We are running a visitor inviting
campaign at BNI Elmbridge at the moment which involves every member bringing in
five postcards. For our chapter of 36 members, 180 postcards will be sent out
inviting business people to our meeting. That just has to be good.
Now there’s a poor way of doing
postcards and a good way of doing them but what I like about the ‘five
postcards’ is that every member can take part and, even with the little extra
time needed to do them correctly, they will only take about 30 minutes to put
together.
So, I guess what you are thinking is,
how do you do them correctly?
The answer to that is simple – they
need to be addressed to a named person; so not ‘The Manager’ or similar, not
just the company name, but, for example, to ‘Steve Smith’. The other thing that
needs to be done is to record their phone number and/or their email address so
that the postcards can be followed up. By simply contacting the person invited
a few days after your postcards are delivered will massively increase the
results of the campaign.
Another great thing about postcard
inviting is that BNI supply the postcards and your chapter will even stick the
stamps on for you. How good is that!
Okay, now we get to the big one. Who to
invite?
This is something that really stresses
a lot of members but I can never understand why. Ask me to find a referral or
someone to invite to Elmbridge and I would go for the visitor every single
time. Why? Because I can control who I invite but I can’t always find a referral.
So, who do I invite? Well, I guess they
fall into three groups; people I know (a good place to look for these people
are in your mobile - these will give you your best success rate), names from
business cards that I have collected in my travels and, if all else fails,
Google.
Google is the least successful but can
get you some great visitors (and members). Remember you need to find a name, so
here are a few tips to help make things easier for you.
First, choose a category to invite; a
good starting point is a business you would like in your Power Team. Then
search whatever that business is and your chapter’s location. For example in my
case it might be – bookkeeper Hersham.
The contact details, address, phone and
email are usually pretty simple to find, as most sites have a ‘Contact Us’
page. But if I can’t find this information in a couple of clicks I move on to
the next possible business.
A name can be more difficult to find,
and this is where you will spend the most time, but can usually be found in either
the ‘About Us’, ‘History’, ‘Staff’, ‘Testimonial’ pages or of course in the
name of the company. Another place to check is in the blog if they write one.
Some types of business, as a whole,
seem to hide the names of their people while others are very open. So, if you
have chosen a category where after a few different sites you’ve not found a
person’s name move on to another category.
The other great thing about Google is
that you can search for people to invite, anytime, anyplace, anywhere. I once
put together a list of people to invite when I had a few minutes spare on a
trip in Japan.
In all you shouldn’t have to spend more
than about 30 minutes writing your five postcards and it’s a great contribution
to your chapter.
The main thing is not to see inviting
as a chore but more a way of increasing your business.
