by Tanya Blocker
At BNI
chapter meetings, members have the opportunity to stand up during the
“Referrals and Testimonials” portion of the agenda to let the chapter know what
they have that week. Imagine that during
this portion of the meeting there was a mandatory slip that every member is
required to report on during that portion of the meeting. The slip is very basic containing in capital
letters T.T.B.N.I.S. (Told The BNI Story) and in the upper right hand corner is
a small square. The square is only big
enough to contain a number, not an explanation.
Have you ever heard a member say during the Referral and Testimonial
portion of the meeting they don’t have anything that particular week for some
reason? 
Unless you
are a “90 minute” BNI member, and I don’t believe any of you are, we should all
be able to put a number in that small square and educate each other of how we
told the BNI story in between meetings.
Perhaps you gave a testimonial about the exceptional service a member
gave to one of your clients, OR – you were able to plant a seed and then you let
the chapter know how you did that.
We have
heard that BNI is about farming, not hunting.
How do we plant those seeds for each other? It is quite simple, educate each other how to
do this. Our job as BNI members is not
necessarily to sell each other’s products or services but to be each other’s
marketing team. As you meet for one to
ones you will find commonality with each other, or you can discuss different
activities you do outside your BNI meetings, either personal or
professional. Often times BNI members
naturally become known as the “go to person”, because we know business professionals
who can take care of a variety of needs.
So how do you do this? I will
give you an example.
When I first
joined BNI, it really bothered me that after quite some time I had not been
able to give a referral to the person who held the residential mortgage
classification in my chapter. I always
seemed to find out about a possible referral after the fact. So I asked her; what is a “one-liner” that I
could use in a personal or professional setting that could possibly open that
door. What happened was quite brilliant. ANY time someone mentioned anything about
banking, it could simply be that they had stopped at the drive through at the
bank on their way to see me, I would say, “My friend Merry Member does
Mortgages at XYZ Bank”. For me, I wasn’t
able to give her a referral immediately. But, after some time of saying this over and
over, I started receiving calls when people I knew needed to talk to a mortgage
person. People would recall me saying I
knew someone and they wanted a referral from someone they already knew and
trusted.
Are you
educating your members on how they can plant seeds in their everyday
lives? As you meet for your one to ones,
let each other know how those seeds can be planted. Is there something your member could say in
one breath about you that can be easily recalled and repeated?
I would
encourage you to spend some time thinking about this. Educate your BNI marketing team how to easily
plant a seed that may result in referrals for you. We have the ability all around us every day
to tell the BNI story and the opportunity to plant those seeds. If you don’t tell your chapter members how,
your BNI story may not be told.