Making Inviting Easy
Inviting.
Bringing visitors is the lifeblood of your chapter. Even if the visitor doesn’t join, on average a visitor will spend around $1000 with members in your chapter.
But for some reason this word generates the same response from some BNI members that the word telemarketing or cold calling does for some outside sales people, a giant groan of dread.
But inviting visitors doesn’t have to be a dreaded chore that causes one to procrastinate until a week has passed and it is time for your meeting again. It can be a very easy task if you follow some simple rules.
1. Invite people that you know.
The best place to find people is by opening up your checkbook or looking at your credit card. Who are you spending money with? Who is spending money with you?
These people already have a level of trust established with you so it makes it easier to invite them. The technique I use to invite a client is to NOT invite them when I am calling or meeting them to talk about their business. I make a special phone call to them just to invite them to our meeting. If they are in a profession that one of my members is looking for as a member of their contact sphere I say something like this:
“Hi Bill. One of my friends mentioned this morning that he was looking for a <insert profession> to pass business to and I immediately thought of you. Are you looking to grow your business?
You are? Great! Would you be able to come with me to meet him next Tuesday morning at 7:30? I would like to introduce you to him and 20 other local business people that could use your services.”
2. Focus on inviting them to VISIT.
The biggest mistake members make when inviting is they try to tell to much information hoping that it will make the person more excited to say yes. In fact it usually has the opposite reaction. Your BNI meeting is designed to give your visitors all the info they need to make a decision about BNI and how it can help them grow their business. Answer questions but remember the goal is just to get them to say yes to visiting. So when inviting the key word to use is visit not join.
3. Make inviting a regular part of your workday.
The more often you invite the easier it becomes to do and it becomes top of mind so you actually end up doing it more often! When i joined BNI many many years ago I put a note up in my office where I would see it all the time that said “Remember to invite to BNI”. Invite one person a day to start then as you get better at inviting and you have developed the inviting habit you will recognize people to invite that you hadn’t considered before.
4. Follow up with people that have said yes.
I recommend a personal phone call the day before to remind them about the meeting. Here is a technique that one of my very successful chapters shared with me and it has worked in all the chapters that I then gave it to.
Send and email to the entire chapter and copy the visitor on. In the email let the chapter know who is coming to the meeting and how excited your are to introduce them all to your visitor. When the visitor reads the email he will realize that there are 20-30 people that are now expecting him at the meeting. It will reduce the chance that they won’t show up.
5. No is not a bad answer.
Just like telemarketing the part of the activity that is perceived as the worst part is when someone tells you no. Getting told no for telemarketing or inviting just means you are that much closer to getting a yes.
A few years ago we had a jeweler visit one of my chapters. During the “I have” portion of the meeting he stood up and said that different people in the chapter had been inviting him off and on for the past three years and that he wished he would have listened to them three years ago and actually visited then. He was inducted the following week.
Just because the say no once doesn’t mean they won’t visit. It just means they won’t visit now.
Inviting can be an easy and successful activity if you make it simple. Find out who the most successful inviters are in your chapter and ask them how they do it. Becoming a successful inviter can be the fastest way to make your chapter even more successful.