Building Successful BNI Chapters By Design

From December 2015

 

I recently had the privilege on being on a con call with Tom Fleming, Executive Director for the Tampa West Central Florida area. Tom used the term 'Build BNI Chapters By Design.' He explained that typically when new Chapters are forming they invite anyone and everyone. What generally happens is a Chapter ends up with a 'hodge podge' of members, making it difficult to pass referrals. His idea is to concentrate on 'Contact Spheres' in order to build Power Teams who naturally pass referrals to each other.

A few months ago I put together a presentation on 'How to Get More Referrals,' which the basis was to grow a BNI Chapter using the concept of growing Power Teams.

Most BNI Chapters have four basic Power Teams, i.e. Real Estate, Finance, B2B, and Health & Wellness. Larger Chapters (40+) tend to have more defined Power Teams.

 

Why concentrate on building out Power Teams? According to Mike Roberts, Executive Director of BNI New Hampshire, "Effective power teams generate more referrals for the rest of the chapter because they are generating so much business for each other that they are finding more referrals for the other members of the chapter outside of their power team."

So here's where 'Growing a Successful Chapter by Design' comes into play. Rather than just invite, invite, invite, determine the current power teams in your Chapter and challenge each power team to grow their team to at least 10.

• Make a list of what other industries you need on your Power Team

• Share your list with your other Power Team members

•  Make a list of people you know who are in these industries

• Ask people you know if they know people in these industries

• Invite them to BNI - You have people who want to give them referrals.

• Give your list of 'Most Wanted Professions' to your Growth Coordinator to use for planning Stack Days and Focused Inviting Events

• Share your list with Your Membership Committee so they can publish and announce each week the Top 'Most Wanted'

• Make a contest to see which Power Team can grow to 10 within a designated timeframe

Video - "More Tea?--The Way to Build a BNI Power Team." - Click Here to watch

It is typically easier to help grow your Power Team because these are the people you are usually already working with and passing business to anyway. Show a Givers Gain attitude and invite them to your BNI Meeting.

This is a good time to focus on goals and put plans and strategies in place for the new year. Please let me know how I can be of help in helping you and your Chapter Successfully Grow By Design.