Are You in Profitability?

From November 2018

VCP - Visibility + Credibility = Profitability

 

What is this formula and what does it mean?

 

Visibility is pretty self-explanatory. People know who you are and may know what you do.

 

 

Credibility means that people know who you are and understand that you do a good job at what you do. They may use your products and/or services.

 

Profitability is when someone knows, likes, and trust you, uses your products/services, and gives you referrals.  You will know you are in 'profitability' when you are getting tier 3, 4, and 5 referrals that resulted from your involvement with BNI.  

 

We all became a part of BNI to increase our business, get referrals, and make more money. Depending on a person's industry and how well they follow the BNI formula for success will depend on how long it takes them to get to Profitability.

VCP is a referral process, not a sales process. If the majority of your clients aren't giving you referrals, then you are only at Credibility with your clients, not at Profitability. It's possible that you can have a lot of Visibility and a lot of Credibility, but NOT have Profitability. Rather than a formula, VCP is a continuum. Profitability does not result automatically from Visibility and Credibility.

Getting to Profitability takes time and work. Here is one BNI member's story when asked does BNI work.

A member was asked about the investment and how much money he made in BNI as a member.  The member responded with... "In my first year in BNI, I made 4 times my membership fees investment.  It wasn't until my second year where I saw the real difference.  This year I have already made over 20X my investment and the year is only half way through.  It took me a year to learn how to talk about my business effectively, learn how to give and get qualified referrals, and conduct enough 1-2-1's to understand the other members in the room.  See BNI takes time.  There are no quick fixes and fast results here.  It takes time and work to do anything worthwhile and to build strong lasting relationships.  The VCP model takes time to move from visibility to credibility and it took longer to move from credibility to profitability.  I am now in profitability with my best referral partners."

 

Mike Barbieri, Executive Director adds - There is "WORK" in Networking.  We have many 90-minute members in BNI.  Where some of our members are present for the 90 minutes during our weekly meeting and forget about their BNI team until next week's meeting.  We are all busy.  That is not an alibi nor excuse.  I hear people say, "I do not have time to work on BNI."  What I hear is... "I do not have time to work on my business."  No matter what excuse you are telling yourself, you should not be working on BNI in the first place.  You should be working ON YOUR business.  Do you tell people that you are working on your CRM (Customer Relationship Management) system?  No, because that is a business software tool.  Why do you say I am working on BNI?  Isn't BNI a framework, a platform or a tool to help you and your business be accountable and generate more money for you and your team?  Maybe we should change how we think about BNI.  So, block some time each week in your busy schedule and work on your business.  Go out and network, meet new people make new friends, develop new relationships, invite new visitors, learn more, and generate more money.  They say that your net worth and your network is the new currency.  It is not always what you know, but who you know and sometimes how well you know them.

Here are some additional resources:

Podcasts - #420 - V+C Does Not = P

#580 - Keeping the VCP Process ALIVE

#528 - How many networks - How many hours?

Power Of One Podcast #233 - What is Missing in VCP

I encourage you to access the podcasts via BNI University so that you show up on the Leaderboard for your Chapter and your area.  To make it easier, you can also download the app to your smart device.  It's available from ITunes and Google.