Phil Berg!

 I’ve known Mr Berg for many years; in fact I worked in his team as a BNI Director, when I was part of the director’s team working from Head Office, in Rickmansworth. I had some wonderful years and miss many of the things we did (even losing to Charlie Lawson at Scalextric!). In case you are wondering why I left Head Office, my family and I moved to Surrey.

Anyway, why am I talking about Phil Berg? Well, it’s because if you haven’t met him I really suggest you do your best to do so, because he will help make BNI work for you. Might mean some hard work, the right work, but your likelihood of success will really improve, leading to more referrals and therefore better business.

I know what you have thought. How am I going to meet Mr Phil Berg? That’s possible, although he does visit most countries, but what you can certainly do is watch (and listen) to him on our BNI University. And I guess that is why I writing this, because I watched him yesterday.

I watched a One-2-One Skills Workshop, presented by him and Brian Gates, on the 2^nd June this year. It’s about how to have very useful One-2-Ones: when, where and what to cover and how to help the person you are working with (having the One-2-One with). But, one of the parts I like best is that he, and Brian, talk about how things have worked for them. Not to make them look good but to give you an idea of the sort of things that you can cover and that will certainly help you.

So, I highly recommend that you go and watch Mr Berg; I promise that you will learn a great deal.

Just enjoy.

All Zoomed!

We have now had a couple of months on Zoom and at BNI Elmbridge we have a fully attended meeting every week, plus some really amazing Feature Presentations.

I find it interesting as you see partners, children and many pets, especially lots of happy, friendly dogs. Drinks come and go (well mine do). Clothing is a ‘little’ different to that worn at actual meetings! And, chosen locations are very different and fun. For a few weeks we had someone attending on their exercise bike.

The education slots have been very useful for help in the current situation and the new Leadership Team are doing a lot of extra work, as are our website and social media team.

What I like the best is that our BNI group is keeping everyone active, whatever the status of the business at the moment. Many are using their time to plan the future, organise how they operate and improve their marketing; plus how to give better customer support.

Many of us are now getting back to ‘actual’ work. I think that if we are using this time in a positive way our businesses will be much stronger in the future.

Have useful BNI meetings, make sure you attend, and use your time, and help others, to plan a great future success.

What if your dream client were in the room?

Sometimes I meet people and I wonder would they dress as they do, say what they do, act as they do, if their dream client were in the room.

Now I’m not saying that we shouldn’t ever relax, or spend our whole lives pretending, but when we are working we are – well working!  And, if we are working, shouldn’t we doing our best all of the time and not just when in sight of our best client, or prospective best client?

It’s pretty much the same in all sorts of things. Just think of all the effort we all put into a first date!  We shower, brush our hair, wear our best clothes, arrive early, and, of course, are on our best behaviour.  But, can we say the same a few months down the line?  What’s more, it’s just the same when we go to an important meeting: our heart beats just as fast as on that first date.

When we get a new car, we lovingly wash and wax it, take care where we park it, don’t let our children eat in it.  But, a few months down the road …

It’s just human nature.  But, if we want to meet your dream client, and more importantly to do business with them, we need to be thinking about them all of the time.

Now often when networking, some of the people I meet haven’t considered that they might just meet their dream client.  Worse, that if they did, they might just miss the opportunity because they weren’t prepared; they hadn’t made the effort to be at their best.

So, next time you go to a networking event, to a business breakfast, to a business meeting, in fact just to work, prepare as if you are going to meet your dream client.  If you do, you never know, you might just meet them!

Have you let anyone down recently?

Trust is a major factor when it comes to people recommending you. Let’s face it, however good you think a company’s service is, would you easily recommend them if you couldn’t completely trust them?

I’m guessing that the answer is probably no – certainly I know that I would think twice.

It’s really important that we don’t raise people’s hopes by making a promise only to dash them by breaking that promise.  It wrecks our credibility and therefore any trust that person has in us and our company.

Now I not talking big events here, it’s the build up of those small broken promises that do the real damage.

For example, have you ever said to someone, ‘I’ll call you in the morning’ and not done so?  Or, ‘I’ll pop it in the post’ and forgotten?  Maybe, ‘How about coffee on Thursday?’ and totally forgotten about it.  Even, set a date for a meeting, ‘No fail’ you said, and then changed it.

The list may seem unimportant, but each is a broken promise.  Sooner or later people will stop believing you and with that goes your credibility.  And, after that goes the trust a person had in you.

The result of all these broken promises is fewer recommendations.

A client asked me recently how they could improve their image and by doing so get more recommendations and my answer was easy.  I replied, keep your promises. Only that very week I knew they had forgotten to call someone and the person concerned had stayed in all morning waiting for their call.

Okay, life happens, we all know that.  So, how can we avoid these little ‘killer’ things happening?  Here are my five top tips:

1)      Immediately make a note of anything agreed.  Put dates in your diary.  2) If it is possible, do whatever it is there and then.  3) Once a date is set, don’t break it.  What makes one meeting more important than the one you have already?  What does it say about the way you feel about the person that you are happy to break an appointment with?  4)  If you know that you are going to be pushed, don’t set a definite time.  Rather than saying 11.00am tomorrow, just say sometime tomorrow (but make sure it is tomorrow.  5)  If you do need to let someone down, because it will happen, let them know as soon as possible, don’t leave them guessing.

Follow these simple tips and you will find your credibility increases, the trust grows, and recommendations follow.

Under Pressure!

I love that song, especially the Queen and David Bowie mix; in fact I’m listening to it as I write this.

But, that’s not why I titled this blog – Under Pressure.

You see we have started the Hot Seat initiative at our chapter, Elmbridge, and as part of the Leadership Team (and VP) you could even say it was my idea. And, as I believe in leading from the front, I put myself top of the Hot Seat inviting list.

Now for those of you who have never heard of the Hot Seat, in simple terms, it’s about inviting visitors. In our case three members are given the job of finding a visitor in a given number of weeks, with the knowledge that should they fail….well there will be some form of consequence!

Now of course not many members like this concept and many in fact hate it. So why are we running the Hot Seat?

Well, the answer is two-fold: first, to replace members lost by natural attrition, and second, more business for our members. By far the most important of these is losses. On average a chapter will lose 12 members every year through no fault of their own. It just happens. Members move, retire, change jobs, have children and just about every other reason you can think of to leave. So unless these members are replaced the chapter gets smaller and smaller and smaller. I have even seen chapters completely disappear because nothing was done to keep the visitors coming. It happened to one of my chapters once and I never want to witness that again. It still saddens me to this day.

So I totally understand why members feel under pressure, because I feel it as well. In total I have five weeks to find a visitor and one of those weeks has gone already. I’ve tried my best possibilities so now I’m really Under Pressure and I have to say I’m feeling it a bit!

However, I also know that it is essential that I find a visitor for the well-being of my chapter (to do my bit) and so whatever it takes I will find one. I hope very soon.

Sometimes I wish I didn’t believe in leading from the front because then I would be further down the inviting list, have extra time to find a visitor and feel a lot less pressure. But, as they say, someone’s got to be first and it may as well be me. At least I have two friends with me (well they were!).

Do you like your Power Team?

The BNI definition of a Power Team is this:

‘A power team is a group of professionals in BNI who work in non-competing, related fields and have developed relationships so they can refer customers to each other.’

Many BNI Power Teams don’t work and I think the reason for this is very simple and the answer as to why this is the case can be found in the definition above.

You see most members hear (or read) ‘group of professionals in BNI who work in related fields’ and think the ‘non-competing’ is unnecessary, for example, an electrician doesn’t compete with a plasterer. So they think things will just work.

But, and this is the really important part, they have missed out ‘have developed relationships with'. You see a Power Team will never work to its maximum potential unless relationships are built between its members and, I would even say, unless they truly like one another.

Because as you build a relationship, you want to help one another, you’re working with one another and you’re finding out about one another; you are getting to like one another. Only then will the best referrals come - but first you must build the relationships.

So, if your Power Team doesn’t seem to be working take a moment and think about these questions. Have you built good relationships with the members of your Power Team? When did you last have a 1-2-1 with someone in your Power Team? When was the last time you met for a social event? And, the big one – do you like them? And, more important, do they like you?

If you work on the relationships the referrals will follow.

Gone fishing

David Moore (Novaglass) our double-glazing expert stands up for his 60 Seconds; he has a fishing rod in his hands. It seems that David likes to cast a line for a little relaxation in his spare time. I also discover that Matt Phils (A-Plan), our insurance broker, likes nothing better than to coax a monster carp into his landing net from a beautiful lake as often as he can. Although with two small children it’s not happened for a while.

Back row: Simon Harris, Mike Daly, Steve Cole, David Moore, David Wimblett
Front row: Nevill Godwin, Chris Denny

So why is this all going on at BNI Elmbridge? Well our 60 Seconds are all about our hobbies (with props of course). Now some of you might be thinking ‘but what’s that got to do with business?’ and the answer is, it’s about relationship building. Getting to know one another better. Finding something we have in common, a connection, because it really can make a big difference in how well people work together.

A great example of this happened to me a few years ago now. There was a member in my chapter that I seldom talked to and he didn’t go out of his way to talk to me either. Don’t know why, we just didn’t gel. Then he did his 10 Minutes and everything changed.

For his 10 Minutes he changed into his motorcycle racing leathers and he told us all about the racing he did around Europe. Now I was a big Barry Sheene fan and this got us talking. Cutting a long story short, the result was me referring him to one of my best friends, something that other than finding out about his hobby would never have happened.

So, I highly recommend that you have a Hobbies 60 Second at your chapter very soon if you haven't had one already.

And, obviously it’s not just about building business relationships, as I have now been clay pigeon shooting with Steve Cole (S. J. Cole & Co), our master builder, and I’m going pike fishing with David in the autumn. Just brilliant!

NOTE: Photograph by Andrew Boschier