BNI SuccessNet will be 25 years old in 2010. The newsletter started just a few months after BNI itself was founded. The online version started about 8 years ago.

If you’re anywhere near a computer, go to www.BNIsuccessnet.com. You can subscribe to get an e-mail notification when the month’s edition appears. We will not sell or rent your contact information, and we won’t spam you ourselves, either.

Each issue’s regular segments are listed in the left sidebar:

• From the Founder
• Across the Globe
• Art of Networking
• BNI in the News
• BNI Recommends
• Breaking News
• My BNI Story
• To the Next Level
• Words of Wisdom

If you don’t have time to read an article, you can print it out and bring it with you to read later—maybe with your BNI chapter.

Brought to you by Networking Now.

Complete Transcription of BNI Podcast Episode 129 -

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

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

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

Ivan:
Doing great, and this week I’m at the International Conference for BNI, which this year is in Long Beach. We’ve done a number of them here. International Conferences are great. It’s like going to a United Nations meeting, because we have flags from all over the world. It’s really exciting. If BNI members ever want to come to the International Conference, they are welcome to come. We have a Member’s Day every year, and the International Conferences are always in November and always in Southern California somewhere, so just take a look at our Web site at BNI.com or e-mail us and ask for information on the Member’s Day, and we’d love to have BNI members coming to this conference. We get hundreds who do come, and we’d love to have more.

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

Ivan:
I’m going to give a tour today. Are you ready to take a tour with me?

Priscilla:
Absolutely! Would love to.

Ivan:
We’re going to take a tour of SuccessNet Online.

Priscilla:
Okay.

Ivan:
SuccessNet is coming up on its 25th anniversary. In 2010, the organization will be 25 years old, and SuccessNet is 25 years old.

Priscilla:
Wow!

Ivan:
We started doing the newsletter literally within months after BNI started. It started as a quarterly newsletter. Then it went to being bi-monthly, and now we have a monthly newsletter. And about eight years ago or so, we went to an online newsletter so that we can get the information out quickly, and that’s worked out really well. For members listening, if you’re anywhere near a computer, go to BNISuccessNet.com; that’s BNISuccessNet.com, and that’s our monthly newsletter. If you’re not getting a subscription to the monthly newsletter, you’ll see on the right-hand side, it says “Subscribe.” Just put in your e-mail address and your name, and you’ll get every month, on the first Wednesday of every month, you’ll get an e-mail, a simple e-mail that says, “SuccessNet, the new edition has come out. Click here to go read it.”

Listen carefully, and I’m recording this, so this is out on the airwaves. We will not sell that list to anybody, and we won’t give that list away to anybody. And you won’t be spammed by us off of SuccessNet. We do not sell the list, give the list away, or spam people. We send one e-mail out a month that says “Here’s the newsletter.” In the ten years, eight years or so, that it’s been online, we have only sent three other e-mails, and all of those were for things like 9/11 and the tsunami in Asia where the Foundation did some big project, and so we sent out an e-mail. Literally, three e-mails in addition to the monthly e-mails in the last eight years have been sent out, so you’re not going to get spammed by us, and we don’t send the list.

It’s really important for BNI members to come to this site. I want to kind of share some of the things that are on there, Priscilla, I think that are of value to BNI members.

Priscilla:
Great!

Ivan:
Starting with – every month, there’s an article from the founder. Each month I talk about – on the left-hand side, you’ll see the categories. I do something every month, an article about networking. I try to integrate some of the things that are going on in my life and with BNI into some interesting stories about networking.

But the next category is Across the Globe, and that’s a really interesting category. So if you go to BNISuccessNet.com, and on the left-hand side, click on Across the Globe. If you ever wonder just how international this organization is, just look there. I’m looking at this month’s edition, and I’m seeing things from Australia, from Japan, from South Africa, from the United States, United Kingdom, Israel, France, Germany, so many different countries.

And if you have something that’s going on exciting in your chapter or your region, this is the place to go. And to send this information to SuccessNet, there’s a place where you can submit requests. You go down to Contact the Editors, and you can send information in. We publish a lot of stuff from all over the world.

The next item is the Art of Networking. And here’s some great content from oftentimes BNI members and directors, but we also get outside experts on networking to submit pieces from time to time, that really is all about networking. So you know that in this section, in Ask the Founder, you’re going to always get articles about networking.

The next one is BNI in the News. So if your chapter or your region has been in the news, you want to send that to us, and we put it up here. I’m, again, looking at a recent issue, and here’s a magazine that we were in, two magazines we were in, a television show that I was on. So here’s some great stuff for people to kind of stay in touch with what’s going on in terms of the PR efforts.

Then the next one is BNI Recommends. If there’s any books – we get asked to review books; I get asked to endorse books a lot, and we don’t talk much about the books on these podcasts that I’ve endorsed, we did so in the last two podcasts, but here’s the place where, if you’re ever wondering, “What kind of books does Ivan recommend,” go to BNI Recommends, and you’ll see a lot of material from our strategic alliance partners and from books I have read that I recommend on that site, BNI Recommends.

Here’s probably the most important category, My BNI Story. It’s the next category here, My BNI Story. There’s some powerful stories here. If you want to remind yourself why you’re in this organization, go to My BNI Story. I’m looking at three right here in front of me. There just so powerful. One is from David Steiner; I think he’s in – no, he’s in Manhattan. He’s been president of a chapter of 57 members. He said he gets overwhelming majority of his business through BNI. He started a cleaning business in the middle of the recession, and he’s successful in these times with a new business because of BNI.

Here’s one from – I’m not even going to try Steve’s last name. In the myriad of referral chapter, he says that he joined BNI in October of ’06, and he gets 90 percent of his business from BNI.

And just one last one. Springfield, Illinois, Michael Vaughn. “I love this because” – he talks about the podcasts, Priscilla, podcast number 104.

Priscilla:
Oh, really?!

Ivan:
And how he did what podcast number 104 talked about, writing a letter to get referrals for your chapter members and position yourself as the resource. And he said that it worked out great, and he tells BNI members how it worked out and why it worked out.

And so what I’m recommending is go to BNISuccessNet Online, take a loot at My BNI Story, and you’re going to see how other members have used the ideas that we talk about in the newsletters, in the books, and, of course, on the podcasts to help them achieve success.

Last two sections. To the Next Level is really articles that are about building your business either through networking or other business topics. And the last one is Words of Wisdom, is the last section of SuccessNet, and that’s a column written by Brian Tracy, a good friend of mine and friend of BNI’s. And Brian, every month, submits an article for BNI, and it’s called Words of Wisdom from Brian Tracy.

So SuccessNet Online, please take a few minutes, go there, and look at the content, each and every issue, probably between 30 and 40 pages of content. This is one of the ways you can immerse and engage in a culture of learning for BNI.

Priscilla:
Well, that’s great! Thank you so much.

Ivan:
Thank you, Priscilla. That’s all for this week.

Priscilla:
Okay. I’m going to be checking that out.

Ivan:
You promise?

Priscilla:
I do promise. I’m gong to go right there and look at it.

Ivan:
I hope all the members do that as well.

Priscilla:
I am a subscriber; I just – you know how it is, sometimes you don’t always read everything that comes to you.

Ivan:
Sure. And I get that. My advice is when you get that subscription next month, not just to you, but to all the BNI members, just click on the one topic, because there will just be a list of topics, here’s some topics, click on the one topic that you think you may have interest in, take a look at it, and if you don’t have time to read it, print it out. There’s a section there that you can just print that article. Print that out so that you can go to it later and use it to help you improve your game in BNI.

Priscilla:
Okay, I’ll do that.

Ivan:
Thanks.

Priscilla:
Okay. Thank you, Dr. Misner.

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

This week Dr. Misner continues his discussion with Dr. Mark Goulston, author of Just Listen.

The topic for this week is how to take listening from being transactional to being transformational. To do this, you need to get them to uncross their arms—literally and figuratively—by getting them to talk about their passion.

One question you can ask is “Imagine you wake up five years from now and life is perfect. What do you see in your career? What are you doing?” That conversation can transport people into a future that they’ve never thought about. It’s amazing how you will bond with that person.

That’s the kind of question that would be perfect for a one-to-one in BNI.

For some great free resources, including questions to ask in order to delegate more effectively, visit JustListentheBook.com.

Brought to you by Networking Now.

Complete Transcription of BNI Podcast Episode 128 -

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

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

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

Ivan:
Hi, Priscilla. I’m doing great. This week I’m in Michigan. I’m doing presentations throughout Michigan. I love visiting this region of BNI. It has hundreds of BNI chapters throughout Michigan. BNI has hundreds of chapters and quite a few members. As a matter of fact, you’ll love this, if Michigan were a country for BNI, Michigan would be the third largest country for the BNI program.

Priscilla:
Wow! That’s interesting.

Ivan:
It’s huge. They bleed burgundy here in Michigan. It’s really a pleasure to be here speaking to a lot of the BNI members. And we’ve done something unusual for this podcast. We’ve carried over the speaker that we had, the guest that we had last week into this week. A good friend of mine, Dr. Mark Goulston. Mark is a psychiatrist and business consultant. He’s been an FBI and police hostage negotiator. And we were talking about his book that just came out recently, within the last month, called Just Listen, and the Web site for the book is JustListenTheBook.com. Lots of free resources there for BNI members. I don’t promote a lot of books on the podcasts, but I really loved this book, and Mark is a good friend. We talked last week about some material from the book.

But there is something that I really wanted to talk about, didn’t get a chance to last week, and that was the idea of how you take listening from being transactional to transformational, which is, in a way, a lot of what we try to do in BNI, to try to take the relationships from being transactional to transformational.

And you’ve got a great story for that, Mark. Do you want to share that with us?

Mark:
Absolutely. I was actually giving a talk to a networking organization, not as well run and I don’t think as productive as BNI. And what I did is I had people introduce themselves to each other, and I said, “Pair up with someone that you don’t know, so this will be very good for the one-to-ones that BNI suggests after meetings. And introduce yourself, what do you do, and who do you do it for, maybe when you do it, etc., etc.” And people did that, and I gave them five minutes to do that and made sure that they changed after two-and-a-half minutes.

And then I said, “I’d like you to try something else. I would like you now to each take the same two-and-a-half minutes and talk about the benefits that your service or product provided to a customer or client. So tell a story of something that totally made that person’s life better and you were associated with by offering them your services or product.”

So what happened is the conversation was totally different, much more animated, much more passionate, much less selling. It was really tough getting them to let go of the conversation and come back to my talk. And afterwards, I said, “What did you notice?”

And they said, “Geez, we didn’t feel like we were selling. We felt more spontaneous. We felt more comfortable. We felt closer.”

And I said, “Well, I noticed that, but I noticed something else. And what I noticed is that you all used your hands a lot more. The reason you used your hands is because the passion you felt when you were talking from the value of your service or product instead of trying to sell people, the passion you felt was so strong that the words were not enough to communicate it, and so you started to use your hands to do that.”

So here’s the take-all, because I’m a neuroscientist. When you’re dealing with skeptical clients or customers or maybe other networkers, when they’re feeling skeptical, their arms are crossed in their mind, and if you can get them to actually uncross their arms literally in front of you to communicate with their arms and hands as well as their words, they will uncross their arms and hands in their mind and be open to you. And you can do that by asking something they’re passionate about or something that they’re really scared about. So you can take either route. The key is as you begin to feel this and you feel them uncrossing their arms, you actually feel them opening up to you, the key is to be of service to them, to actually give to get and focus much more on the giving whether you get or not. As opposed to opening them up and then doing a bait-and-switch or maneuvering them, which I think is out of integrity and not in alignment, actually, with the spirit of BNI. But it’s amazing how it transformed the conversation.

And regarding transformation versus transactional, transactional conversations are eye to eye, toe to toe, and what you have is commodity versus commodity, and people will try and cheap date you and will decide things on price. When you can ask people questions that cause them to break the conversation and look up to the ceiling because they want to think more about what you’ve asked them, when they come down with their eyes to look at you again, you’re not in a transaction anymore; it’s been transformed into a relationship, because you have added relating to the conversation.

Ivan:
I think that’s really powerful. A lot of what we try to teach is that when you come to a BNI meeting and you’re telling people what you do, you’re not trying to close a sale; you’re trying to train a referral team, you’re trying to teach them about what you do. And that, to me, is not transactional. We talk about transactional networking to be a sort of coin operated networking, where you put the coin in and you expect results right now.

But transformational networking is really about going deep and building that relationship. Wouldn’t you agree?

Mark:
Absolutely. And I think building on that, I think a good thing to also get from people that go with passion, but find out what their core of excellence is, because when I discover what people’s core of excellence is, I feel it behooves me to go out to people, and the way I’ll make a referral is I’ll say, “Have you ever met someone who is so excellent in their service or product when you experience it that you just had to tell others?”

And everyone says yes.

I said, “Well, I need to tell you about someone I just met, what they do, and what they did for me so that you can experience it on your own.”

And I think when people can pause and talk about their core of excellence, what you’ll see happen is instead of being a sales mode, you’ll see confidence, you’ll see them actually re-experience their competence so they’ll feel much better. It will be a wonderful conversation, and then you can actually follow it up in that way I just suggested.

Ivan:
You know, in BNI, when we do the one-to-ones, and what you’re suggesting here would be something great to try out on the one-to-ones to see how they’re responding to what you have to say. We do what we call the GAINS Exchange, where people share their Goals, their Accomplishments, their Interests, their Networks, and their Skills, as a way of getting them to open up about – a little bit of personal information about themselves rather than transactional, “Hey, here’s how you can give me a referral.” And we find that going a little bit deeper and sharing with each other a little bit more about each other that it creates connections for people to build upon.

Have you seen that with your networking efforts?

Mark:
Not as much as what you do. You deserve – you especially, Ivan; you’ve created an amazing organization that’s really about productivity and results, but it’s also about building a community. You have a caring community, but one of the things they want to share is help each other be successful.

One of the questions I’ll ask people, by the way, to deepen the value is – sometimes people who are in transactional professions just see themselves going and improving their business by just doing more and bigger deals. If you ask someone this question, “I would like you to imagine that in five years from now and you wake up, it’s a Monday morning, and life is perfect. What do you see in your career? What are you doing?”

And what’s fascinating is a lot of time, people will, instead of breaking from the future they’re living into now, which they may not be that keen about other than making more money, that kind of conversation will transport them into a future that they’ve never thought about, like “Well, you know what I’d like to see? I’d like to see myself doing this, which is very different than what I’m doing now.” And then if you help them work backwards. “Well, what would be the steps between now and then to make that future a reality?”

Talk about transforming a conversation from transactional, it’s amazing how you will bond with that person.

Ivan:
Great example. And these kinds of questions, I think, are perfect for the one-to-ones, and I urge members listening to this podcast to try out some of the things that Mark’s been talking about here.

And, Mark, you’ve got a Web site, JustListenTheBook.com, that has a ton of free resources. Do you want to give my members a couple of the examples of the free resources they can get from your Web site?

Mark:
Well, there’s a list of things called Two Questions that are exclusive to the site, and I think in a prior podcast, we talked about two questions to gain people’s respect and have them treat you better. One of the other two questions is how to delegate more effectively, and I need to give credit to a friend of mine, Stan Barkey, who is a senior executive at State Farm for many years, and he said whenever you’re delegating something, the first question is to tell people what you want them to do; but then instead of saying, “Do you understand?” you said, “What do you understand that I’ve asked you to do, and why it’s important for us to do that?” When you do that, they feel, actually, more than a function.

But the second question, which he feels is the best question he’s ever asked in his career, is, you said, “In the event that, for any reason, you’re not able to do what you just agreed to, how do you want me to react to you? If what I care most about is just getting the work done, I have no interest in being punitive, and all that kind of stuff, but going forward, what shall I do?”

And that’s what I talk about a lot in the book, Just Listen; if you can talk about the future that nobody has messed up yet, it’s amazing how open people are, whereas if you talk about something that’s already happened, even in the best of conversations, you’re going to get people that are defensive, justifying their position. And so I thought that was amazing advice when you’re delegating to someone. And then you repeat it back to them, “So what you’ve said is, if you don’t follow through, what you’d like me to do is to never tell you about it in front of other people, but just take you into the office and be firm with you and tell you it needs to be done by today, etc.” Then you repeat it back to them and you wait for them to get what I call the confirmatory yes. And when they say yes, then you have your way of dealing with them instead of fuming about them when they drop the ball.

Ivan:
Well, Mark, great content. Your book called Just Listen, our members can go there, to JustListenTheBook.com. I highly recommend this book and free resources at the Web site. Dr. Mark Goulston, thank you so much for being on two of my podcasts. You’re the first guest back to back like that, I think, so thank you so much.

Mark:
Thank you, Ivan.

Ivan:
Back to you, Priscilla.

Priscilla:
Okay. Thank you both. That was great.

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

This week Dr. Misner talks to Mark Goulston, MD, the author of Just Listen.

Here are some of the tips Dr. Goulston offers about listening:

• Listening reduces anxiety—for the listener as well as the speaker.
• Instead of interrupting, say “Tell me more about that.” You’ll get a better result.
• World-class listeners care less about being right than about helping people.
• Not managing your own anxiety makes it hard to listen—and hard for people to listen to you.
• Instead of interrogating people, invite them into a conversation by letting them fill in the blanks in statements.

You can sign up to get free resources, including the first chapter of the book and the Two Questions series at http://www.justlistenthebook.com/resources/.

Tune in next week for a second interview with Mark Goulston.

Brought to you by Networking Now.

Complete Transcription of BNI Podcast Episode 127 -

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

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

Hello, Ivan. How are you? And who do you have with us today?

Ivan:
I’m doing great, Priscilla. Thank you very much, and I have a good friend of mine, Dr. Mark Goulston. Mark is a psychiatrist, business consultant, executive coach, and, believe it or not, an FBI and police hostage negotiator. He’s done a number of best selling books. And Mark and I met each other a little over a year ago at a very unusual event, a storytelling event, and have gotten to be friends and really love his latest book called Just Listen. And I just want to welcome Mark to the podcast.

Dr. Goulston, great to have you.

Mark:
Well, glad to be hear, and before we get started, something I want you to listen to and something that I think people on the call can use as long as they use it earnestly. And it’s called the Power Thank You. And the Power Thank You has three parts, and it’s a way of helping people actually feel how much you are grateful to them in this “everyone feels taken for granted” world. And the three parts are:

Thank someone specifically for what they did or maybe a negative thing that they refrained from doing, the effort it took for them to do that, and what it personally means to you. So, Ivan and BNI, here it goes. You reserved time for me to do a podcast especially, really, within a couple weeks of the release of my new book, Just Listen. So that’s very special in terms of getting the word out. In terms of the effort it took, I think that you’re protective of your audience. You want to give them things that are valuable, and so you actually trust that I’ll be able to serve your audience as opposed to wasting their valuable time. And then the third thing, what it personally means to me is, when you’re pursuing ideas and you’re forging new journeys in your life, you hope they’ll help people, but they’re kind of like when you give birth to a baby; you hope it’s intelligent and beautiful, but you just don’t know. And so just the fact that you have this confidence in me really empowers me and emboldens me to keep doing that. So use those power thank you’s in your life, and it will only enhance it.

Ivan:
And it’s something, I think, perfect for a BNI member, because we really talk a lot about the importance of positive reinforcement in the relationships, and I appreciate your comments. Thank you very much. You’re right, the content in these podcasts has to really serve BNI members, and I love your material, and I’m sure that they will feel the same way after they get exposed to it.

So if you don’t mind, let me jump in and ask you, I think, a really good opening question, and that is, why do you thinks it’s so important to listen in order to build a powerful personal network? One of the things I say is that a good networker has two good ears and one mouth, and uses them both proportionately. But you really talk about an active listening process, not just listening, but really connecting with people.

Mark:
Well, I think the reason being is that, let’s face it, we’re all anxious, and we’re getting even more so, given the current financial climate. And whenever people are anxious, they don’t listen, they shut down, and the problem is anxiety is contagious. And so when you’re coming from anxiety and desperately wanting to make a sale, it triggers anxiety in the other person. And if you ask yourself, “What are two things that lessen anxiety?” Well, when you are listened to, when someone lets you get something off your chest and then doesn’t get impatient with you and doesn’t shut you down, that reduces your anxiety when people listen and care. The second thing is, when you can let go of yourself and being preoccupied and listen to your customer or client for what’s really important to them and serving them, that will not only lessen their anxiety, but it will lessen your anxiety, because instead of coming from a position of selling and being afraid that you’ll lose the sale, you actually come from a position of serving them.

If people go to JustListenTheBook.com, there’s something called Free Resources. This is actually a video clip. It’s kind of funny. I talk about meeting with the CO, who actually was really right on target and needing my services. And what I talk about in the video clip is that there were ten times when I wanted to interrupt him to say something utterly brilliant, but that wouldn’t have served him at all. It would have just been to impress him. And I had this inner conflict, and I can see you chuckling, Ivan, as a kindred spirit, and I said to myself, “Ooh, if I don’t tell him this brilliant thing, I’m going to lose it, even if it ruins the conversation.” And on ten occasions, at the moment I wanted to interrupt him, instead of doing that, I said, “Hey, tell me more about what you just said.”

What was fascinating is every time I said that, it’s almost like he picked up that I was just about to compete with him and chose not to; he went deeper into the conversation and deeper and deeper about what he really needed. And then at the end of those ten times, I just reviewed what he said, and I said, “Is that right?”

And he said, “Yes.” And then he looked at me, and he said, “When can you start?”

Ivan:
Nice, nice. Well done. I wanted to interrupt you two or three times myself, so I’m not going to do that.

Mark:
Okay.

Ivan:
Let me ask you a question. What distinguishes world class listeners from the average listener out there?

Mark:
Well, I think world class listeners realize that they can’t succeed by themselves, and so world class listeners have less of a need to be right and less of a need to win than to move the process of the conversation forward to something that has a mutually satisfying, productive end. So I think they come from a position of literally caring instead of winning, and they’ve had enough experiences that caring in the end will help them win.

It’s interesting. I wanted to call the book Just Care, because a number of people said, “You know, Mark, this isn’t just a book about listening; it’s a book about caring.” And then my publisher said, “Hey, Mark, if you write Just Care, there’s a lot of people who don’t care, and they’re not going to read it. You might be able to get in under the radar if you say Just Listen, and what people will discover in your book is, they’ll discover ways to actually show caring, not only in their business but in their personal life. What they’re going to actually experience is greater success, greater success and fulfillment and satisfaction, and be able to get to the end of their life and say that was a life well lived.

Ivan:
For the listeners here, we’re talking about Mark’s latest book called Just Listen. The forward was by Keith Ferrazzi. It’s a great book. I have it sitting right in front of me, and I really try to limit the number of books I talk about on these podcasts, because I don’t use these podcasts just to go out and market books. I think this book is perfect for BNI members because it fits our philosophy of Givers Gain, caring, and about the importance of listening.

So the Web site that Mark mentioned was JustListenTheBook.com, and there’s a lot of free stuff of there that our members can go to.

We’re running out of time, and I’ve got so many questions for you, Mark. Can you tell me, what do you think are the biggest mistakes that a networker can do regarding listening?

Mark:
Well, I think the biggest mistake is they don’t manage their anxiety, meaning your anxiety causes you to become pushy, causes you to sort of smile insincerely, and causes you to not listen. I think if you can have the experience of getting where the other person is coming from and caring about them when you get there, what you’re going to feel is they’re more likely to listen to you and let you take them to where you’d like them to go.

Ivan:
In your book, you talk about some tips, like the power of hmmm and fill in the blanks or the impossibility question. What are you talking about? I think those were really interesting. I think the members might find them of value.

Mark:
Well, in the interest of time, and then people can certainly look and find more, the fill in the blank one is, when you talk to people, when you ask people a question, even if it’s a question as simple like, “What are your goals,” people get flashbacks of being put on the spot about “What was the capital of North Dakota.” By the way, I was told in a talk it’s Bismarck; I didn’t know that. But people will get a flashback of having been interrogated. And if you change the question from “What are your goals for this year; what are you trying to accomplish” to “Your goals for this year are” and then you invite them with your hand as if to invite them to fill in the sentence with you. What you will feel is a different energy as if you’re inviting them into a conversation with you as opposed to interrogating them, where even though it’s a reasonable question, they’re likely to get defensive.

So in your store, if you’re talking to a customer or client who’s looking around, say, “What you’re looking for today is…” And you’ll see they will naturally fill in what that word is, and then you keep leading with that. “And the reason you’re looking for that today…the reason you were thinking of purchasing that today was…” “Oh, I see.” “And the things that you’re looking for, the qualities that are most important about that service or product to you are…” “Oh, I see that also.”

Can you see how that has a different energy feel than just machine gunning people with questions?

Ivan:
Absolutely. Nice. And I talk a lot about the importance of questions when you’re meeting people. Especially meeting them the first time or you want to go deeper in the relationship, learn how to refer them, and the questions are really, really important. So I love this content.

We’re almost out of time. On the Web site that we mentioned, JustListenTheBook.com, you’ve got a lot of free resources that BNI members can use. Two of them were really intriguing, and I wonder if you could just maybe summarize them quickly. Two questions to gain people’s respect and have them treat you better, and two questions to delegate effectively. The first one, in particular, I think may be relevant to BNI. Do you want to explain that?

Mark:
Yeah, because I’ll tell you, when people trust you, they’ll listen to you, but when people respect you, they’ll trust you and do what you ask them to do. So this is especially helpful in the service business. What you say to the other person is, and you don’t say it out of the gate, but in your conversation, say, “Do I have your permission to step in and protect you from anything or anyone that might do you harm financially?” or whatever service you’re providing.

Most people will say yes; 50% of people will laugh and say, “Thank you.”

And then what you say is, “In the event that the person I most need to protect you from is you, how shall I go about doing that?”

And most people, again, just like you do, because you probably need some protection, Ivan, will say, “Take me aside because I am capable of shooting myself in the foot and all the toes go all over the room. So take me aside because I don’t want to make some of the mistakes I’m capable of making.” And so you repeat that back to them, but can you see the power of that?

Ivan:
I can, absolutely, yeah. No question about that.

Listen, Mark, we’ve gone over time. I’d really like to talk to you more. Can we do a second podcast next week to cover a little bit more material? I particularly want to talk about the transactional versus transformational material you have in the book.

Mark:
Let’s do that. I’d love to do that.

Ivan:
All right. So for the BNI members listening today, we’re going to continue this conversation in our podcast next week.

Mark, thank you so much for coming on.

Dr. Mark Goulston, author of the book Just Listen. I don’t recommend very many books on BNI podcast. I really recommend this. A lot of free resources. Go to JustListenTheBook.com.

Priscilla, back to you. Thank you very much.

Priscilla:
Thank you both very much. That was really interesting. I look forward to next week.

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

A referral relationship is more than just doing business. You need to find common ground on a personal level.

One exercise that can help accomplish this in a BNI chapter is the GAINS Exchange, discussed in Episode 5 of this podcast.

Even though many members are reluctant to do this exercise, it has tremendous results.

Two guys who had barely spoken to each other in their first year in one chapter formed a relationship over their shared interest in soccer and began passing business to each other as a result.

Ivan encourages Priscilla to go back to her BNI chapter and propose a new GAINS Exchange exercise.

See Business by Referral for more on this topic.

Brought to you by Networking Now. Enter “freesixmonths” for a six-month free trial and get access to live teleconferences with Dr. Misner.

Complete Transcription of BNI Podcast Episode 126 -

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

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

Hello, Ivan.

Ivan:
Hi, Priscilla.

Priscilla:
What’s going on? How are you?

Ivan:
I’m doing great. Today we’re going to be talking about, I think, a subject that, when I started BNI, I don’t think I fully understood how important this was.

Priscilla:
Great. What is it you’re going to share with us, then?

Ivan:
Well, the fact that networking is more than just talking business, and when I started BNI, my primary focus was, “Hey, it’s all about business; let’s focus on business.” I mean, even in the introduction of the weekly speaker, I talked about the fact that I trained people to talk about their education, talk about their background, talk about their experience. And I really didn’t suggest that you talk about some of your personal interests. And that, I found over the years, was a mistake. People often think that networking is talking about business and exchanging cards, and that’s definitely part of it, but it’s not all of it.

In a networking group, you should talk about more than just business with people. A referral relationship is more than just, “I do business; you do business; let’s do business.” A much better approach is when you find common ground on a personal level and then make these connections and build business with other people.

I think the longer I’ve been involved in networking, the more I’ve seen the power of those personal interests making connections with others. Networking is really about building those personal relationships, and if you remove the personal from the equation, you limit that amount of business that can happen.

I talk about this at length in a podcast a long time ago. The listeners might want to go back to that podcast. It’s podcast number 5, podcast number 5, 005, and I talk about the gains exchange. One BNI group that I worked with, I introduced the GAINS Exchange before it came out in my book, Business by Referral. The GAINS Exchange is an exercise that’s available in BNI. Any member can get it. It’s in Business by Referral, but go to your director and get the form if you want to try it out. It stands for Goals, Accomplishments, Interests, Networks, and Skills. The idea is that you have people share their personal and professional information about themselves in those areas, Goals, Accomplishments, Interests, Networks, and Skills.

Well, two of the participants, when I tested this out years ago, had not done any business with each other, and they’d been in the chapter for a year, hadn’t done any business with each other, really didn’t make a connection at all. It wasn’t that they didn’t like each other; they just didn’t have anything in common; their businesses were really different. And they found out by doing this GAINS Exchange – which, by the way, they dragged their feet, kicking and screaming into this exercise, did not want to do it. Once they did it, they found out that they were both coaches for their sons’ soccer teams, or football teams, as it’s called in some countries. And they quickly became close friends and started helping each other conduct certain aspects of the soccer practices. And they would share coaching techniques with each other, and eventually, they began to scout other teams for each other, so that they would scout the other team and report back what a team was like.

Guess what? After they started doing this for each other on a personal level, within a few months, they started passing business to each other. They began referring business to each other. Two guys who had barely spoken to each other in the first year, because they had so little in common, ended up doing business with each other because they built a relationship over soccer, over football. Go figure! Who would have thought that? I certainly didn’t. But when I saw that done, that nailed it for me, and I knew that that technique had to be put in Business by Referral, and that’s where it was first introduced, was in Business by Referral.

Priscilla:
Yeah, I think that’s a tremendous tool. I mean, knowing the other person on a personal level is exactly what’s it’s all about, I think.

Ivan:
That’s where you kind of make connections with people. If you can find a common interest and start with that, we can make connections and have a very good chance at turning into business. And I really recommend that BNI members experiment with this. I’ve seen chapters where they’ve had every single member complete a GAINS Exchange and come back to the chapter with 30 copies, or however many members were in the chapter, and hand that out to everybody.

I’ve even seen some chapters that have a running three-ring binder so that when a new member joins, they get a binder of all of the members GAINS Exchange, so they, at a glance, get information about that person’s Goals, Accomplishments, Interests, Networks, and Skills. I’ve even seen where maybe they don’t do it to that level of detail; I’ve seen chapters where that week’s speaker also completes a GAINS Exchange. Besides the speaker information for the secretary/treasurer, they also complete a GAINS Exchange. And the member makes 30 copies, or however many for the members, and passes that out at the beginning of the meeting to say, “Hey, here’s who our speaker is going to be later today. Glance at it so you have a little bit of background about this person when he or she speaks.” And it’s really interesting to see how personal interests, whether it be something like soccer or sewing or cooking or wine or chess or anything, between two people makes a personal connection, which makes them feel closer and more connected, which leads to business.

Priscilla:
That’s totally true. I remember when I had to fill mine out, because that was a requirement of our chapter, it doesn’t seem to be right, but it was when I first joined, and I was so stressed about it.

Ivan:
Why so? Why were you stressed out about it?

Priscilla:
Well, it seemed like it just took forever, and I was just agonizing over the format and putting it together. And I remember I stayed up really late doing it and getting it to print right. And it was just like a job, but it was a good thing. I was glad I’d done it.

Ivan:
Well, certainly, spending time and effort in doing it accurately is important, but I’m a real believer of the concept of – Tom Peters talked about it in In Search of Excellency – do it, fix it, try it. Do it, fix it, try it. Do something, lap it around a little bit, see how it works out in the marketplace, fix it, and then try it again. So take that GAINS Exchange that you write and put it out there, see what kind of response you get from people. And then bring it back in and redo it, hang onto it. Redo it; maybe do it digitally. And then every year or so, you revise it and redistribute it. And as you get it out there and you see what seems to connect with people and what doesn’t, then you emphasize some of those things and try it again.

It’s not a one-of-a-kind of deal; it’s a thing that the chapter should do regularly. So one of the things I’d suggest is go back to your chapter and say, “Hey, we haven’t done this for a while. Let’s listen to this podcast, and then let’s all incorporate the GAINS Exchange in some way that makes sense for us over the next two months.”

Priscilla:
Okay.

Ivan:
All right. So are you going to report back and let me know how that goes in a couple months?

Priscilla:
Okay. I just had an idea where if you had the person next to you with your GAINS Exchange and then they announce to the group some unusual fact or some unusual thing you were involved with, and then you kind of went around the table, that might make it fun.

Ivan:
It does make it fun. I’ve seen that done. I’ve also seen it where members had to do a one-to-one with somebody else, and they gave them two or three weeks to do it. You’ve got to do it one to one; you’ve got to take a half hour, do a one-to-one with somebody else, minimum half hour one-to-one with somebody else. And then, four weeks from now, everybody is going to stand up and they’re going to do a 60 second presentation on the other person and what they really found interesting about them from the GAINS Exchange.

Priscilla:
Okay. There’s a great idea.

Ivan:
Yeah, yeah. I love it. Give them enough time; give them three weeks or so. That gives everybody a chance to meet; they do their one-to-one; and then they meet four weeks from then. And I would stand up and I would say what I had learned that was really interesting about you from what you did in the GAINS Exchange and what I read. It’s a great technique. I highly recommend it, and it’s a great way to implement this concept.

Priscilla:
Okay. I’m going to take that one back.

Ivan:
Okay. And you’re going to report back in a few months as to how it’s gone, right?

Priscilla:
That’s right!

Ivan:
Okay, good.

Priscilla:
All right. Well, thank you, Dr. Misner. I think we’re kind of out of time today.

Ivan:
Yup! I do have a special offer on NetworkingNow.

Priscilla:
Oh, okay.

Ivan:
At the end of all of these podcasts, we talk about NetworkingNow and the downloadables. If you’re a BNI member and you would like to be involved in telebridges with me, every month I do a telebridge called the Networking Café, which is part of the NetworkingNow program. And NetworkingNow has tons of downloadable material, videos, audios, PDFs; there’s even some of my books. And so I’m going to give you a password right now that you can type in this password and get six months free in NetworkingNow, which is worth almost $70.

So the password is – it’s one word – freesixmonths. Spell it out; no number. So it’s F-R-E-E-S-I-X-M-O-N-T-H-S, freesixmonths, no spaces. That’s the password.

So when you go to NetworkingNow, you sign up, you punch that in, and you absolutely, positively, unequivocally will get six months free. And if you want to renew, then you can renew; or you can cancel it at six months, and you’ll never be charged anything.

But you’ll have access to tons of downloadable content, and you’ll get an e-mail from us every month saying, “Here’s when the Networking Café next one is, and you’re welcome to join Ivan, and here’s the subject.”

Priscilla:
And how does that work? I know we’re almost out of time, but what does it mean that you’re on this telebridge?

Ivan:
Well, I do a telebridge on subjects that – imagine that I did this topic that networking is more about talking business, but this is a podcast that is one-way communication. You can post a message, which is great. But what if you had a question? The same with the telebridge is that we open them up; we open up the lines and say, “Okay, what questions do you have?” And so it’s really a dialog with anybody as opposed to just a podcast or a one-way communication. If you have questions, you can chat with me directly on these telebridges which are done through NetworkingNow.

Priscilla:
That sounds great. Okay, well, thank you, Dr. Misner.

Ivan:
Thank you, Priscilla.

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

This week Dr. Misner brings us a great metaphor from a BNI director in South Dakota and a BNI member named Bill:

Networking will never work if you’re here for yourself. You need to take off your bib, put on your apron, and learn to serve other people.

Here are 12 ways to do that.

1. Provide referrals.
2. Make introductions.
3. Arrange a meeting.
4. Invite people to meetings.
5. Endorse people’s products and services.
6. Display their literature in your office.
7. Distribute their information.
8. Announce their events.
9. Nominate people for awards.
10. Follow-up on any referrals they give you.
11. Serve as a sponsor.
12. Publish information.

Brought to you by Networking Now.

Complete Transcription of BNI Podcast Episode 125 -

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

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

Hello, Ivan.

Ivan:
Hi, Priscilla.

Priscilla:
What do you have to share with us today?

Ivan:
Oh, I’ve got a great metaphor. I just love this. A few weeks ago, I received a message from a BNI director in the United States, and it read, “Ivan, I’m working on a chapter kick-off in South Dakota, and I had a salesman named Bill sit through the whole meeting, then not get up to leave when I ended it. And he sat there gazing into space.” He said, “Bill’s a 30-year veteran in the sales business.” And I asked him if I could help him, and he said, “You know, this whole networking thing will never work if I’m here for myself.”

Now, he just sat through, basically, a kick-off introduction, this is what it takes to kick off a successful BNI chapter. And he watches this meeting, and he tells the director, “This networking thing will never work if I’m here for myself. I need to take off my bib and put on my apron and learn to serve these people.”

I thought wow! Wow! If that’s not the concept of Givers Gain, an incredible summary of the concept of Givers Gain, I don’t know what is. Take off your bib and put on your apron. Stop coming to networking events looking for ways to feed yourself and look for ways to help others, to serve others.

Priscilla:
Yeah.

Ivan:
There’s really not much I add to that sentiment. I think truly effective networking is about taking off your bib and putting on your apron. It’s about helping other people succeed through the activities that go along with that process and you build your business and you prosper.

I just want to thank the director and the member. I think it’s an incredible metaphor to live by in BNI.

Priscilla:
I agree, and I was wondering, do you have any ideas on how to implement that?

Ivan:
Absolutely. I’ve written a little bit about ways that others can promote your business. And so let’s flip that on its head. Here are 12 simple ways that you can help other people in their business. I’m going to give you 12 things real quick.

Priscilla:
Okay.

Ivan:
The first, of course, is provide referrals. BNI, that’s really important, is you’ll look for referrals for other people. But there’s more than that.

You can introduce people to prospects. Make introductions to other people, number 2.

Number 3, arrange a meeting, set up a meeting where you’re not just introducing two people via e-mail, which is one way, but you actually set a meeting to connect with these people.

4, invite people to attend meetings with you. That’s a great way. You go to a meeting with somebody else and you promote them. Say, “Here’s my friend. They’re really good at such-and-such.”

Endorse people’s products and services, do a testimonial letter. I do endorsements for books every month. I probably do two or three a month, and I keep doing them because it puts my name out there as an expert, and I think doing endorsements for other people’s products or services is a great way to put your name out there, but also to help put others’.

Display their literature and products in your offices or homes, particularly offices. If you have an opportunity to display other people’s material, I think that’s great.

Distribute their information. If you’re sending out a newsletter, include some information from somebody else.

Make an announcement. If you’re attending meetings or speaking groups and, let’s say, somebody’s got an event going on, promote them. Say, “I’ve got a good friend that’s doing an event locally.”

Here’s an unusual one. Number 9, nominate people for recognition and awards.

Priscilla:
That’s a great one.

Ivan:
Nominate them for recognition and awards. A lot of times there’s local organizations that recognize business people one way or another, and I think that’s a great way. And it could even be nominating for their community service. That’s a great one.

Here’s 10. Make sure to follow up with referrals that have been given to you. You want prospects to be really, really well taken care of. So when somebody gives you a referral, you do a better job for them than you do for anyone else. Believe it or not, that serves them, because when you give a referral, you give a little bit of your reputation away. When you give a good referral, it enhances your reputation. So if somebody decides to give you a referral, you better do a better job than normal; you better to the best you possibly can, because that makes them look good.

Serve as a sponsor, if you have an opportunity. Number 11, serve as a sponsor. If you can fund or sponsor a program for somebody else, I think that’s excellent.

And one more. Publish information. If you write, if you have a newsletter, if you have a blog, do any writing at all, those people that you’ve got a relationship with, make sure to recommend them. Look at BNI SuccessNet. We have a section on SuccessNet that says “BNI Recommends.” Here are products, books, services for people that have supported me, that have supported BNI, and we try to reciprocate and do that same for them through that section.

So there’s more. This is just some real simple ideas that you can apply, 12 simple ideas on how you can take off your bib and put on your apron and serve others more effectively in BNI.

Priscilla:
Those are great. I especially like the idea of giving people recommendations on testimonials. I think they’re so powerful in the meeting. You just can’t say enough about somebody, and they can’t say it about themselves, so I think that’s a great one.

Ivan:
Well, it’s very true, and you bring up a good point. It’s never as effective, you talking about yourself as having somebody else talk about you. It’s one of the reasons why, whenever I do a speaking engagement, I never open up by giving my background. Sometimes organizations say, “Talk a little bit about yourself so we know more about you.” Never, I never ever do that. I have a set bio and somebody else reads that bio, because if somebody else says, “He’s done this; he’s done that; he’s done this,” it’s much more impressive than you talking about yourself.

Priscilla:
Right.

Ivan:
So the idea of an endorsement is, I think, really valuable. You’re right.

Priscilla:
Yeah. Well, great. I think those are wonderful ideas.

Ivan:
I do, too, and I want thank, again, the director from South Dakota and the member, because I think it’s a wonderful metaphor that we can all use, take off your bib and put on your apron. Great concept.

Priscilla:
Okay, thank you, Dr. Misner.

Ivan:
Thank you.

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

Word of mouth marketing is always working. It just may not be working in your favor.

Online networking makes it possible to stay more engaged and guide the conversation. Because of that, you have to participate.

Go to the search engines and set up alerts for your name, your company name, the title of your book or name of your products. That way you’ll know who’s talking about you and you can get in touch with them or respond on your own blog.

If you come across a complaint, a timely offer to fix the problem can turn it into an endorsement.

• Google Alerts
• Yahoo! Alerts

Brought to you by Networking Now.

Complete Transcription of BNI Podcast Episode 124 -

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

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

Hello, Ivan. How are you?

Ivan:
I’m doing great, Priscilla. Thanks.

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

Ivan:
Today’s topic is People Are Talking About You; Are You in the Conversation? And it kind of stems from some material that I originally did in my book, Truth or Delusion?, and I bring up the point that word of mouth marketing is always working. Word of mouth marketing is always working. It must may not be working in your favor. And you may not be getting the kind of word of mouth you’re looking for; it may not be the kind you’re hoping, which is the good kind where people are talking positively about you.

The problem is the negative word of mouth really has legs, and the average dissatisfied customer tells ten times more people, and that’s based on studies that have been done. That was one out of the White House. Office of Consumer Affairs found that people are more likely to talk about you when they’re unhappy than when they’re happy, therefore, you have to get engaged in the process.

And with online opportunities, that’s even more important. It’s especially important to be engaged in conversation with online networking. There you have a little bit more, I don’t want to say control, because you really don’t control what is said, but you have an opportunity to engage more effectively with online networking opportunities. And we’ve talked about and had some guest speakers talking about online communications through blogs and bulletin boards. One of the things I think is really important, you have to stay engaged in that kind of conversation; you need to check out what’s going on and what’s being said about you.

And what made my really start to think about this was a number a years ago, we started getting more and more BNI groups going on LinkedIn and Ecademy, and so I had some directors who were saying, “I’m not going to participate in those.” And years ago, I said, “We’ve got to participate in those just to stay engaged in the conversation,” because if you’re not engaged in a conversation, you can’t help direct it or coach it in any way whatsoever. Sometimes the most vocal people are the people that are unhappy, and that engagement is really important.

A great example of what I’m talking about is a blog or an article that I recently saw by a good friend of mine, Dave Goetz. Dave is the publisher of SuccessNet, for our newsletter, BNISuccessNet.com. Dave is the publisher of that. He and his staff, Bernice, Bunny, do all of the heavy lifting to get SuccessNet done, and he writes articles a lot about branding and customer service. And he wrote a piece entitled, “Are They Laughing at You?” or something to that effect, which I think was really an interesting article, because he talked about a professor who was teaching a graduate level class at a university. Usually, graduate level classes are very interactive and the students get involved. When you start talking about Master’s level students, these are people who’ve – they’re out there in the workforce. They’ve got some expertise, and that’s one of the reasons why they’re much more seminal and interactive. But this particular professor just said, “Look, I’ve got content I need to go through. This is not a discussion class. I’m just going to lecture.”

Well, in this day and age, that doesn’t work; it doesn’t work in business, and it doesn’t work in the classroom. Because you know what these kids did, these young adults?

Priscilla:
What did they do?

Ivan:
They actually set up an instant messaging board, and while the professor was talking, they were all talking to each other online about what an idiot this guy is. And so, while he’s up there droning on and on and on, the very thing he said couldn’t happen was happening, and he didn’t know about it.

Priscilla:
Right.

Ivan:
And so that’s where the title of this podcast comes from, is People Are Talking About You; Are You in the Conversation?

Priscilla:
Right.

Ivan:
It’s really important to be in the conversation.

Now, to the credit of these students, finally one of them said, “Hey, look, we can sit here and bash the professor every week for the rest of this course, which is a lot of fun, but we’re really not accomplishing what we need to accomplish.”

And so what they ended up doing was literally dialoging with each other about the topics that the professor was talking about, and he wasn’t involved in the conversation at all.

Priscilla:
Yeah, that makes sense.

Ivan:
And so although it turned into a somewhat positive experience for these students, it was because of, really, their integrity that it stayed positive, or mostly positive, as opposed to really going south.

And so the question, if you’re in business, really is, “Are people talking about you?” And it’s hard to figure that out with the face-to-face networking, but with online networking, it’s not so hard to figure out. And one of the ways that I recommend that my listeners and BNI members getting engaged in conversation is to go to Google, go to Yahoo, go to any search engines, many of them have alerts, alerts, a Google alert and a Yahoo alert. And you go to those sites and you go to the alert section, and you say every time my name, and you type in your name, every time my name is mentioned online, send me an alert. And you can set it up where you get an alert every time it happens, I usually do a daily summary. So every day I get an alert from Google and an alert from Yahoo that mentions every time my name was mentioned anywhere. And it do it for my books. I do it not only for my name, I do it for my books, I do it for BNI. So I do it for my company names, my book names, my name, I do it for certain phrases that I’m wanting to stay on top of, like business networking and social capital, so that I stay engaged in the conversation.

It’s really a lot of fun when somebody writes an article or a blog and they mention me or they mention my book or they mention BNI. I don’t get to do this every single time, so if I don’t get back to you, I apologize, but many, many times, somebody will mention me or BNI or one of my books, and I’ll get this alert. And I’ll just drop the person a note. “Hey, thanks for mentioning me in your blog or in your column.” And they’re always just shocked that I knew about it.

I even had one where a nonmember blasted a local BNI chapter about the way they were invited, and the chapter really didn’t quite handle it right. And saw this and I posted on the blog. I said, “Hey, I’m really sorry that you were treated that way.” And I apologized, “That’s not the way it’s supposed to be done, and we’ll do a little redirecting, retraining with this chapter. And I just wanted to let you know that that’s not the way that we generally do things, and I apologize for your experience.”

Well, you should have seen the next blog this woman wrote. The next blog was, “This is the way a corporation should handle a complaint, and what a great job.”

And so this is what I mean where you need to be engaged in a conversation, because if you’re not engaged in a conversation, you don’t have an opportunity to put your version of what took place out there and to support your brand, even if it’s a small brand, to support your brand and your business throughout the marketplace.

So people are talking about you; are you in the conversation?

Priscilla:
That’s great. I just want to add that I had an experience last week that showed me about negative comments and what legs they have. This woman I talked to, I had never met her before, she launched into this passionate discourse about how she had taken her dog to get him groomed, and the woman had not listened to anything she said and destroyed this dog’s fur, essentially. And she was so passionate about it and was telling me never go there or don’t ever tell anybody to go there. And I was like wow!

Ivan:
That’s my point. I call it the WHAM factor; people are more likely to talk about your business when they’re mad at it than when they happy with it. Wouldn’t it be nice if the opposite were true, if people talked about your business, if they’re happy, they talk about it as much as those who are unhappy, but generally, that doesn’t happen. We see something slightly different in BNI because we are a very structured program to go out and talk positively. But as a rule, it doesn’t really work that way in the real world. BNI is sort of an artificial construct for developing word of mouth that is a little bit different.

Priscilla:
Yeah.

Ivan:
So you’re absolutely right.

Well, I know we’re almost out of time. Just to wrap up, I would say that whether you’re networking online or face to face, the dialog is going to happen with or without you. And if your don’t participate in the conversation, particularly online, you’re not in control whatsoever. I mean, you’re never in control, but you have no opportunity to guide and coach and to bring it along. But if you do participate publically and say who you are – one of the big no-no’s in buzz marketing is to act like you’re somebody else; I would never suggest that. You go in, say who you are. And I think it’s more powerful to say, “Hey, I’m so-and-so. I’m sorry you had a bad experience,” or “Let me give you a different perspective.” I think you can help to steer the conversation in a positive direction.

Priscilla:
Well, thank you, Dr. Misner. I think that’s a fantastic little tip to give the rest of us about Yahoo and Google. I’m going to definitely do that.

Ivan:
Great.

Priscilla:
Thanks so much.

Ivan:
Thank you.

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

In this episode, Dr. Misner wants to talk about learning to rely on the people who respect, admire, and love you. Who are these people? Members of your support network fall into 8 categories.

1. Your mentors
2. People you have mentored
3. People you have helped
4. Your co-workers, colleagues, associates, classmates
5. Your family and close friends
6. Other members of non-business groups
7. Your former managers, supervisors, and instructors
8. Spiritual leaders and advisors

Is there anyone you would add to this list? Share your experiences with your support network in the comments on the blog.

Brought to you by Networking Now.

Complete Transcription of BNI Podcast Episode 123 -

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

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

Hello, Ivan. How are you?

Ivan:
I am doing great, Priscilla.

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

Ivan:
Today I am going to talk about your support network, the people who help you and support you in any number of ways.

Priscilla:
Great.

Ivan:
Whether you are a master networker or you are new to networking, we all face challenging situations at times, and sometimes we need to rely on the help and encouragement of others. I am a big believer of learning to rely on the people who respect, admire, and love you. Theirs are the purest motives for helping you, they are genuinely interested in you, mostly accepting of you, and will usually do what they can to help you achieve any goals.

Now, they may not have all the knowledge or information you need or the ability to bring you new clients, but if you direct their willing efforts, they can give you emotional, physical, spiritual, financial support. The gifts of time can be a really valuable resource, and members of your support component can help you at crucial times of your business. They can perform essential tasks; they can encourage you, work with you, help you deal with an emergency, serve as a sounding board for your ideas.

I have seen that in BNI a lot. Even fill in for you for a couple of hours if you need them for something. To make the most of this resource, it is important to learn about their talents, their knowledge, and contacts that these friends and supporters may have to offer. I wanted to take a few minutes to categorize your support network members, who they are.

Priscilla:
Okay.

Ivan:
There are eight of them in total. The first one is your mentors. People who are or who have been your mentors, generally believe in you, care about you and your success, and can be counted on for honest feedback and encouragement.

The second, people you have taught or mentored. These people are usually excited to hear from you and will remind you about how much they appreciate your support. They also open doors to business opportunities by constantly spreading positive word-of-mouth about you.

The third is people you have helped. People remember people who have done something for them. So can you identify people to whom you have donated money, time, or other gifts? They’ll also go out of their way to help support you when you need it.

The fourth is your coworkers, colleagues, associates, and/or classmates. Friends you have made in the course of your school and your career are often friends for life. You know, like and respect each other. Of course, you may have been reluctant to call upon a friend for help because you don’t want to admit you need it, but don’t let your ego get in the way. Use these sources. A true friend will be eager to help and won’t think any less of you nor make you feel diminished for asking.

Five, your family and close friends. I talk about this one in the 29% Solution. You may take your family and personal friends for granted, but they are perhaps your most reliable source of support. Keep in mind, however, that some may be more reliable than others.

Number six, other members of non-business groups. These are people who you have worked with outside of business, members of Neighborhood Watch groups, apartment associations, community youth programs, people that may be willing to support you in activities outside the group’s normal scope. Join, participate, donate generously your time, money, let others help you and your endeavors, people who you have known in other non-business groups.

Your former managers, supervisors, and instructors, number seven. These people are often familiar with your work habits, your ethics, your values, your character, abilities, interests. They know what it takes to get your to perform at your highest level. Often, like surrogate parents, they feel responsible for your success. Should you take advantage of this parental instinct? Of course. Work with people who have mentored you in the past.

And eighth, any spiritual leaders or church leaders that you may have, members of organizations that you belong to that are spiritual in nature. If you belong to a religious organization, you are bonded to each other through that shared faith. It would be a mistake not to seek the backing of these leaders or other member. If, on occasion, you need them, don’t hesitate to use the support of services and groups like that.

Those are the eight categories of support network members that I think members of BNI should consider, and anyone who is trying to build a network should consider if you have some challenges and you need feedback or help in some way. Think about the people who might fit into these categories. They are great people to be part of your support network.

Priscilla:
Great, Dr. Misner. Thank you. Is there anything special that you would like to add to that?

Ivan:
I think if we had some BNI members who have listened to this podcast, I would love for them to add to this list, either experiences that they have had in one of these eight or if they think there is one I missed. I would love for them to share that with the other members here in the Comments section of the podcast. Thanks, Priscilla.

Priscilla:
Oh, you’re welcome. Thank you.

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

It’s not the anchor that holds a ship in place during a storm, but the length of chain connecting it. The captain watches the first mate to see where he needs to lay the chain to counter the winds.

This is a metaphor for BNI. How many links are there in your chain of relationships? Can you extend your chain in times when the economic winds are blowing against you? Have a one-on-one meeting with everyone in your chapter at least once a year.

Your BNI director is like the first mate on the ship, watching to see which way the wind blows and signaling which adjustments need to be made for the welfare of the group.

What are you doing to lengthen and strengthen your chain? Leave your comments here.

Brought to you by Networking Now.

Complete Transcription of BNI Podcast Episode 122 -

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

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

Hello, Ivan. Where are you and how are you?

Ivan:
I am doing great, Priscilla. This week I am in New Hampshire and Maine visiting BNI groups and doing presentations. There are some great groups up here, and I am really pleased to be here.

Priscilla:
Great. Well, what do you have to share with us?

Ivan:
Today I have a topic that I have written a little bit about; it is called “The Strength of the Anchor.” This summer my family took a several-day small ship tour of the Great Barrier Reef. The first night we noticed the anchor being used to secure the ship in the middle of the Coral Sea was really small compared to the size of the ship. It was a pretty decent sized ship, and the anchor was pretty small.

The second night we were anchored off of Hope Island in the Great Barrier Reef, and some really strong winds came up and our captain started the engines, and he backed the ship up, letting out more length of chain to the anchor. I am really curious, maybe a little bit concerned, so I asked him, “How is it possible that such a small anchor will hold the ship in place when the wind is blowing against it so strongly?”

And he said, “It is the chain that is holding the ship, not the anchor.”

After the anchor is lowered, the captain looks to the first mate, who signals from the prow which direction the chain is laying on the bottom of the sea. The captain then maneuvers into the right position and lets out the necessary amount of chain to hold the ship in a particular place and at particular time. This night, with the winds growing stronger, he recognized that he needed to let out more chain, and I began to see how this dynamic was really relevant to BNI.

Our anchor is the system, the process of doing business the BNI way. But it is not the system or the process that has the strength at all, or not completely. Clearly, it is a powerful process. It is the length of the chain holding the chapter, or the ship in the metaphor, in place that makes it all come together.

If you take a look at your chapter, members that are listening to this podcast, think about the links or relationships you have formed with the individual members in your group. How many links does your chain have? Do you have strong relationships with all the other members in the chapter, or are you closely linked with some but disconnected and detached from others in your group, for whatever reason? How do you go about letting out more chains during times when the economic winds have strengthened against our business?

I submit that it is time to get serious about developing strong relationships with each and every member in your chapter, even the ones you don’t think you have contact with that might run a business that is not exactly symbiotic with yours.

We talk about forming power teams with those businesses which are closely related to yours, but what you do about those members whose businesses are totally out of sync with yours or members who seem to be unable to provide quality referrals to you? Have you done one-to-ones with those members? Spending time to do the one-to-ones with each and every member of your chapter helps you to develop a longer and stronger chain. Each person in your chapter is one of the links that lengthens and strengthens that chain. The wisdom of laying down a longer chain to strengthen the ability of the anchor to hold strong is critical for the success of your chapter.

Another aspect of this anchoring process is watching the first mate. I thought that was really interesting. Your BNI director is trained and qualified to signal your chapter of the direction the chain is lying as the dynamic in your chapter changes. This is really important. The first mate signals where the change is going for the captain, and without him, the captain would really, really struggle. That is your BNI director; they can signal the direction of your chapter and help you if you take their advice.

The chapter president is basically the captain of the chapter, the ship in this metaphor. He or she watches the director for guidance and what adjustments to make to ensure the chapter is pointed in the right direction. At one point in the anchoring process, you see the first mate literally, literally dove into the water…

Priscilla:
Wow.

Ivan:
…to loosen the chain where it had become hooked on some coral formation. Your director cares about your chapter. As we travel around the world meeting with BNI directors and conducting trainings and conferences, we’re both gratified to see the heart of our BNI directors and our presidents and leadership team people and chapter members. And we encourage chapter members to keep their eyes, particularly the chapter president to keep their eyes on the director as he or she signals which adjustments need to be made so that the system works well for the BNI group.

I love this metaphor, and I wanted to share it with BNI members today.

Priscilla:
It is interesting, especially the idea that the chain, rather than the anchor, being the most important part, which is just counter intuitive.

Ivan:
I had no idea, no idea at all. I guess when winds really pick up is when they need to lay more chain down, because when I was on the ship the first night, there was not much wind, and it was no big deal. As the winds really kicked in, they laid more chain down, and they said that is what really helped to grip the bottom. I am listening to that and thinking about BNI, and I put these two things together. I talked about it with my wife, Beth, who helped me to create this visualization. I think it is very relevant to BNI, and I would love education coordinators to share it at BNI meetings.

Priscilla:
I just want to make one more comment in terms of the actual group. If you have been in a group for a while, as I have, and you develop a certain number of relationships with people and then you don’t renew them by doing one-on-ones in a fresh way, or more often than you would have thought to do them, I think you put yourself at a disadvantage.

Ivan:
Definitely. I think you should probably do a one-to-one with those people, certainly all new people, and all of the people that you want to maintain a strong relationship with, no less than once a year. Most people say, “Well, it’s not that much.” But you have a chapter of 30 members, that can be a lot of one-to-ones. And I am saying that is a minimum not a maximum; that is a minimum. You have to meet with those people if you want to create those relationships, if you want to maintain those relationships with them.

Priscilla:
Yeah.

Ivan:
No less than once a year for one-to-ones.

Priscilla:
Do you think a party counts?!

Ivan:
No, I don’t think that is a good one-to-one! But that is a good way of staying in touch with people, absolutely.

Priscilla:
Okay, great. Well, do you have anything else you would like to share?

Ivan:
No, that is everything today, and I would love for those of you who listened to this podcast to leave a message, leave a note what you think. Particularly if you take this back to your chapter, I would love to hear what your chapter thought.

Thanks, Priscilla.

Priscilla:
Great. Thank you, Dr. Misner.

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

This week Melinda McNeely and Mary Alice Griffin from the Golden Triangle Referral Group in Texas join Dr. Misner to share their experiences with the BNI Fast Track Program from del Fuego.

Here are some of the results the Golden Triangle chapter got from the 12-week Fast Track Program:

• Average number of referrals per week increased from 43 to 74
• Before Fast Track, 10 members were making 65% of the referrals. Now 96% of the members make at least one referral per week.
• Quality of referrals has increased.
• Accountability has increased.
• The number of members bringing visitors is increasing.
• Member report cards were an important part of this process.
• “VCP” and “Wind Sprints” are now staples in the chapter’s vocabulary.

To learn more about the BNI Fast Track program, listen to Episode 108: Quantum Chapter Growth. You can order the CDs for your own chapter at www.delfuego.com/bni or find a Fast Track coach.

Brought to you by Networking Now.

Complete Transcription of BNI Podcast Episode 121 -

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

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

Hello, Ivan, how are you?

Ivan:
I am doing great, Priscilla, and I have a couple of guests with me today on this podcast. They are Melinda and Mary Alice. Melinda is a chapter president of one of our groups, and Mary Alice is the education coordinator.

Melinda, what chapter are you with?

Melinda:
The Golden Triangle Referral Group in Beaumont, Texas.

Ivan:
Beaumont, Texas. My wife was born in Texas. There is something funny about that, the people born in Texas; it is like a country all to their own. She loves Texas, everything in Texas. I am up in Big Bear right now, and I have a pool table in my game room, and the billiard balls are a Texas Star. So you know she is a Texan when the cue ball is a Texas Star.

Texas is a great state, and we have Mary Alice here from the same chapter, right?

Mary Alice:
Yes, sir.

Ivan:
Great. You are a part of one of the first two groups that did the Fast Track Program for BNI Networking Secrets. And that is what we are going to be talking about today. Now that some time has passed since you first started the program in February of this year, what are some of the ongoing results for your chapter? Why don’t we start with Mary Alice.

Mary Alice:
Well, one of the most significant things that we have learned dong the Fast Track Program is that it is not what you expect but what you inspect that gets results. When we first started our benchmarking, members showed that we were averaging about 43 referrals per week, and after implementing the 12 week curriculum that reinforced the Networking Secrets, we improved our average number of referrals to 74 a week. Also, another important thing to note is that we had ten members that were doing about 65 percent of the referrals, and now, based on 96 percent of the group passing an average of at least one referral per week, the distribution of performance is much more balanced.

So we found that is it easier for everyone to do a little work rather than a few people to do most of the work. That is why our group is now much more productive and much more energized.

Ivan:
That is amazing, 43 to 74! That is 70 percent.

Mary Alice:
Yes, sir.

Ivan:
In what period of time?

Mary Alice:
It was the 12 week curriculum that Sarah and Flynn from del Fuego put together. We used the three, the Standard Learning, the BNI Nuggets, and the BNI Jeopardy game to reinforce the learning of the CDs.

Ivan:
I have done a podcast or two with them, so in this podcast, we will make sure to have a link to the other podcasts or two that I have done with them so people can go back and listen to that.

You said something I think is really key here. It is not what you expect but what you inspect that gets results. I think a lot of chapters really either forget that or they don’t understand that. It is the things that you focus on that are going to be where you have your results. That is clearly what has happened in your chapter.

Mary Alice:
Yes, sir. We actually started a new initiative today looking at visitors and how many visitors we have all invited individually since the beginning of the year. The numbers were quite shocking. That is our new initiative. Using the same principles that we tracked the referral piece, we are now using that to do visitors to improve our chapter size as well as, obviously, the referrals and the business that we are going to be getting.

Ivan:
Sure. And of course, the larger chapter, there is a direct relationship between the size of the chapter and the amount of referrals. No matter how good the chapter is at generating referrals, chapters that are great at generating referrals when they bring in new members, their referrals go up proportionately.

Chapters that are marginal at bringing in referrals but increase their number of visitors, their referrals go up proportionately. Wherever you are at in terms of the referrals development process, new members bring up the average number of chapters. Well, not the average, but the total number of referrals in the chapter. It is an important topic.

One suggestion for all the chapters out there that are focusing on bringing in visitors, just a warm body isn’t a qualified visitor. It is really important to bring in people that would be prospective members into the group, and that is what makes a good visitor. I am sure your chapter is focusing on that already.

Mary Alice:
Yes, sir.

Ivan:
Melinda, what are your thoughts about growth in your chapter in the last few months?

Melinda:
Well, just to reiterate, of course, the biggest result we have seen is an increase in quality referrals, which is a direct result of the information on Networking Secret CDs and accountability. It is all about accountability.

Ivan:
Yes, it really is about accountability. I wrote an article a few years back now, well, more than ten years back, called “Accountability and Friendship, the Paradox That Every Member Should Know.” It is at the Archives of Success, and I think it is May/June 1996 or 1997. It is really about accountability.

One of the strengths of a BNI group is that all the members are friends, but one of the weaknesses of a BNI group is that all of the members are friends, or many of the members are friends. It is both a strength and weakness.

The weakness is that friends don’t like to hold friends accountable, but chapters that really focus on accountability in the Networking Secrets 12 week program certainly do that, and it makes a real difference in the group.

Melinda:
Yes, it does.

Ivan:
Mary Alice, what is the role of the education coordinator, and how does the Fast Track Program really impact your role?

Melinda:
I am either the education coordinator or the coach of the chapter. In order to motivate people, you must help them understand or give them knowledge about the task at hand. I believe the key reason BNI works is because it is a performance driven organization. That is why it is extremely important to individualize targeted performance.

We believe, obviously, the chapter report cards are great, but an individual member report card is better. That is what we use when we track the 12 weeks of curriculum. There are many areas of performance that can be targeted for this type of coaching, like referrals, and now we are working on visitors one to one. Wherever you see that your chapter needs to grow, this method can be applied and used to motivate and improve performance for all the chapter. We did that with the Fast Track Program, and the expectations were clearly defined by a stretch objective. We shared information; we discussed information and, obviously, laughed when we celebrated our success. Without the celebration, you don’t know that you are really being successful.

I believe the Fast Track Program was a turning point for the education coordinator’s role. Again, like I said, we have already begun implementing and looking at areas of improvement utilizing the same principles that we did for the Fast Track Program.

Ivan:
How did the CDs and the curriculum work hand in hand with what you did in your chapter?

Melinda:
The Networking Secrets CDs presented a challenge and gave our members an opportunity to increase their knowledge of BNI while being recognized as top performers. The CDs are easy to listen to, and they can be reviewed at a member’s convenience, in the car, office, home. Also while insuring that all the members received and were listening to the Networking Secrets CDs, our leadership supportive efforts of the education coordinator. In coordination with the curriculum from Flynn and Sarah, our education coordinator was able to successfully implement a 12 week tracking system to hold members accountable for the number of referrals submitted. It is a win-win situation. Today, VCP is a staple in our vocabulary.

Ivan:
I was just going to ask you that. Do you find that your chapter is dialoguing with similar phrases and concepts so that they are all talking about the same thing and focusing on the same thing?

Mary Alice:
Yes, they are, and to hear people spit out VCP like they are making a CD is phenomenal. I absolutely love it, that and Windsprint. We all think we are professionals there. We love it. Before the BNI Networking Secrets, we came to BNI individually, and now we come as a team.

Ivan:
Oh, I love that. I love that. That is excellent. You came to BNI individually, and now you come to the meetings as a team. That is powerful.

Any other thoughts before we wrap up?

Mary Alice:
I would just like to say the three types of curriculum, The Standard Learning, The Nuggets, and The BNI Jeopardy game that Flynn and Sarah gave us were really helpful in making this fun and interesting because it reinforced the learning from the CDs. And because each chapter is unique and they have unique members and personalities, it allowed us to customize, if you will, what we did to make our group better. Every chapter can take that and customize it to what works in their chapter. The variety obviously helped us to do a better job of it and reinforce the learning of the CDs.

Ivan:
Well, excellent. The CDs we are talking about are the CDs produced by del Fuego, Sarah and Flynn are the owners of del Fuego, and they have really gone out of their way to help produce material for BNI that is outstanding.

For the members listening to this podcast, if you would like information on how your chapter can do the Fast Track Program, go to delfuego.com/BNI. That is delfuego.com/BNI, and you can get information on how you can do the Fast Track Program.

I love doing podcasts with BNI members. I definitely want to do more. Melinda, Mary Alice, you guys are pros. You did a great job on the podcast, and I really appreciate your efforts in your chapter. You have made a difference for a lot of people, and I appreciate what you do, and I thank you very much.

Mary Alice:
Thank you.

Melinda:
Thank you.

Ivan:
Priscilla, back to you.

Priscilla:
Okay, thank you, Dr. Misner. That was very, very interesting.

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

Dr. Misner had an experience at a restaurant in Japan that inspired today’s podcast. The waitress and all the patrons greeted every new arrival with “Welcome to the restaurant.”

Shouldn’t a networking group be just as welcoming? If BNI chapters make visitors feel welcome, visitors will return.

Sometimes a BNI group’s members can get so connected that they forget to talk to visitors. If you see that happen, share this podcast with your group.

How does your group make visitors feel welcome? Share your tips here.

Brought to you by Networking Now.

Complete Transcription of BNI Podcast Episode 120 -

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

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

Hello, Ivan, how are you?

Ivan:
I am doing great Priscilla. I am at BNI headquarters this week. We have directors training with dozens of BNI directors from around the country, around the United States, and a few internationally, that are going through three full days of training, so that is what I will be doing for the next couple of days.

Priscilla:
Wow, that sounds good. What are you going to share with us?

Ivan:
I have a fun topic today; it is about making visitors feel welcome in BNI. This topic came about by an event in Japan. I was speaking throughout Japan last month to BNI networking groups and to the public. I was there with my eighteen-year-old daughter; she just turned eighteen. She wanted to do a language program, so I went there for BNI, and I took her with me. We did some BNI meetings together with her speaking in Japanese, which is great.

Before leaving the country, I took my daughter to a little restaurant called Gonpachi. I understand that is it a chain, it is not a one of a kind, but there are many of them. It was pretty near the hotel that we were staying at. It was a nice little place in Tokyo, had great food and good service.

What really got my attention was the reception we received when we entered the dining room. As we entered the room, one of the waitressed yelled, and I know I am going to mess up the word, my Japanese is horrible, but it was something to the effect of “irasshaimasei.” She just yelled that out and all the patrons joined her in yelling it, “Irasshaimasei.” I turned to my daughter and said, “What in the world are they yelling at us?”

She said, “They are more or less saying, ‘Welcome to the restaurant.’”

I thought, “Wow, that is really impressive, what a nice touch!” I sat back and watched as the patrons flowed into the restaurant, and with each group of people the waitress, and even the patrons got into it, and they would yell out “Welcome to the restaurant” in Japanese. As people slowly started to trickle out of the restaurant, they started yelling, “Thank you very much” in Japanese as they left. “Thank you very much.” I even jumped in. I could barely say the words, but I jumped in. I thought it was fun.

Isn’t that what a good networking group should be like? When visitors come to BNI and the members say through their actions and words, “Welcome to our networking group; thanks for visiting us,” when they say that with enthusiasm and just genuine interest, you have to come back to the group again. I think this is truly an important secret to a good network, make visitors feel welcome. When people feel welcome, they want to come back. So if you started yelling “Welcome to our group” at the end of the room, you might not actually get the response I am thinking about here, but I think you get the idea.

If BNI chapters, through their actions and through their words, really truly make visitors feel welcome, those visitors will return. And that, my friends, is a sign, not only of a great restaurant, but of a great networking group. I would love to see BNI chapters all over the world share their podcast with their members, because I think that is one of the things that sets BNI aside from our competition, is the core way we potentially welcome visitors. If we can carry that out effectively, we will continue to be the world’s largest networking organization.

Priscilla:
I agree. And I just have to ask, did that happen in any other restaurants or any other places that you were in in Japan?

Ivan:
It didn’t. That is a great question, because I am told that it does happen and that it is somewhat common and that they do it not only in restaurants, but sometimes in stores where they say “Welcome to the store.” It is not an uncommon tradition in Japan, but I was there for a week, and that was the only place that I saw it done. I felt like I wanted to come back. I was sorry it was my last day. If it had been my first day, I definitely would have come back because it was such a great technique.

I don’t know how, in BNI, to incorporate that in reality. I don’t think yelling out “Welcome to BNI!” is maybe the thing to do, but it is the impression, and the impression was so welcoming. If we can do that at BNI, I think that you have got to get visitors to come back. It is all about making people feel comfortable. Sometimes in networking groups, the relationships become so tight, you meet and start talking to the fellow members, and you forget to reach out to that visitor and make that visitor feel welcome.

Priscilla:
Right.

Ivan:
When we see that starting to happen in your chapter, share this podcast with your members, because I think it can really help with a group.

Priscilla:
In our group, I am one of the visitor hostesses, so I get a chance to meet all the visitors right away. We hand them off to another member who is going to take them around and see if there is a power partner for them or somebody that they might really connect with in the group. And then we greet them by name during the meeting and thank them for being there. I think that really makes them feel comfortable and glad that they are there.

Ivan:
Absolutely, I think we should start to train the visitor host to start to say, “Welcome to our BNI group.” First words out of their mouth should be “Welcome to our BNI group.” I think this is a great tradition that they have in Japan, and we should incorporate it worldwide in BNI.

Priscilla:
I will test it out on Thursday.

Ivan:
Great; let me know how it goes.

Priscilla:
Okay.

Ivan:
And for the listeners, try to apply this concept of not necessarily yelling it out when they come but telling them, “Welcome to the group.” And leave some messages here on the podcast, and let us know what you think.

Priscilla:
Okay, great. Is that it, or do you have anything else you would like to share?

Ivan:
Nope, that is good for this week.

Priscilla:
Okay, good. All right. Thank you so much, Dr. Misner.

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