Practise what you preach!

4/4/09

Credibility and personal branding are so important in your chapter and I believe that a great many members just don't understand how important these two things are.

I have a great book called the Perfect Portfolio and in it, amongst other things, the author suggests that you need to open with a 'Bang' and close with a 'Bang', but more important than that, you will only sell what is in your portfolio. In my case as a printer, these is no point going out selling colour leaflets if my portfolio is full of 2-colour letterheads. Things just don't stack up.

And, it is exactly the same in your BNI chapter. Only in your chapter you and your company are your portfolio. I will give you some examples to explain.

We once had a web designer join our chapter, only to discover a short time later that they didn't have a web site themselves. Guess what that did to their credibility? How hard do you think it was to refer a web designer who didn't have a web site? Can I add here that if you are a web designer and you look after your chapter's web site, make sure that the chapter site is always up to date, as if it's not, it will hurt your credibility.

If you are a copywriter your 60 Seconds need to be perfect, every word in exactly the right place and every 60 Seconds exactly that - 60 seconds.

On the other hand if you are a Business Coach who says that you can help companies find more business and increase sales, then you must have business yourself. A great way of also showing how good you are at gaining people new business is to be the top visitor bringer to your chapter.

Then of course you have the Personal Coach - they listen, consider, and help. What do you think it says about that coach if throughout the meeting they are constantly interrupting and not understanding what is being said?

I think that by now you are probably getting the picture - that you have to be what you are selling. You have to look the part. If you are expecting to sell an expensive service you really can't hand out a cheap looking business card you got off the web - you want someone to give you thousands of pounds but can only afford £20 for business cards. Again it doesn't add up.

So, credibility, it's built on everything you do in your chapter, everything you say, everything you show.

If you are not getting the number of referrals that you think you should, may I suggest that you find a member that you can trust to tell you the truth and ask if your credibiltiy and branding match up to what you are selling. And, if not, how you could improve things.

If you can increase your credibility your referrals will follow suit.