St George's BNI

This post is based on one I wrote on my own blog, deargeek, back in January.

It seems like every day there’s another networking event or breakfast club popping up. Whether it’s a group of people chatting over coffee, exchanging business cards to make mini appointments in a speed dating style, small town events or county wide socials, they all claim to boost your business.

And the network I’m a member of is no different, they claim to be the single most effective way of generating new business.  What does make them different is that they measure how much business is being passed and you can actually work out what it’s worth.

You could quite easily spend an hour or two every day at some event or other, but how are you going to benefit if people are just turning up because it’s nice to have a chat?

St George’s BNI is not just a networking club, it’s a referral network.  That means that when you go along you’re not just trying to sell to everyone in the room.  You actually go with the intention of finding them more business.

And if you give them business, they will want to give you business.

Each week, we pass business to each other on little referral slips.  They contain the name and contact details of potential customers and information on what they need.  They are not just cold calls, they are expecting your call, they already know about you – they’ve been warmed up!

Later on in the meeting, we actually acknowledge how much business those little slips of paper have brought to us.  We pass little “Thank You” cards.  These are used to measure performance of the group as a whole, as well as helping people see if their referrals are paying off.  If your referrals are not warm enough, they won’t generate business.

This January we passed a big milestone at St George’s. Since we started passing those “Thank You” cards we’ve been keeping track of the total, and we have just passed the £1,000,000 mark.

If you want to grow your business and share some of that, you need to visit St George’s!

Or you can go somewhere for a coffee and a chat and just hope that something comes out of it, one day…

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