course of speaking at organizations over the last decade, I have had the privilege and honor of doing keynote presentations and being the featured speaker at events across the world.  I have never done this on the podcast- a good referral for me. It’s been over 200 podcasts and I never said that a good referral for me is someone that you know who is in charge of speakers for that organization and having me come out to do a keynote presentation in their organization. We can put them in touch with the people who handle my keynote presentations. That would be a great referral for me because it gives me a chance to go out and talk about networking. Of course, I mention BNI. I don’t do a big sale for BNI but I mention BNI and it’s great branding development for the organization.

As a speaker, I had somebody look at this speaker’s reel that they did for me and had somebody say to me how amazing it is that I achieved this kind of overnight success. Everytime someone says that to me, and I got it when somebody saw this video reel recently, I had to chuckle and say, “Yeah, I am a 20-year overnight success.” It took me 20 years to achieve any kind of success in my life. I really don’t think there is anything- there is always an exception. People say, oh yeah, there is someone who hit it big overnight. Those are the exceptions, not the rule. There are people that it happened to, but they can’t sustain that success.

It’s one of the reasons why people who have won the lottery- how many stories have we heard about people who have won the lottery and then they blow it all. They blow all that money. Why? Because they don’t understand how to manage money. They get this windfall and run it right into the ground.

So sustained success over time, I think, is where most people become successful. Very few people are overnight successes and hang on to that. I know it happens in the moves but I don’t see it happen in real life very much.

I asked for some feedback from members and readers of my blog. I would love to get some feedback on this podcast. Diana said on my blog that success takes years of hard work and patience. There is no such thing as overnight success. I couldn’t agree more.

There were several quotes. One that I had never heard before was by Mark Twain, who was quoted as saying, “It takes me three weeks to prepare a great impromptu speech.” That is so true. I think about that. To do a one-hour keynote, I will put in about 50-60 hours. I am not talking about a presentation where it is a sort of a state of the company presentation. Even then, I would probably put in 30-40 hours. But for a professional keynote presentation, I will put in at least 50-60 hours of work to do what looks like it’s just, you know, winging it- like I’m going off a handful of notes. But there is a lot of practice and a lot of preparation. Most successful people make it look easy, but it comes from a lot of work prior to that.

Another reader said he would love to find where opportunity meets preparation. I have heard that a lot. I really like that one. But one of my favorite things that was shared on this blog video was shared by BJ. BJ Shaw is the National Director in the UAE. He put this saying up about newly planted bamboo. The saying is that the first year it sleeps. The second year it creeps and the third year it leaps. That is so true because bamboo has actually been clocked to grow over 40 inches in a 24-hour period. Over 40 inches. Can you imagine that in a 24-hour period. But that doesn’t happen in the first year. It is after many, many years down the road.

I’d like to say that harder you work, the luckier you get. I think that’s really the secret to success. That is one of the reasons why in BNI I talk about systems and passion and applying these systems and being consistent in what you do. Being there week in and week out. Why do we do it every week? Because it is about building those relationships. And building relationships takes time. You have to be dedicated to it. We talked about this in a previous year’s podcast. You can’t expect to get a ton of business in just a few months. It takes time and ongoing effort if you want to be a success.

I don’t believe in this overnight success stuff. There are very few people I have met who have been overnight successes and have sustained that success over time.

Priscilla:
I think it’s overnight for the people who are experiencing the other person’s success for the first time. So for them, it’s brand new, but for the person who is successful, I think they have to have been working on it for ages.

Ivan:
You bring up a good point. Somebody mentioned that in the blog, too. They said it really is a matter of perspective. You may not have ever heard about this person and all of a sudden, you hear about them and it looks like an overnight success but it really wasn’t. That person was working on it for a long time. And to me, success is about long-term. It’s not about short-term. You may have a short-term success, but can you keep it going? Can you sustain it over a long period of time? That’s where the rubber meets the road and it takes a lot of hard work- to sustain that over a period of time.

So if you have a chance and you’re listening to this podcast, tell us about your ideas of what it takes to be successful. I talk at length in a book that I wrote. It’s one of my favorite books that I did, Masters of Success. If you get a chance, take a look at Masters of Success because it talks about the things that I think it take to become successful in business and in life. Those things include passion, system, goals, vision, being able to deal with adversity, social capital skills. These are the things that you do long and hard and you are going to achieve some success. Share that with us. What do you think that it takes to be successful? We’d like to see it.

Priscilla:
Great. Thank you, Dr. Misner. I really appreciate that. I just have to say that in the music industry, that is where you think you see the overnight success happening, but those people have been studying music for years. But anyhow-

Ivan:
They have. But what about those people that all of a sudden have a big hit. How many one hit wonders are there out there?

Priscilla:
Thousands

Ivan:
There are so many and they can’s sustain it. Even those who have a hit early on in their career- my point is maintaining that is a lot of work. No matter what it is you are talking about, maybe you are looking to get there a little quicker, but maintaining that success is as hard if not harder.

For me personally, it took many, many years to build my business. I see these kids coming out of college expecting to be filthy rich in a year or two. That is the exception, not the rule. It’s long-term commitment to hard work.

Priscilla:
Agreed. Well, great.

Ivan:
Thanks Priscilla.

Priscilla:
Thank you, 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 again for listening. This is Priscilla Rice, and we hope you will join us next week for another exciting episode of The Official BNI Podcast.

This episode is a rebroadcast of Episode 173.

What do you say when someone asks you what you do? You need to be prepared, and you need to have something quick and interesting. You need a Unique Selling Proposition.

Don’t just say “I’m a consultant.” Say “I work with small businesses to help them attract more clients than anyone could possibly handle.”

The Referral Institute’s USP is “We help people work less, make more, and create referrals for life.”

The natural response to a USP like this is to say “How do you do that?”

Your assignment this week is to come up with a USP for your business and share it here in the comments. Then share it with your BNI chapter.

Once you’ve tested your USP, come back and tell us how it worked and whether you changed it for a better effect.

Read the complete transcript on Episode 173.

Brought to you by Networking Now.

Networking vampires are people who aren’t trying to add value, only to make sales. These are the people who use networking events as a form of face-to-face cold calling. They can suck the life out of your networking experience.

So how do you deal with the people who are only out for what they can get from you? Unfortunately, most aren’t open to learning that networking is more like farming than like hunting, so you need to find a way to extricate yourself before the vampire sucks up too much of your time. If you attend events with your spouse, you can pre-arrange a signal so the other person can rescue you.

Read more about networking vampires on Dr. Misner’s business networking blog.

Have you encountered a networking vampire? Leave a comment to tell us what happened and how you handled it.

Brought to you by Networking Now.

Complete Transcript of BNI Podcast Episode 226 -

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:
Well, I am in this week for US member extravaganza winners. We are doing a big trip to San Diego and all the people who won the extravaganza are going to San Diego, and I get a chance to meet them all. So if you are coming, make sure to come on up and say hello and that you listen to this podcast.

Priscilla:
Okay great. What are you going to share with us today?

Ivan:
Today I am going to talk about something kind of fun, the networking vampire. I wrote about this in my blog and I want to talk about some of the comments that people made. The blog is businessnetworking.com, so if you have a chance, go drop by and look at the blog that I do. Someone recently used the expression that I really got a good kick out of. It really resonated with me. She said that she met someone and that this guy was a networking vampire. He just sucked the life right out of you and would take all the business that he could get. He would take whatever you were willing to give him and drain it out of you and then move on to the next person.

I talk about networking being more about farming than it is about hunting. Total networking hunter, but she used the expression, networking vampire. I got a kick out of it and I did this blog and got a lot of responses from people. I wanted to talk about some of those responses and then you and I can chat about whether you have had any experiences with this. In my blog, Jason mentioned that he enjoyed it and that he definitely ran into people who were networking vampires. What he did was to try to disengage the conversation as politely as possible, with something like, “ Nice meeting you. I’ve set a goal of meeting X number of people today, so it was a pleasure meeting you.” Then move on to the next person. When you find someone like that, it’s basically cold calling and you just move on to the next person.

Erin posted a message that they really try to go into networking events to add value. So when they find people that they can add value to, they work with them, and networking vampires you generally can’t add value to because they are just trying to make a sale.

There is a really good posting about Jeff where they talk about having a gentleman from a consulting company come into BNI and use the BNI meeting to develop referrals for his lead service. He had a couple meetings and tried to do this hard sell on all the people. He did all these meeting just to do basically face to face cold calling. He tried to meet people and close deals without building any kind of trust or relationship.

There is one I really love from Allen Buchanan. He has been in our podcast with BNI. He said that he goes to networking events with his wife. I love this because I do this. When one of them sees that the other is in a tractor beam, as he says, with a networking vampire and they are being drawn in, they have a signal that they give one another. They will do whatever it is, touch their nose, pull their ear – I noticed he never said what that signal is. When I see him next time, I’ll be looking for a signal . When that signal is given, the other one approaches and rescues them by saying, “Honey, I am sorry to interrupt you, but there is someone who has to meet you and they are leaving soon.” And pull them away. I love that technique with someone who is a networking vampire.

There were several people. Bob was one of them. He said, “When somebody comes up who wants to just get everything they can from me, I try to redirect them and educate them.” Those are my words, not necessarily Bob’s. Do a little bit of networking education. Several people said that. I say good luck to that. Generally speaking, these people are not prepared to be educated. They have a one track mind and that is to close deals. Unsolicited advice is rarely taken. I don’t find these people generally in a mindset that they are willing to take suggestions and recommendations.

There was one other comment that I wanted to share from Terrance. I met Terrance. He does a great sculpture with soundwaves. He did the soundwaves of me doing givers gain. He’s got a sculpture for it. So Terrance, if you are listening to this podcast, put your website up here on this podcast. It’s a 3-D acrylic thing, really beautiful. Terrance came up with a term that he liked better than vampires, who drain all the blood. He said most people don’t do that. They just take what they can and move on. He had another term called networking mosquito. They’re annoying as heck. They flutter around. They take what they need and move on to the next person. That is probably as good or better a term than networking vampire.

So have you run across any networking vampires or mosquitos.

Priscilla:
Let me ask if you would consider this person a vampire or a mosquito. It was a member who joined our group and he did more one on ones than anybody else we ever had. He must have done over 40 and then he left the group. It was kind of interesting. Then he left the group. Is that a vampire? I was very curious.

Ivan:
It’s hard to say. It’s quite possible. It’s one of two situations as a rule. Either he was just there from the very beginning to get what he could and move on, so he met with everybody to get what he could in referrals and then once he met with everybody, he decided he was going to go network someplace else. That would absolutely be a networking vampire. Or he could have possibly not understood that it just takes time and the one to ones are a great way to help expedite it, but I think you said he was a member for like 4 or 5 months. It’s just not enough time. We have have hard data to show that for most of us, not all, it takes 6 months to a year to start generating the kind of referrals that you would like to get out of a networking group.

As a matter of fact, as part of my doctoral dissertation, we found that people who were in two years, compared to one year, substantially more referrals. Not only the quantity of referrals but the quality of referrals given that second year compared to that first year. Why is that? It’s all about trust. When you give a referral, you give a piece of your reputation away.

You told me off air what the company was. I know that company. Nice company. They have a great product, but it was expensive. You don’t just refer that to anybody. So you know, you have to find the right person and make sure that this representative is a good representative and that they are going to do a good job. It takes a little bit of time. So yes, either a networking vampire or he just didn’t understand the concept of networking being more about farming versus hunting.

Priscilla:
I think you’re right. Well, great. Thank you so much.

Ivan:
That’s all I have for today, Priscilla. If you are listening to this podcast, we would love to hear your stories of networking vampires that you’ve met. How did you handle it? How did you do? Not everybody out there is a networking vampire. I’m telling you. We have a lot of BNI members who are out there to give business. But we do run into people and we certainly run into people in other networking organizations. So tell us your stories on this podcast. Thanks Priscilla.

Priscilla:
Okay. You are so welcome. 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.

LinkedIn is the top site for online business networking. There’s an official BNI group there, where members can share ideas with each other.

Here are some ways you can get more out of LinkedIn.

1. Connect with more people through your second and third level connections.
2. Participate in groups, which allow you to communicate with people you aren’t directly connected to.
3. Capitalize on the search engine optimization value of LinkedIn in your profile
4. Connect LinkedIn with Twitter for cross-promotion.
5. Build and enhance your credibility with recommendations, publications, and work history.

Brought to you by Networking Now.

Complete Transcript of BNI Podcast Episode 225 -

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:
I am doing great and I am actually back in town this week. I travel a lot but this week I actually get to be here at BNI headquarters.

Priscilla:
That’s great. What are you sharing with us?

Ivan:
Today I am going to talk about five tips for getting the most out of LinkedIn. I have said for a long time that social media and BNI- it’s not an either or. It’s and. Being active in online networking, there is a lot of value to that. I am a fan. I am also obviously a fan of face to face networking. I talk a lot about face to face networking, so today, I thought I’d talk about online networking, particularly LinkedIn.

If any of you out there have any lingering thoughts that social media is kind of a fad, you want to let those go- especially in light of LinkedIn’s IPO, where they had a valuation of $4.3 billion USD. It’s just amazing. When an IPO says- well, you know, a public offering. So they are here to stay.

I have been following the development of online business networking for some years, particularly the inception of some sites like ecademy.com, which is one of my favorite online sites. It’s based out of Europe. I know the founders there really well. LinkedIn, which I am going to talk about today. Of course, Facebook and Twitter. There area lot of competitors out there to LinkedIn. It’s certainly for now, at the top of the sites devoted primarily to online business networking.

I use a variety of social networks to interact with colleagues and friends, but LinkedIn has some features that I think are really strong. A lot of my members use LinkedIn, so I wanted to talk about that. LinkedIn has an official BNI group. And I think it’s a great way for BNI members to stay in touch. We recently had a call about BNI Connect. Obviously, BNI Connect is a great way for members to stay in touch. LinkedIn is another and I do recommend it. Sometimes a person gets in that 500+ connections category and then they don’t know what to do. They have a lot of connections. Now what do I do?

Here are five tips that I want to give people. One is connecting with more people. I have spoken to countless entrepreneurs who have increased their business because of connections they were able to make on LinkedIn. With the ability to view detailed profiles, which is what we do with BNI Connetc, and the ability meet via a shared acquaintance and then to be able to post updates about one’s business or career- these are things that are really valuable and important. I think it is something that LinkedIn offers that members should take advantage of.

LinkedIn is also known as a source for job seekers and recruiters. I think that’s probably one of its biggest advantages and opportunities. Most of my BNI members have a job, so they are not looking for anything else, but you might have friends or associates who are looking for jobs. Or you might be looking to hire somebody. LinkedIn is well-known as a great website for job seekers. As an employer, that might be of value to you. Or if you have friends who are looking for jobs, clearly that would be of value to you.

So the first is connecting with more people. The second is participating in groups. LinkedIn’s groups features a wonderful way to meet others with a shared affinity, whether it is a cause, an employer, an organization like BNI- BNI has an official group on LinkedIn. Being an official member of the same group as someone else removes the barrier that LinkedIn ordinarily imposes, that you have to personally know someone to send a message or invite them to connect. This gives you a way to communicate with people.

I am on several groups in LinkedIn and I have found it invaluable, particularly as an educational element to talk about different topics. LinedkIn’s group feature might be its most valuable feature, especially when it is used effectively to build connections, participate in a group by asking questions, suggesting topics or recommending another member’s answers is a way to build a more personal connection. I see this as a thing that as BNI Connect grows and grows and grows, we are going to do more of what LinkedIn is doing but within that walled garden where it’s only BNI members mentoring and supporting each other.

Again it’s not either or. Don’t do one and not the other. I think both are great and have opportunities. Something that I recommend is capitalizing on the search engine optimization. LinkedIn profiles show up high in search results. The more links you have, the higher up a profile might show in the search engine results. Obviously, search engine results- if you have a BNI member who is a social media expert, talk to them. BNI allows you to incorporate very important links: to your websites, blog- when you incorporate these things to your profile, it not only builds your profile link, but it adds to your site. I use that feature to highlight my blog, businessnetworking.com. So I do a lot of promotion as well with my blog.

The fourth thing is tying that with a Twitter connection. LinkedIn easily dovetails with Twitter. Indeed, you can really integrate with Twitter and with several social networks using Twitter’s programming social interfaces. I cross promote content that I have written across various social networking accounts. Every article I write can be seamlessly shared in Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn. You can even have an article about your local BNI group. What a great way to promote that in LinkedIn. Typing your twitter account into your LinkedIn profile allows you to connect your Twitter profile easily through LinkedIn.

One more. Building and enhancing credibility could very well be one of the first places that some people who don’t know you outside of BNI may look at to determine a little bit about you and get your business profile, which is again, one of the things that we talked about with BNI Connect recently. Finish your profile so people can find out about you. But LinkedIn allows a professional to showcase their works, their publications, recommendations from other LinkedIn users, company affiliations, work history, etc.

So the more you can have about yourself online, the more credibility that you have in business. There is really, I think, a lot of value in that. So the five things that I recommend for getting the most out of LinkedIn- and many of these overlap into other social media networking including BNI Connect are:
connecting with more people, participating in the groups, capitalizing on search engine optimization, tying in with a Twitter account and building and enhancing your credibility. I think these five things will help our members get more exposure though LinkedIn. Of course, when you are on there, you should put that you are a member of a local BNI chapter. That would be great to see more and more people do that.

So that is what I’ve got for today, Priscilla. Are you on LinkedIn?

Priscilla:
Yes, yes. I’m on LinkedIn. I read your article on this topic and I did something that I hadn’t done before., which is there is press release that came out today in SF Gate, which is a San Francisco Chronicle website, about the studio and one of my clients. I posted it on LinkedIn, which I had never done before. That was kind of cool. Anyway, I see the value of it and I appreciate that you pointed out all of these different tips for us.

Ivan:
I talk about in networking that it’s really a multitouch program. You have to connect with people in many different ways and this is one of the ways that I think is valuable. I have a LinkedIn profile. I recommend it to others. It, along with other forms of connecting and building credibility, can help other people build a powerful personal network. Thanks Priscilla.

Priscilla:
Okay. Thank you, Ivan. 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.