This is a rebroadcast of Episode 278.

Synopsis

Dr. Misner’s favorite technique for inviting visitors to BNI is what he calls “We’re Interviewing.”

Suppose your chapter needs a printer. When you meet a printer, explain that you’re in a referral group and say “We’re interviewing printers now to find the best printer in the area to give all of our business to. I think you might make a good candidate.” Replace “printers” with members of any profession your chapter needs.

This shows people the value of BNI membership and helps the chapter to be selective about new members.

Of course, this means you have to interview the visitor after the chapter meeting. Only submit an application if you think the person is a good fit.

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Complete Transcript of BNI Podcast Episode 278 –

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, CA. I am joined on the phone today by the Founder and Chairman of BNI, Dr. Ivan Misner. Hello Ivan. How are you today?

Ivan:

I am doing great, Priscilla, and today I have a topic that somebody asked me about. It’s inviting visitors, a technique that I call the “we’re interviewing” technique. They said have you talked about this on a podcast and I said, yeah, I thought so. I did a search and I saw a mention of it in one of my podcasts, but I never really went into any detail. It’s such an important topic that I can’t believe that I haven’t talked about this thoroughly on one of the podcasts in the past.

People ask me how do you invite people? What is the best technique? What I think the best technique is, the one I really like, is “we are interviewing.” So take a profession, whatever it is- a printer. Let’s say your chapter decides they need a printer. What you want to do is, when you meet a printer, to say to them, “We’re interviewing printers right now.” Start it with, “I am in a referral group. We get together on a regular basis. We are all about passing referrals to each other. We are interviewing printers right now to find the best printer in the community that we can give all of our referrals to. I think you might make a great candidate.”

So let’s review this again. I want people to use this. You can use the transcript. I want you to use the transcript.

“I’m in a referral group.” You don’t have to go into much detail. “I am in a referral group. I have been a member for [however long]. We get together on a regular basis and we’re all about passing business to each other. We’re interviewing [fill in the blank for whatever profession]. We’re interviewing printers right now to find the best printer in the area to give all of our business to. I think you might make a good candidate.”

That’s a really powerful way to invite people. One of the reasons is whenever- sometimes when people invite others- one of the great things about BNI is people love BNI. They love BNI, and so they maybe come on just a little bit too strong,. “Oh, you have got to join this organization. It’s the best organization around. They get a lot of business.” People who don’t know you are like, “Who are you? And why are you trying to sell me on this? Read the palm.” Right? They get put off.

One of the things that I found is that if you can, in an appropriate way, be more exclusive about who you bring in, you are actually going to get more interest from people. It’s a little bit counter intuitive but it’s absolutely accurate...