Synopsis

Today’s Ask Ivan question comes from Serena in the USA.

My chapter does not do visitor orientations at all. We haven’t done it since we chartered several years ago. Our members chose not to take visitors out of the room before the announcements, feeling that it would bring down the energy level, and we used to have 4 to 5 visitors a week. Now the VP and membership committee talk to the visitors at the end of the meeting and ask whether they would like help filling it in.

Visitor orientation was started by a BNI chapter; Dr. Misner discovered it when he visited this chapter in the 1980s. The chapter president gave Dr. Misner the job description for the visitor host, and the description of the visitor host in the BNI handbook today is based on that description.

You won’t get the same performance out of a BNI chapter if you don’t follow the tried and true agenda set out for you. Don’t reinvent the wheel. Visitor orientations have been proven to work since the mid-1980s. They’re important because visitors don’t know what BNI is about or how it works.

If you find your chapter is neglecting an important part of the BNI agenda ask your director for a referral to a chapter that’s doing that thing really well. Visit their chapter and see how they do it. Ask your director for help implementing it. There are systems and processes for everything that BNI asks chapters to do.

Don’t forget to listen to Episode 503, Making People Feel Welcome in BNI.

Brought to you by the Networking for Success Channel on YouTube.

Complete Transcript of Episode 509 –

Priscilla:

Episode 509. Don’t Reinvent the Wheel, which is part of the Ask Ivan series. If you would like to ask Ivan a question, go to [email protected].

Hello everybody and welcome back to the Official BNI Podcast, brought to you by the Networking for Success Channel on YouTube, which features Dr. Ivan Miser and many other networking experts. 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, thank you very much. I have kind of an interesting topic. I have a question that I had to go put my blood pressure cuff on after I read the question. You know, did a little meditation and thought it through. I have, I think, a better Asher than I would have had when I first read the question.

The question comes from Serena in the United States. This is what she asked. She says, “My chapter does not do visitor orientations at all.” This is where the blood pressure cuff came in. “We haven’t done it at all since we chartered several years ago. Members chose not to take visitors out of the room before announcements, feeling that it would bring down the energy level. We used to have 4-5 visitors a week,” which I think is interesting wording, used to have. “Now the VP and Visitor Host go and talk to visitors at the end of the meeting to ask whether they would like an application and like any help filling that in.”

I do know for a fact that she was interested in doing visitor orientation, but she just wanted my feedback on this. So I don;t want to throw Serena totally under the bus. She asked me about this. So what I thought I would do today is tell a little story about how visitor hosts and visitor orientation started.

It was actually in the mid-1980’s, several years after I started BNI. I might have the exact date in the book Givers Gain, but it would be in the mid-80’s. I heard about a chapter that had this thing call...