This is a rebroadcast of Episode 116.

Synopsis

In week two of BNI Fundamentals, Dr. Misner addresses “Full Participation in BNI.” (Remember, Education Coordinators can download all this material in advance from BNI.com.)

* Be there every week. Out of sight, out of mind. And if you show up late for BNI, we assume you’ll show up late with clients.

* Participate in the networking time that starts each meeting. Don’t sit down until the president calls the meeting to order. Pay special attention to visit.

* Participate 100% in the meeting. Treat whoever is speaking as if they were the biggest client you could possibly land.

* Attend the BNI trainings and embrace a culture of learning.

All four of these practices demonstrate the Givers Gain mentality. The more you put into BNI, the more you’ll get out of it.

Brought to you by Networking Now.

Complete Transcription of BNI Podcast Episode 116 –

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’m Priscilla Rice, and I’m coming to you from Live Oak Recording Studio in Berkeley, California, and I am joined on the phone today by the founder and the chairman of BNI, Dr. Ivan Misner.

Hello, Ivan and how are you?

Ivan:

I’m doing great, Priscilla. This week I’m still up at Big Bear. We’re doing master trainer meetings with the Referral Institute people. One of the companies I run is called The Referral Institute. For BNI members, if you have a chance, go to ReferralInstitute.com, and it’s a great program to help teach people to go really deep in learning how to create referrals for life. I’m meeting with the key master trainers this week in Big Bear for the referrals.

Priscilla:

That sounds great. Well, what would you like to share with us this week?

Ivan:

Well, last week I started the 12 weeks of BNI Fundamentals, and this is week number 2, which is called Full Participation in BNI. If you’re an education coordinator, you can download these 12 weeks ahead of time by going to BNI.com and putting your user name and password for education coordinators. If you don’t have that, go to you local BNI director and get that information. And you can get this ahead of time and then follow along with us and help train and support members on these podcasts as we do them.

Last week we made the point that success in BNI comes when the rest of the chapter members trust you enough to open up their best referrals to you. You have to remember that until we’ve experienced your work, you have to earn that trust by showing us how professional you are and by treating us like prized clients. So we talked about the things not to do to be a good member in BNI.

This week the subject is how to really play full out, full participation in BNI for fun and for profit. The first simply is showing up each week at our meetings. That means be there every week; be there on time; actually participate. Why? Two reasons. First, if you’re not there, you’re not fresh in everyone’s mind, and you’re not in the minds of the members each and every week. We won’t think of you when we’re standing smack in the middle of a great referral for you.

The second reason is if you don’t show up or you show up late, we assume that’s just your style. This is really important. If you don’t show up or you show up late, we assume that’s just your style and that that’s the way that you’ll operate in a referral that we give you, that you’ll do the same thing with people we might refer to you. Remember, your actions here are all we have to go on to judge your professionalism with our referrals. So it’s very important that you walk the talk.