What’s the point of email?

I sometimes wonder why some members have an email address.  After all, what is the point of having an email address if you aren’t going to check it or, worse still, answer it.

Now as a business mentor I’m the first to say that you mustn’t be ruled by your email, but there is a big difference to being a slave to your email box and not looking at it at all.

Over the last two days I have sent three emails to three different members with the potential of work.  One is a definite job.  But I’ve not heard back from any of them.

Now it’s possible that an email hasn’t been delivered; but all three?  And of course I could pick up the phone and call them.  Often far better than an email or text in fact.  But that’s not the point.  Especially when I’ve been told by someone who knows one of the members that he never answers his emails.

So I guess that’s my point.  If you don’t want to communicate by email, don’t publish your email address.  And, if you do publish your email address, you have to appreciate that people will use it, and you will need to check your inbox and answer any emails.  Because, believe me, you will be losing business and maybe, in the long term, even customers.

Rant over.  I’m going to check my inbox!

Does it add up?

There are many reasons why people join BNI but obviously, by far, the most important is business; after all we are a referral organisation.  So it surprises me how few members keep any record of how much business they get from being a member.

And this fact has never been more sharply brought to my attention than in these past few weeks when three members, from different chapters, all asked me for 1-2-1s to discuss if it was worth them renewing their membership.  All three didn’t think that they were getting much business from their chapters.

Having met with the three members I discovered a common theme.  They had no records of how much business they received from BNI. But, more importantly, when we really looked into where each got their business from, a great deal was in fact from BNI. And in one case, almost 90% of their business came from BNI.  So the big question?  Why didn’t they know?

Well, the first reason was obviously lack of record keeping, but it went much further than that.  You see they focused on their weekly referrals.  And in all three cases, they were not getting as many referrals from their chapters as they used to. (They all need to find out why.) In fact, one of the members hadn’t received a referral from their chapter in over two months.  However, they had all missed out the business they were in actual fact getting.  So, where was this business coming from?

The answer to this was from all sorts of places: other chapters, workshops, online.  But, the two main sources, they had all overlooked were repeat business. One had a repeat monthly order that they didn’t even think about anymore, and third party recommendations.  Third party recommendations can be huge.  You know the sort of thing; someone in your chapter gives you a referral, you do a great job, and that person recommends you to one of their friends, you do a great job for them and they recommend you to one of their friends.  And so on.  Now by the third of fourth recommendation you might be thinking “what’s that got to do with BNI?” Well, the big thing is you wouldn’t have got the recommendation (any of the recommendations) without BNI.  So I would suggest  - everything.

So, even if you are extremely happy with your BNI membership, I would advise that if you don’t already, keep a record of all business, and I mean all business, you receive from BNI, that you do so from today.  You might just be surprised!

Note: All three members renewed.