Notably Green: Balance = Retention

Does your chapter keep adding new members and you keep to seeing about as many leave? Yes, life does happen and sometimes members move, change jobs, have health issues, etc. that necessitates them having to leave BNI. But what about the ones that decide BNI wasn't right for them. What do you suppose the reason was for them leaving? Studies have shown it may be because they didn't have an equal opportunity to receive referrals. How can that be you ask, if BNI provides all of these resources and the member takes full advantage and does all the activities that are suggested? It may be that the chapter is not balanced.

So why is balance important to BNI Chapters? For years BNI has said 'Grow your membership in order to make more money.' Which is true to a point. in further research and tracking results for many BNI Chapters, what has been determined is that the more balanced the contact spheres are in a chapter the more opportunities members have to receive referrals and thus have the potential to make more money. Why is that?

A member tends to receive 60 to 70% of their referrals from their contact sphere. If they only have a few members in their contact sphere, then they are not going to get many referrals.

Here are some examples of balanced and unbalanced contact spheres and their stats:

In the above example of an unbalanced Chapter, the Home Services Contact Sphere has the most members followed by the Trades and Financial Services Contact Spheres. However, the Marketing and Health & Wellness Spheres have few members. In this example, there are 36 members, the TYFCB reported was $420K and there is a retention issue.

In this example of a more balanced Chapter, the Home Services Contact Sphere is still the largest, however the other spheres aren't that far behind. In this example of a 36 member chapter, the TYFCB was $1.2M and there is no retention problem. Why? Because the contact spheres are more balanced and gives members more of an equal opportunity to receive referrals.

So, in order for a Chapter to give their members more equal opportunities to receive more referrals, make more money, and stay and renew, Chapters must ensure their Contact Spheres are as balanced as possible.

Here are the steps to create balance:

The first step to creating balance is to figure out where you are. Doing a spreadsheet like the ones above will identify which contact spheres (CS) are lacking in members and need to grow.
Second is to devise a plan to even out the contact spheres by working to grow the smaller spheres to the same size as the largest contact sphere in the chapter. Looking at the examples above, for the unbalanced chapter, the home services team has 13 members. The goal would be to grow the other contact spheres to 13 members each, starting with the smallest ones first. To grow out the other CS would mean adding 41 new members. Even the balanced chapter example has opportunity to grow and balance even more. To balance their CS would mean adding 13 more new members starting with the smaller CS of Marketing/Events. This needs to be an ongoing exercise in order to know at all times who the Most Wanted are for your chapter. Typically this falls to the Membership Committee and the Community Builder which includes the Growth for the chapter.
Once you determine which CS needs more members, then comes the task of determining which industries are needed. Which industries can the members in that CS pass referrals to. How do you find out? Ask. Seems simple, yes it does. Are they currently passing referrals to other members in other chapters? If so, to what industries? Are they passing referrals to people outside of BNI? If so, what industries? Also ask, who is typically sitting on your referrals? Meaning who can pass you referrals? And who are their good referral partners?
After asking the above questions, compile your list. There will be industries that are mentioned by more than one member. Give that industry more weight. Rank your most wanted with the CS with the least amount of members at the top of the list. For example, in our unbalanced chapter above, the Marketing/Events CS only had one member, so focus would need to be put of this CS and the industries needed to grow that CS, i.e. event planner, photographer, gift service, travel agent, etc.
On your most wanted list, determine the Top 5. Have your Membership Committee announce during their report each week, who your Top 5 most wanted seats are. It plants the seed in the minds of the members as well as the visitors. If a visitor is there who could fill one of your Top 5, that's a nice way to say, 'We want you in our Chapter!'
Publish your Most Wanted on your Facebook page. This publishes to a larger audience of those people who 'Like' your page but aren't members of your chapter. They may know someone they can refer.
Post your Most Wanted on the Notably Green page. There may be members in other Chapters who have business colleagues who are looking for a BNI Chapter.
Each time you add a new member, take their photo of their induction and announce on your Facebook page. 'We are very excited to have Jane Smith joining our Marketing & Events team filling the Event Planner seat. We are still looking for a Photographer, gift service, and a travel agent to pass referrals to.' People who follow your Facebook page will want to help you find prospects to fill these seats.
Ask on social media, do you know, i.e. 'I'm looking for a good family photographer, who would you recommend?' Usually you'll get many referred and many recommended more than once. Take those that are recommended the most, give them a call and tell them that you belong to a referral group who is looking for a photographer to pass referrals to. Would they be interested in meeting your referrals partners? If they say yes, invite them to your meeting. If they say no, ask who would they recommend.
Have 'Focused Inviting' Days. Invite prospects just for a particular Contact Sphere, i.e. Marketing & Events.
Have 'Stack Days.' Focus on inviting one of two from a particular industry, i.e. photographers and travel agents. Usually you'll have several from each industry. Which is usually a good thing because it creates a sense of competition and often one will submit an application.
Use your Most Wanted list and have a full blown Visitor Day. By focusing on just the industries needed for the chapter, rather than come one come all, it will lead to a more focused approach and be a more successful event.
Keep track of where you are as you add new members and as members leave. Adjust your focus accordingly. It will take time to get your chapter more balanced, but the more balanced your chapter, the more of an equal opportunity for ALL the members to receive referrals and make more money, thus a happy member. Happy members renew and stay thus the chapter has higher and better retention and thus more growth.

Growth and Retention go hand and hand. You can't have one without the other. New Members are great, however renewing members mean you have a happy member that has seen the value in their membership. Statistics have shown that the longer a BNI member is a BNI Member the more successful they are.