Episode 518: Want More Referrals? Show Up! - a podcast by Dr. Ivan Misner

Synopsis

Would you like to substantially increase the number of referrals that your BNI chapter generates? If so, listen.

Years ago, a chapter president wanted to prove to Dr. Misner that attendance had no effect on the number of referrals passed. After 6 months, absenteeism dropped by 71%. Referrals went up 62% and membership went up 50%. A second chapter tried the same experiment. After 9 months, absences decreased by 53%, referrals went up 164%, and membership grew by 90%.



If your chapter is lax on attendance, it’s going to affect your pocketbook.

Listen to Episode 490 for more data that supports the role attendance plays in membership growth and referrals passed.

Brought to you by the Networking for Success Channel on YouTube.

Complete Transcript of Episode 518 –

Priscilla:

Hello everybody and welcome back to the Official BNI Podcast, brought to you by the Networking for Success Channel on YouTube, which features Dr. Ivan Miser and many other networking experts. I am Priscilla Rice, and I am coming to you from Live Oak Recording Studio in Berkeley, California. I am joined on the phone today by the Founder and the Chief Visionary Officer of BNI, Dr. Ivan Misner. Hello, Ivan. How are you and where are you this week?

Ivan:

I just got back from a visit to the Tucson BNI region. I love that region, I’ve been there several times. It was great to be back!

Priscilla:

Good! What is this podcast about?

Ivan:

So the title of the podcast is, “Want more referrals? Show up!” So here is a question to everyone in BNI listening to this podcast or reading the transcript; Would you like to have a substantially increase in the number of referrals that your BNI chapter generate? If you answered yes, listen up, here’s how. Years ago, many years ago, I had a chapter president call me with a proposition. He said his chapter felt that the attendance policy was a hassle and they didn’t believe it made any difference in referrals. As a matter of fact, he said he felt it was actually a drawback to membership. So, I told him I didn’t create the policy, it was created by a board or advisers which is made up exclusively of BNI members. He said his group- and I’m not making this up, wanted to test something out. They wanted to show me and the board, that the attendance had no impact on referrals and it had no impact of membership. None.

Priscilla, I know you’re chuckling, but at that point I was not because we did not have hard data back then. I’m like “okay, fine.” This attendance thing is driving me nuts. Anyway, so he asked me if I would publish the findings in our newsletter, and ask the board to reconsider this policy if they could document that it made no difference. I happily agreed to both.

So, they used the prior quarter as their baseline and they began focusing on improving attendance starting with the next month. It is important to note that this during this time they did nothing else other than improve attendance. They really didn’t focus on anything else other than improving attendance. Now, I’m going to include a couple of graphics in this podcast and it will show some of the data that I’m talking about here, so that you can visually see the graphics.

So, they used the prior quarter. Then for six months, they looked at it on a quarter-by-quarter basis, they did it for six months. So, what were their results? Well, they decreased their absences, they had a 0.7 absences per member month. So roughly every member missed a meeting every other month, roughly. And in their first quarter, they dropped their absenteeism by 52% – so a big drop in absenteeism. After six months,

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