Synopsis

A long time ago a BNI chapter came to Dr. Misner and said they didn’t think attendance made any difference to the amount of referrals passed. They proposed to increase their attendance, track referrals, and demonstrate that there was no difference.

By the second quarter of this experiment, absenteeism dropped by 71% to .6 absences per member per quarter. Membership went up 50%, and referrals went up 62%.

BNI printed the results of the experiment. Dr. Misner got a call from a member who didn’t believe the results. He proposed to have his chapter track absences and referrals for a year. In their first quarter, they had a 53% drop in absenteeism and a 9% increase in referrals. The second quarter, they had a 58% drop in absenteeism, a 55% increase in members, and a 71% increase in referrals. In the third quarter, their membership increased by 90% and their referrals increased 164%. By that time, the chapter leadership was convinced.

If your chapter has high absenteeism, what’s in it for you and the other members in better attendance is more referrals.

You can read the original document here: 

Have you had a similar experience in your chapter? Would you like to duplicate this experiment? Share your experience in the comments.

Brought to you by Networking Now.

Complete Transcript of Episode 436 –

Priscilla:

Hello everyone and welcome back to the Official BNI Podcast, brought to you by NetworkingNow.com, which is the leading site on the net for networking downloadables. I am Priscilla Rice, and I am coming to you from Live Oak Recording Studio in Berkeley, California. I am joined on the phone today by the Founder and the Chief Visionary Officer of BNI, Dr. Ivan Misner. Hello, Ivan. How are you today?

Ivan:

I am doing great, Priscilla, and I am talking today on a topic that comes up all the time as I visit regions all around the world and I cannot believe that I have not gone deep into this topic on the BNI Podcast.

What made me think about it is I had a BNI Director just recently reach out to me and say, “Do you have any podcasts on the topic of absenteeism and how it affects referrals?” I said I was sure that I do. I did a search.

By the way, if you are listening to this, you can search for topics here on BNI Podcast just by doing a search.

I did a search and I realized I haven’t done this topic. So that is what I am going to do today and talk about how absences have a direct impact on the amount of referrals on a chapter.

I came upon this a long time ago when I had a chapter come to me and say we don’t believe that attendance makes any difference in the quantity of referrals. We don’t want to follow the program anymore. We don’t want to follow the attendance requirement.

I said, listen, the attendance requirement wasn’t created by me. It was created by the Board of Avisors. The International Board of Advisors, which is made up of nothing but members, is the one that creates all the policies for BNI. I told them that.

They said, yeah, yeah- we know that, but we think they were wrong. We really believe that attendance will make no difference in the amount of referrals. Here is what we propose: we propose that we improve the attendance in our chapter and continue to track the referrals. Ivan, we will show you that attendance has no impact on referrals. If we can show you that, will you go to the Board of Advisors and ask them to change this policy?

How do you like that as a question?

Priscilla:

I like that. I am listening. I am just thinking to myself how could you not think that being there would make a difference?

Ivan:

You know what? I was happy to consider it because the attendance policy is the biggest hassle for us in the organization.