Along with several hundred BNI Directors from around the world, I recently attended the 2008 BNI International Directors Conference in Long Beach, CA (more details below in 'International News'). One of the most exciting parts of the Conference was the issuing of Founder's Awards which are issued to BNI chapters that represent the top ten percent of the organisation in terms of performance. They must have a minimum of twenty members, be nominated by the local BNI Director, and be approved by the Founder. These chapters are specifically recognized for excellent performance relating to referrals, visitors, new members, commitment, enthusiasm, and - most importantly - attitude.
I am pleased to announce that five Chapters from Australia were recently recognised at the 2008 BNI International Directors Conference as follows:-
- BNI Alliance – North Queensland - BNI Central – NSW Central Coast - BNI Clarence – Tasmania - BNI Derwent – Tasmania - BNI York – Tasmania
This is an awesome result and a well-deserved congratulations goes to these Chapters and their Directors.
New Australian Website Front page and valuable Links
BNI offers an enormous range of educational resources and alliances to build your business.
To make access to these as easy as possible, we have recently changed the front page of the BNI website and added links.
Please take the opportunity to click onto the links and check out these valuable free resources for members, including:-
-Ecademy The BNI Australia Ecademy Club for members -BNI Podcast The official weekly BNI podcast by Dr. Ivan Misner -NetworkingNow Articles by Dr. Ivan Misner on How To Build Your Business - Entrepreneur.com Networking Columns by the World's Leading Experts -SuccessNet The BNI International Newsletter -Flying Solo Australian community for solo and micro business
Harness the Law of Probabilities for Success
By Brian Tracy
It has been said, "A Butterfly flapping its wings in Peru can start a change in the weather that leads to a typhoon in China."
In BNI, the application of this idea is that a casual meeting with a new acquaintance at a BNI meeting can have major long-term effects on your sales and your life.
At every turn in the road of your life, there will be a person standing there helping you or hurting you, guiding you or blocking you, giving you good or bad direction.
There seems to be a direct relationship between the number of people you know, meet, bump into and interact with and the quality of your life. People who go to BNI meetings, who network on a regular basis with others, seem to be far more active and successful than people who go to work at the last minute, chat idly with coworkers, read the newspaper, make a couple sales calls-and then go home and watch television.
Warren Buffett applied to Columbia University and was turned down. He turned to Princeton University and most of the courses that he wanted to take were already full. Finally, he settled on one course taught by a Professor Fisher on value investing.
Because he was young and impressionable, Warren Buffett absorbed Fisher's ideas on how to choose stocks for the long term, went back to Omaha, and began investing others and himself. The rest is history. Warren Buffett is now one of the richest men in the history of the world, still applying Fisher's ideas to buying and holding good quality stocks.
How many times in your life has your direction changed because of your meeting and interaction with another person? Sometimes a single observation or bit of advice from someone with more experience in a particular area than you can change the course of your destiny.
When I was in my 30s, I was urged to run for political office. I put together a campaign committee of about 12 people, all of whom were enthusiastic supporters of my bid for office. I started to get carried away with the idea of being an elected politician and making a difference in the politics of my state.
Then I called an elected politician on whose campaign I had worked a couple of years before. I told him of my plans and asked him if he had any advice. I still remember his words: "Are you financially independent at this time?"
When I told him that I was a long way from financial independence, he told me that if I ran for office in my 30s, and was successful, I would never be financially independent. I would have a much lower income than I could earn in the private sector, and I would probably worry about money all my life.
That simple observation, "Are you already financially independent?" slammed the brakes on my political ambitions. I folded up my early campaign and went back to work as a business consultant, real estate developer, and, eventually, as a professional speaker.
It's Not All about the Law of Attraction
The Secret has been a bestseller for the last couple of years. This book says that, "If you visualize and think positive thoughts, you will attract all good things into your life."
Unfortunately, this idea is misleading. Of course, it is important that you think positive thoughts, about yourself and your possibilities, but it is simply not enough. In addition, you must take continuous action in the direction of your goals, overcoming resistance, adversity, difficulties and temporary failures until you win through.
In reality, success is not based on the Law of Attraction, but rather the Law of Probabilities. This law says that there is a probability that everything can happen, and that you can influence these probabilities by doing more of the things that are more likely to lead to your success.
In sales, the sales person who makes more appointments and sees more prospects is going to make more sales than the sales person who stays in the office and shuffles his or her business cards. In life, the professional who networks regularly with other professionals, especially in sales, is going to dramatically increase the probability that he or she will meet with the right person, at the right time, with the right insight or guidance, which will lead to a sale that might not have taken place.
The challenge is that you never know which person you meet is going to be the one that helps you the most. Using the Law of Probabilities, you organize your life so that you network and meet with as many people as possible. This greatly increases the likelihood that you will meet the right person.
At every stage of your life, there will be someone standing there giving you insights and guidance that can set you off in a different direction. At the same time, you can be the person who gives the insights and guidance that helps others to do more of the right things that help them achieve their goals and improve their lives.
Networking in the BNI way is one of the most certain ways of meeting more and better people who can help you to achieve higher levels of success-faster than would have ever been possible in the absence of their ideas and input.
About Brian Tracy: Brian Tracy is one of the top sales experts and trainers in the world. He has taught more than 2,000,000 sales people in 46 countries. He is the president of Brian Tracy University of Sales and Entrepreneurship online, and committed to teaching ambitious individuals how to rapidly increase their sales, income, and profits. For a free one-hour CD on "21 Great Ways to Become a Sales Superstar".
BNI Alliance continues to go from strength to strength and recently the members were awarded their Gold Medallion lapel pins for achieving a 40 member membership and are continuing to grow. The chapter now joins BNI Focus in Townsville as the second Townsville chapter to be awarded the Gold Medallion lapel pins.
Special mention should be made of the leadership of successive Presidents who have taken this chapter from having an active attending membership of 13 under 15 months ago to a 42 member chapter (and growing) having goals that stretch the imagination of many other chapters. Alliance Chapter is now averaging over 90 referrals every week with closed business averaging over $25,000.00 per meeting.
Presidents Darryll Gilchrist,Mike Dinnison, Roxie Grey and now Jason Evans have with guidance from Regional Director Bernie Hock achieved this exceptional result. The Presidents all enthusiastically relate that the support from their Leadership Teams has been the secret to their continuing success and an uncompromising focus on Attendance policy, Visitors, Dance Cards, Referrals and Closed Business.
A comment was made by one member “Now that we have discovered the secret of finding Gold, we are now mining for Platinum”
We all look forward to awarding the members of this chapter their Platinum lapel pins in the near future.
Article submitted by Lance Gane, Executive Director BNI Northern Australia.
Congratulations Top 5 BNI Chapters for Closed Business Results!
Congratulations to the below Top Five BNI Chapers for having the highest recorded values for Closed business for the past 6 months (01.06.2008-30.11.2008):-
BNI Kingsfords
$1,270,552.00
BNI Surfside (Dee Why Beach)
$1,421,749.00
BNI Titan
$1,616,326.00
BNI Artisans
$2,141,522.00
BNI Integrity
$2,372,984.00
Fabulous effort everyone - what a fantastic result!
What would happen in your BNI chapter if you set some clear and measurable goals this year as a chapter?
What if we used "Show Me the Money" as a basis of our goals? What could we achieve together if all of us in the chapter "owned" the goals?
That is what BNI Springfield Business Connection asked themselves last year as the new term started.
They decided to come up with a "Macro Goal" for the entire chapter.
Here is how it worked: Everyone in the chapter thought about how much closed business they would like to achieve. "Show Me the Money" is based on gross sales, so some members numbers were higher than others, which was perfectly fine!
Everyone wrote down the number on an index card and they were collected and tabulated. The original number was somewhere around 7.7 million dollars- the chapter rounded the number up to 8 million dollars. From this, they made a theme: "8 in 08".
Here is where the story gets interesting....
Every meeting they colored in with red pen the week's "Show Me the Money" numbers. They kept the sign right in front of the visitor sign-in table (Quick question: Would you join a chapter that was focused on closing business for members?)
About halfway through the year, the number seemed further away than in the beginning. As all of us know, some markets have been challenged this year. So the chapter had a few months that were not as productive. As a matter of fact, until the month before the party, the chapter did not know if it was going to hit their chapter goal.
How easy it could have been to walk away from the goal program, or "accidentally" leave the sign somewhere, never to be seen again. But the chapter was persistent in its resolve to see its goal to the end.
Guess what happened? During the last two weeks, serious ground was achieved, high dollar items were closed on (as well as non-high dollar), and they hit their goal in the very last week!
Submitted by Mike Tobin, Director - BNI Central and Southern Missouri
Networking Faux Pas - Think you're a good networker? Make sure you're not making 1 of these 3 big blunders...
Faux Pas #1: Not responding quickly to referral partners This one really troubles me. I can't imagine getting a call from a networking partner and not responding immediately, but unfortunately, this seems to happen with some regularity. Not long ago, someone I know had a referral to give a gentleman in his networking group. He called the associate and left a message at his office as soon as he knew the referral was viable. A day went by without a return call, so he called again, saying it was important to connect.
He was finally able to speak to his networking associate at their next meeting. He asked him why he didn't return his call and the associate said, "If I knew you had a referral for me, I would've called you back immediately." He still gave the referral at the meeting, and, to no one's surprise, the person referred ended up working with another vendor because no one got back to him in a timely manner.
Treating each of your networking partners as one of your best clients is critical. Return phone calls from them immediately, as it speaks to your credibility and reliability as a professional. There are countless examples of people receiving referrals at networking groups and then contacting the referral a few days later. The old phrase, "If you snooze, you lose," is apropos here. If the referral knows you had her name and number on Monday and took your time calling, that sends a negative message about your business.
Faux Pas #2: Confusing networking with direct selling One of my company's directors struck up a conversation with a woman business owner at a networking function. When the business owner asked our director what she did, she said she helps owners build their businesses through networking and referrals. The business owner smiled and said, "I’m really good at networking. I’ve been doing it for a long, long time."
Curious, our director asked her, "So what’s your secret?" She stood up straight and said, "Well, a friend and I enter a room together. We imagine drawing a line down the middle. She takes the left side; I take the right side. We agree to meet at a certain time to see who collected the most cards. The loser buys the other one lunch."The director curiously inquired, "So what do you do with all those cards?" Again, proudly, the business owner said, "I enter them into my distribution list and begin to send them information about my services. Since I have all their information, they’re all good prospects, right?"
This is a classic example of an entrepreneur not understanding that networking isn't about simply gathering contact information and following up on it later. That's nothing more than glorified cold calling. It gives me the chills. I used to teach cold calling techniques to business people. And I did it enough to know that I didn’t want to ever do it again. I've devoted my entire professional life to teaching the business community that there's a better way to build long-term business.
Faux Pas #3:Abusing the relationship There are many ways I’ve seen networking partners abuse relationships, but the following story is one of the most glaring examples.
A woman I know was invited to attend a 50th birthday party of an associate who used to belong to a networking group in which she also participated. They once had a long-term working relationship, and, out of respect, she decided to attend. When she got to the door, she looked through the window and noticed people were arranged in a semicircle, listening to a presenter in front of an easel board. When she stepped in, it was very obvious the partygoers were being recruited for a business opportunity. As resentful as the woman felt, she and other mutual friends found it difficult to remove themselves from the "birthday party," despite the fact that the only refreshment being served was the company’s diet shake!
Never mislead your networking partners. For that matter, never mislead anyone. Trust is everything when you're talking about relationship networking. Inviting people to a "birthday party" that turns out to be a business opportunity pitch isn't being honest with the very people with whom you want to build a trusting relationship.
All these faux pas directly relate to good people skills. The prevailing theme of all three is to treat your referral partners and potential referral partners with professionalism and care. Use networking opportunities to meet people and begin the process of developing a genuine relationship and treat your referral partner like you would a top client.
Lastly, always network in a way that builds credibility and trust--be candid in telling your referral partners what you need and what you’re asking of them. Do these things and you’ll avoid some serious mistakes in relationship networking.
Called the father of modern networking, Dr. Ivan Misner is the Founder of BNI and the senior partner for the Referral Institute. He has written nine books, including his recently released New York Times best seller Truth or Delusion? Busting Networking’s Biggest Myths.
BNI Northern Australia - Townsville Gala Ball Rocks! (Well into the night....)
On this special day in November, BNI members in Townsville came together for the inaugural BNI Gala Ball and Awards Night.It will go down as a 'November to Remember'. Over 210 members, partners and guests dressed up for the black tie event at Jupiter's Casino.
People were treated to soft dinner music from the Trevor Mitchell Show Band while entree was served to the tables. Later an alternate drop main course was beautifully presented and brought to each table. While dinner was being served, Lance Gane - Executive Director BNI Northern Australia and Bernie Hock, BNI Regional Director in Townsville, began announcing a series of awards. In the first segment, awards were given to members of all 5 chapters in four different categories, namely most enthusiastic new member, best infomercial, best 10 minute talk, and a chapter mentor award.
The band cranked up the volume to entice people to the dance floor. Members from all chapters mixed freely and danced with passion. Later an alternate drop dessert was delivered to each table setting. While this was happening, another batch of awards were presented. Firstly there was an award for the member who had helped the chapter grow the most, followed by the Giver's Gain award which went to a person in each chapter who had given the most, in terms of referrals and time for dance cards. The highlight of the presentation was the announcement of the chapter member of the year, for each chapter. While these people soaked up the accolades on stage, one member was awarded BNI Townsville Chapter member of the year prize. The person judged the most deserving of this prestigious award went to Mike Dinnison, from BNI Alliance.
Members were given the opportunity to vote for the person they thought most deserving of each award, in each chapter. PALMS reports and consultations with Chapter Presidents were used to help determine the winners. All prize recipients had prizes donated by fellow BNI members, with the prize pool exceeding $10,000.
Another highlight of the evening had to be the announcement of the BNI band. This is a group of people who are members of various chapters, who showed us their extra talents, by combining on stage to rock the night away. As the music pumped, the dance floor became more congested.
Later the Trevor Mitchell Band came back on stage, while people danced the night away. The concept was hatched to get BNI Townsville together, partly as a forerunner for July 2009, when the National BNI conference will be held in town. It was also an opportunity to recognize the achievements of members from all 5 chapters, as well as extend the networking and relationship building across all 5 chapters.
In the spirit of 'Givers Gain', some charity auctions were held on the night as well, with proceeds going to Breast Cancer, Movember and Camp Quality. Already the plan is to make the BNI Ball and Awards night an annual event. BNI members and partners who are planning on coming to the BNI National Conference can expect a great night out on Friday Jul 17, 2009.
"Best Ever BNI International Directors Conference"
November 13- 15, 2008, over 500 BNI directors from all over the world traveled to sunny Long Beach, CA, to attend the 2008 BNI International Directors Conference. Many attendees said it was even better than last year's, which had previously been labelled as the best conference.
The 2008 BNI International Directors Conference was held at the Hyatt Hotel with 550 BNI directors and staff in attendance. An impressive 420 BNI members showed up for the Members Day Session on November 14.
Norm Dominguez delivered his highly informative CEO Report. And Dr. Ivan Misner took the stage to present his illuminating, as well as entertaining, Chairman's Report.
Another Conference highlight was when Brian Tracy, best-selling author, international speaker, and world renowned sales and personal development expert, gave a powerful presentation on "Peak Performance in Turbulent Times."
The Conference was replete with a variety of educational breakout training sessions, individual and group dance cards, and open networking. It ended with the BNI Awards Banquet on Saturday night when over 180 awards were given out. Virtually every person in the ballroom was vigorously clapping when Beth Misner of the BNI Foundation announced that the BNI-Misner Foundation saw $54,000 donated/pledged at the International Conference -- once again showing that Givers Gain is not simply a catch-phrase.
The BNI International Directors Conference 2008 was an event to remember. And next year's conference, which will again be in beautiful Long Beach, promises to be even better!
Christmas Greetings and BNI Head Office Closure Dates
BNI Head Office and its Chapters close down for holidays from 5pm Friday 19th December, 2008 and reopen Monday 12th January, 2009. Please check with your Regional Office for their hours of operation over the Christmas period.
We would like to take the opportunity to wish members, their family and associates a safe and joyous Christmas and look forward to sharing a prosperous and successful New Year at BNI!
