I’d like to introduce…

If your chapter doesn’t get its members to introduce their visitors it is missing a trick; a very large trick!

You see there are three great reasons why a member should introduce the person they have invited to your chapter.

1)    It gives added importance to bringing a visitor and also gives the visitor a lovely introduction.

2)    It gives special recognition to the member who has brought the visitor along in front of the chapter.

3)    And, this is really important, it has a hidden element to it.

What’s this hidden element?

Well let’s consider two possible introductions of the visitor. The first, ‘I would like to introduce Sarah, we met in the pub last night and as she is looking for more business, I suggested she came along this morning.’ And second, ‘I would like to introduce Sarah, we have been friends for over 10 years now, and I’ve lost count of the number of times she has helped me and my business.’

These introductions are valuable for two reasons and both are useful for the members and Membership Committee alike. The first tells everyone that you know nothing about Sarah, so you know nothing about her or how well she runs her business. Whereas the second is a wonderful reference and your members know that they would be safe in using her services.

The introductions are also extremely useful to the Membership Committee should she apply to join your chapter as, in the first example, they would have to spend more time following up on references and researching her business details.

So, I strongly recommend that if your chapter doesn’t already let members introduce their visitors that they do so very soon.

The 10 Year Breakfast…

Is the title of my second book due for publication in April. My first, in case you missed it, was ‘BNI: One Bite at aTime’.

The 10 Year Breakfast is the result of me eating nine hundred and eighty seven breakfasts (mainly Full English) over the past ten years. My book is about business; it is about what I have learnt about business whilst networking, in the main as a long-time member, and director, of BNI.

This is what Executive Director Colin Read says about my book: "David has the ability to observe everyday networking situations with an extremely dry sense of humour that is rarely found before lunchtime, let alone breakfast. 

In a nutshell, 'He adds the brown sauce to your full English!'  A must read..."

And this is part of the foreword by Nigel Botterill of the Entrepreneur’s Circle, “What’s more, by his own admission, he wasn’t very good at this ‘networking thing’ when he first started and that makes him even more interesting and fascinating to me, because he’s come from a position of incompetence and poor results, to master what he does.

Critically, his success as a networker isn’t innate which has helped him to teach and share his lessons along the way in a very accessible style.”

I’ve learnt a great deal from BNI over the last ten years and so I would like to give you, the readers of my blog, a special Pre-Publication Offer as a Thank You.

My book has a cover price of £11.95, but buy it before publication, before the 11th April, and you can get your copy (maybe even copies) for just £5.00 (plus £1 toward P&P).

All you need to do is click here to order.

Thank you.