During your first few days at a new job, you spend plenty of time learning about the business of your new employers, meeting lots of new people, and diving into how things get done currently in your new department. And that’s when you start to learn about how things were before you got there.
One of the most valuable and often ignored assets any business professional has is their network of personal contacts. If you keep an organized list of contacts, you’ll be able to effectively and efficiently build and deepen your relationships, ask for referrals, or simply keep in touch.
Most of us are familiar with the BNI expression 'people do business with people they know, like and trust'… what few people realize, however, is that trust takes a combination of factors to develop. Still, it may be short-circuited with "liking." A study by Stetson...
If anyone in the room owns a business with staff, you have likely experienced “leaky bucket” syndrome where we train our team only to find a few weeks later they’ve forgotten the training. We have to keep topping off the bucket!
BNI is notorious for acronyms, and one of my favorites is the CEU, or “continuing education unit.” What exactly is it? When you joined, you might remember some discussion about how BNI is big on education and helping you improve your business, and giving you the...
A timely follow-up can mean the difference between closing a sale and hearing that they hired someone else before you got around to it. Use this hack to never forget to follow-up ever again.
As you know, visitors are the lifeblood of BNI. Natural attrition means 20% of members leave due to factors outside of the chapter's control. Visitors provide the possibility of new members to maintain and grow the chapter. On average, visitors spend $1,000 on...
A steady stream of visitors is necessary to keep a chapter healthy and growing. But we don't need to invite visitors just for chapter growth. Whether they join or not, visitors contribute to your growing network of business partners, potential referrers, and even new...
When we look at the overall levels of member engagement in terms of attendance, one to ones, referrals, and visitors, generally, the weakest area is inviting visitors. The irony of this is that we were all visitors to a BNI meeting at some point. So, we know that...
During business networking meetings, such as BNI or Chambers of Commerce, you will have one minute or less (usually less) to do your weekly presentation (in BNI) or a round of introductions (Chambers and other networking events). This “commercial” is your chance to...