Who is bni

This is my personal experience at a local chapter meeting. This review is targeted toward local business owners who are looking to grow their business by giving and getting good referrals. Some of them were free events. I paid for some. I was also invited to join several professional networking groups. List of BNI Chapters near me:. One of the great things about the BNI Connect website is that you can easily find. Its primary purpose is to give its members more protect, more referrals and business.

Typically, your local BNI group will only allow one business from each industry to join. For example, at every meeting there will only be one real estate agent and one accountant. Ideally, the members build relationships that organically evolve into sending and receiving business referrals from one another. This organization has been around for decades and thousands of small business people swear by its success. BNI Connect is a membership organization.

BNI Connect was founded in and has been a legitimate franchise organization since Following are a partial list of franchise fees involved in owning a BNI Franchise. I have to admit that the promise of getting regular referrals from these BNI groups was very attractive.

But, I made mistakes. In fact, those mistakes led me to swear off paid networking groups altogether. I still tell almost everyone not to join them. Of course, like all rules, there are exceptions.

As a chapter member, your goal should be to get the most out of the meetings and the relationships you build. One of the first things I noticed is that the people at my local BNI Connect event were sharing cold leads. You know a referral when you get one.

Joe said I should call you. She then struggled with making enough time for the group so she has since left. I do talk to her now and then and she is still doing well. I will say as a whole BNI has done well for me. I do respect most of these comments since they are true. It is not a group you join and expect the referrals to start pouring in. You need to work at it, gain the groups trust, and also give referrals.

This can work for almost any business but you should ask these questions before joining. I do disagree with the last statement the most. Everybody passes cards and most intelligent people know these are not referrals. The goal is to partner with people and get access to their clients not make them the client.

If you try to hard sell to each member you will not last long and get frustrated. For instance a handy man would rather have referrals from the realtor than just have the realtor as the referral.

Another nice thing about BNI is the oath you make to each other. When I send a referral to another group member the way they act reflects back on me. I expect them to do good work. I just used the plumber in my group today and he did a fantastic job and a much lower price than the plumbers that market all over the place.

I was a member for almost three years. They seemed really nice. I have lots of referrals and often found myself saying hey the person I referred said you never called. I got asked for plenty of free advice but never got a single referral from the group.

I felt like they started letting anyone in if they could pay. That was my normal breakfast bill for the week before their weekly breakfast meeting double my expense.

I paid for booths and networking events and got nothing but used in return. This is my 16th year in BNI, and each Chapter is different and depends on the internal Leadership team of the Chapter not the franchisee. BNI motto is Givers Gain, So let me get this straight, you were given two referrals from your chapter, over net seems the new way, I prefer passing referrals in the meeting. And your two referrals panned out to be nothing. Life happens, and you will get referrals like that, I get them mostly from new Members that have not been to training and do not know the ropes yet.

In our Chapter we give each new member an older member to Mentor. BNI is not easy, but if it were easy everybody would belong, instead we just have , members and chapters world wide. So they must be doing something right. I would tell you to be more specific so that you get a more specific referral. I would do more one on ones with members as your job is specialty, so you need to dig down deep and you will as you do one on ones with other members.

The more one to ones you do and get to know the other members closer you become. Each time you do your 60 Second Educational minute. Be precise in asking for the referral you want. Try that, Try next week asking for a referral to someone who you have tried to contact but he will not see you. You will be surprised. Take all the training offered, buy and read all the books that Dr.

Ivan Misner the founder has written, starting with the 7 second marketing, might find on Amazon. Do the one on ones, and keep doing them, as I get more referrals for my one on ones, because there is only two of you there. Dear Codger, My friend their is nothing free in this life. Yes there is Training, any job you get that is worth it, should have training, yes you pay to belong to BNI, but the free networking groups out there, the members come and go, as they wish, as they do not have any skin in the game.

Yes Dr. This is minor expense, but do not join, unless you are willing to learn the BNI way and get involved. How many sales do you need to make up that. This is a Franchised Successful Business.

I do not mind if the franchisee makes a good living, as mind does with Texas. If you help enough other people get what they want, then you will get what you want. What an incredibly negative post, clearly not written by an entrepreneur. I own an internet marketing company and we have grown exponentially thanks to our involvement in BNI.

I will agree that your success will greatly vary due to the chapter you join but this article seems more about their own experience and not typical results. As a small business owner you owe it to yourself to approach all opportunities with an open mind and a positive attitude. Hi Kelly just wondering beauty and massage therapy business would benefit from BNI? I am invited to one of their meetings?

I would be grateful if you could comment. You would do very well if you put in the effort to build relationships and trust with other members of that BNI chapter. If your business need to grow by referrals, please think possitive, find a green light BNI chapter or a green light BNI member, you can definitely get help. Hello everyone, a friend has been pushing me to join a bni network chapter. I just started to work in the sales and marketing division of our company.

I work with a commercial insurance company. Would anyone recommend me joining for my type of work? If not what other groups or networks would you recommend? We have 2 insurance guys in our chapter and they do well.

Generally most chapters will allow you to be a visitor 2 or 3 times so it will give you a little bit of a feel for the chapter as well as the structure. I attended my first meeting 3 years before I joined, and I wished I joined earlier. Not all chapters are the same. When I came off the road after 20 years of traveling to watch my kids grow, I was told to join a lead group.

Ivan Misner, believes in Training and Education. If I were you I would go to your area website and dial up some other chapters and find someone in your profession and call them and asked them how they are doing in BNI. I tell my new members to do that all the time. If you join your Chapter and do the work, learn the system and how to ASK for the referrals you truly want, by being specific so that you will be terrific. And then BNI keeps Giving.

I have belonged to other free networking groups, but with no money in the game, then people come and go. In BNI, you can only miss 3 times without a substitute in a 6 months period. Do you have a Sales meeting each week at your Company, and if you do not show up without excuse, what would happen.

Givers Gain. People helping people seems like such a no brainer. Since then, I have learned more about people than I had in the previous 50 years. People who want to get, will do poorly in BNI unless they change. People who want to help others succeed will do well, provided they gain trust and educate the other members on good referrals.

Yes, unfortunately there are people in BNI who have bad attitudes. Every organization has them. This article is short-sighted and needlessly negative. Hidden costs: Everyone is told what the costs are before they sign anything.

Application fee one time , annual membership, and lunch costs if any. But most do if you have lunch. Our lunch buffet is good and we get the room at no extra cost.

The weekly commitment is roughly two hours a week for the meeting including a one-to-one. As for serving on leadership? You neglected to mention two nice benefits to serving: 1 Leadership positions P,VP,ST annual dues are waived and 2 Leadership positions are highly visible, lending additional credibility and the business that comes with it to members who serve. A personal referrals cuts through advertising BS and disbelief like nothing else.

The teams work together to develop mutually beneficial relationships to take advantage of natural synergies within different buyer journeys. Like anything, you get out of it what you put into it, and some people and businesses are better suited for BNI than others.

The more accessible and simple your business is, the more likely you are to do well with BNI. Speciality companies may need to work harder to connect to niche networks through BNI, but it is possible to make it work. The more friendly, and outgoing you are the faster people will get to know, like and trust you. But it is not a personality contest, even introverts can do well in BNI. In fact, introverts tend to do well with the one on one meetings that are central to the BNI model.

The weekly meetings were an important catalyst for solving that problem. One way to think about your BNI group is as your sales team. For the team to work, everyone needs to contribute. I know it took me a while to figure that out and to a set up a system to help me do that efficiently. The other benefit of BNI are the friends you make. Having to stand up and introduce myself each week in 35 seconds has encouraged me to refine my introduction over and over and over again.

I would have never put that time in, if not for the weekly need to do so. About twice per year you deliver a presentation to the group and visitors. You have six minutes to make an impression and help train your group how to recognise an opportunity and how to refer you.

But it is a great opportunity to refine your message. Apart from the referrals, I think this constant practice is the most important benefit of BNI. There is no coasting and it has challenged me to approach networking much more rigorously and systematically, which has been a good pattern for me to adopt. Although once you get to know, like and trust the other people, you do tend to buy from each other.

But that is not the point of the group. BNI is not just another unstructured networking meeting. The meetings follow a structured agenda and the goal is to generate referrals by following the BNI model.