According to outgoing VP Rick Sharrard, one of the key factors surrounding the successful turnaround of the Edwardsville chapter was the membership committee's decision to: 1) define the kind of members they were looking for, and 2) say "no" to applicants who didn't fit that description. They use this formula:
The Ideal Member:
H ungry for business
A ttitude is everything
S ingle membership
P ersonality fits group
O ne business interest
W ants to give referrals freely
E xpectations are realistic
R eady to make commitment
The ideal member has the power to contribute positively to the growth and development of the chapter insofar as he or she meets those 8 criteria. Your chapter might have different criteria, but your ability to attract the right members begins with defining what that looks like.
How do you define your next member?
Sunday, September 23, 2007
Wednesday, September 19, 2007
Metro East Leaders Recognized
John Suarez recognizes Tim Phillips and Judy Henry, the outgoing President and Vice President of the Metro East chapter in Collinsville. Tim and Judy have served in leadership for the last two terms. Their efforts were the driving force behind rebuilding the chapter and positioning Metro East as a model chapter in the region.
Metro East ranked as the #1 chapter for the month of August out of 77 chapters, with exceptional production that included more than $3 million in closed sales. Click here for the complete 12-page production report.
How Fragile is Trust?
The battery on my phone went dead today after a flurry of calls from and about a member whose chapter asked him not to renew his membership. Two hours of this kind of drama is enough to drain any battery, including mine. Needless to say, this unhappy person could not understand how a Membership Committee would vote 3-1 against him. After all, he was a good and committed member.
Somewhere along the line this good and committed member did something to fall out of favor with the people on his Membership Committee. No one in the chapter ever filed a written complaint, but questionable behaviors accumulated in the minds of the voting members. And when he was excused for seemingly no reason, he was devastated.
At the very least, there was a huge disconnect between the member's perception of his performance and the membership committee's perception of his performance. Right or wrong, membership committees have complete autonomy to handle their respective chapter's business. We train membership committees to be open and honest about negative communications, but let's face it...those are tough conversations to have.
Why didn't the member see this coming? Because no one ever said anything directly to him about questionable behavior until his Contract for Profitability came due. It could happen to anyone....unless chapters find a way to have tough conversations proactively.
Page 34 of the Leadership Team Training Manual outlines a formula for having such conversations. Pages 31-33 describe the process by which complaints should be handled in the chapter. With these tools and your discretion, there should never be a situation where a member feels blindsided by a committee's decision.
Here is some more good advice, courtesy of author and speaker Ron White:
Somewhere along the line this good and committed member did something to fall out of favor with the people on his Membership Committee. No one in the chapter ever filed a written complaint, but questionable behaviors accumulated in the minds of the voting members. And when he was excused for seemingly no reason, he was devastated.
At the very least, there was a huge disconnect between the member's perception of his performance and the membership committee's perception of his performance. Right or wrong, membership committees have complete autonomy to handle their respective chapter's business. We train membership committees to be open and honest about negative communications, but let's face it...those are tough conversations to have.
Why didn't the member see this coming? Because no one ever said anything directly to him about questionable behavior until his Contract for Profitability came due. It could happen to anyone....unless chapters find a way to have tough conversations proactively.
Page 34 of the Leadership Team Training Manual outlines a formula for having such conversations. Pages 31-33 describe the process by which complaints should be handled in the chapter. With these tools and your discretion, there should never be a situation where a member feels blindsided by a committee's decision.
Here is some more good advice, courtesy of author and speaker Ron White:
"In your office, organization, or circle of friends if you want to see a cancer
spread faster than almost anything... begin to speak negatively about others
when they are not around. Not only will a cancer spread in your group that will
fragment it into factions, but you will no longer be trustworthy."
Do you want to be a top notch sales professional? Attempt that without being
trusted and try to be trusted while being known as a gossip.
Do you desire to be an effective leader? Again, attempt that without being trusted. A simple way to lose trust is gossip.
Develop a reputation as someone who can be trusted not because of your loyalty to your friends, but because of your character and watch as your business skyrocket!"Trust is a very fragile thing. If you lose it, people are not comfortable walking up to you to let you know. But the Membership Committee meets behind closed doors, where the "truth" reveals all the dark places we try to hide. Sooner or later there is a price to pay. The BNI Code of Ethics says "I will display a positive and supportive attitude with members of my chapter."
It is not a suggestion.
Monday, September 17, 2007
Commercials vs. Infomercials
In MSP training, we talk about the difference between Tier 1 referrals (self to member; member to self) and Tier 2 referrals (outside contacts). Tier 1 referrals are finite and limited to the number of people in the chapter, yet doing business with other members of the chapter is one of the most important ways of building trust.
Tier 2 referrals are infinite. Your ability to access the rolodex of your members and visitors depends partly on the trust they have in you. As members demonstrate during MSP, gaining access can be accelerated with a specific infomercial that actually targets key contacts and challenges members to think about who they know. This is the primary difference between an infomercial and a commercial, which simply advertises a product or service.
Think about how we are conditioned to tune commercials out. When we are watching TV, do we give commercials our full attention, or do we flip to one of 1,000 other channels available? Or perhaps we switch to a movie channel that has no commercials? Getting people’s attention is hard enough. When we sound like a commercial, we are fighting an uphill battle.
A strong infomercial is the member’s primary opportunity to target and cultivate more Tier 2 referrals. Why, then, do so many members settle for delivering a commercial instead of an infomercial?
Five reasons come to mind:
1) Commercials are right-handed activities (I say this because I am right-handed). They come easily, thoughtlessly, like our signature on a piece of paper. An infomercial is a left-handed activity. We have to stop, think about it, even struggle a little….just enough to keep people from working at it. When something natural is available, we gravitate toward that. Ironically, results do not even come into play.
2) Commercials produce results…sometimes. But the results are based on luck, and luck runs out. If you sell commercial insurance, and you stand up every week to tell people you sell commercial insurance, sooner or later a member will be in a position to refer business to you. But if you take a more proactive approach and request to meet the owner of XYZ restaurant, you take responsibility for targeting the kind of prospects you want to do business with. Even if you miss, you have used your time more wisely.
3) Members don’t know the difference. Intellectually members understand the concept of infomercials versus commercials, but not experientially. In other words, until they do it and get results, they will never experience the power of a different strategy. After MSP training, members are rarely challenged to embrace or practice these principles. Many revert to their natural right-handed activities.
4) Members don’t have time to prepare an infomercial. As busy as we are, we tend to have time for things that are most important. When we take a proactive approach to building our network and targeting customers, we get better results. Making time to get better results is true in just about any discipline, and it is certainly true in BNI. Referrals don’t just happen. We either learn to make them happen, or we don’t.
5) Members would rather do what everyone else is doing. In small groups, we have a natural tendency to conform. In one chapter, every member ends their infomercial by giving their business phone number. My guess is that one person did it, and soon everyone else followed along. Which would you rather have: a referral and no phone number (which you can easily find) or a phone number and no referral? Rather than rock the boat, new members eager to "fit in" judge the rules of proper conduct more by what they “see” than by what they have been told at MSP. And the cycle of ineffectiveness continues.
When members leave BNI, a common parting thought they share with me is “I’m not making any money.” A strong infomercial is where Tier 2 referrals and the money-making begin. It takes time and effort, but so does everything else we value.
Tier 2 referrals are infinite. Your ability to access the rolodex of your members and visitors depends partly on the trust they have in you. As members demonstrate during MSP, gaining access can be accelerated with a specific infomercial that actually targets key contacts and challenges members to think about who they know. This is the primary difference between an infomercial and a commercial, which simply advertises a product or service.
Think about how we are conditioned to tune commercials out. When we are watching TV, do we give commercials our full attention, or do we flip to one of 1,000 other channels available? Or perhaps we switch to a movie channel that has no commercials? Getting people’s attention is hard enough. When we sound like a commercial, we are fighting an uphill battle.
A strong infomercial is the member’s primary opportunity to target and cultivate more Tier 2 referrals. Why, then, do so many members settle for delivering a commercial instead of an infomercial?
Five reasons come to mind:
1) Commercials are right-handed activities (I say this because I am right-handed). They come easily, thoughtlessly, like our signature on a piece of paper. An infomercial is a left-handed activity. We have to stop, think about it, even struggle a little….just enough to keep people from working at it. When something natural is available, we gravitate toward that. Ironically, results do not even come into play.
2) Commercials produce results…sometimes. But the results are based on luck, and luck runs out. If you sell commercial insurance, and you stand up every week to tell people you sell commercial insurance, sooner or later a member will be in a position to refer business to you. But if you take a more proactive approach and request to meet the owner of XYZ restaurant, you take responsibility for targeting the kind of prospects you want to do business with. Even if you miss, you have used your time more wisely.
3) Members don’t know the difference. Intellectually members understand the concept of infomercials versus commercials, but not experientially. In other words, until they do it and get results, they will never experience the power of a different strategy. After MSP training, members are rarely challenged to embrace or practice these principles. Many revert to their natural right-handed activities.
4) Members don’t have time to prepare an infomercial. As busy as we are, we tend to have time for things that are most important. When we take a proactive approach to building our network and targeting customers, we get better results. Making time to get better results is true in just about any discipline, and it is certainly true in BNI. Referrals don’t just happen. We either learn to make them happen, or we don’t.
5) Members would rather do what everyone else is doing. In small groups, we have a natural tendency to conform. In one chapter, every member ends their infomercial by giving their business phone number. My guess is that one person did it, and soon everyone else followed along. Which would you rather have: a referral and no phone number (which you can easily find) or a phone number and no referral? Rather than rock the boat, new members eager to "fit in" judge the rules of proper conduct more by what they “see” than by what they have been told at MSP. And the cycle of ineffectiveness continues.
When members leave BNI, a common parting thought they share with me is “I’m not making any money.” A strong infomercial is where Tier 2 referrals and the money-making begin. It takes time and effort, but so does everything else we value.
Saturday, September 15, 2007
The Key to Inviting Visitors
Our friends at the Sandler Sales Institute describe PAIN as “the emotional attachment to intellectual need.” In other words, it is what drives us to make buying decisions, including whether or not to consider visiting a chapter or buying a BNI membership. PAIN can be categorized in one of three areas:
· Immediate problem
· Fear of future
· Gain or how can I make the buyer a hero
Immediate problem has a greater impact on the reason to buy than the other two.
Gain has the least amount of influence.
If your approach to inviting visitors involves selling "Gain", change your approach by asking more PAIN-related questions. Here are two examples:
EXAMPLE: "Would you like to have a larger network of trusted referral contacts for your clients to choose from?" (that’s Gain)
BETTER: "What happens when your clients must choose from a limited network of service providers and they can't rely on a referral from you?" (that's Pain)
EXAMPLE: “Would you like to meet some people who could get you more business?” (that’s Gain)
BETTER: “Some of my friends refer business to your competitors because they don’t know who you are. How come they know your competitors and not you?” (that’s Pain)
Understanding the types of PAIN will lead you to ask more effective questions. When you learn to uncover PAIN, you discover the emotional reasons for intellectual need…and that is what drives the decision-making process.
· Immediate problem
· Fear of future
· Gain or how can I make the buyer a hero
Immediate problem has a greater impact on the reason to buy than the other two.
Gain has the least amount of influence.
If your approach to inviting visitors involves selling "Gain", change your approach by asking more PAIN-related questions. Here are two examples:
EXAMPLE: "Would you like to have a larger network of trusted referral contacts for your clients to choose from?" (that’s Gain)
BETTER: "What happens when your clients must choose from a limited network of service providers and they can't rely on a referral from you?" (that's Pain)
EXAMPLE: “Would you like to meet some people who could get you more business?” (that’s Gain)
BETTER: “Some of my friends refer business to your competitors because they don’t know who you are. How come they know your competitors and not you?” (that’s Pain)
Understanding the types of PAIN will lead you to ask more effective questions. When you learn to uncover PAIN, you discover the emotional reasons for intellectual need…and that is what drives the decision-making process.
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