One-to-One Meetings | Dr. Ivan Misner®

20Dec2021

Referrals Work Both Waysstring(24) "Referrals Work Both Ways"

December 20, 2021

Networking, One-to-One Meetings Building Relationships, Business, Referrals 2

When you receive a referral from your networking group, it directly benefits your business. When you give a referral to someone in your group, it strengthens your network while benefiting your referral partner.

If you have a growing customer base, you’re going to be generating a lot more business for your referral partners. To strengthen your referral network and keep your business growing, you need to make sure your networking partners can handle all the referrals you will be providing.

Because referrals work both ways, it is important to build trust and develop deep relationships with your fellow networking members. You want to have One-to-One meetings with them; get to know them and their business well enough to understand the scope of their services and products. You can ask them detailed questions about their company to find out who their ideal customers are and how they are able to best serve them. This will help you identify possible referrals for them. You may want to ask about their plans for business growth to determine if they can accommodate the potential increase in clients from future referrals.

When you offer your referral partner a business opportunity they can’t handle, several things can happen. They may try to provide the product or service but do a poor job, upsetting the customer – your friend or colleague – which can damage your reputation.

They may pass the referral along to another businessperson that you don’t know, taking control of your referral relationship away from you and putting your reputation at risk. Or they may decline the referral, forcing you to spend additional time finding another person to give the referral to. You may have to go outside your network to put the prospect in touch with someone who can get the job done, which defeats the purpose of your referral network. You may even have to admit to your contact that you cannot help them after all.

Your ability to handle referrals from your network is equally important to your network’s ability to handle referrals from you. If your business grows big and strong but your referral network doesn’t, you will eventually become a network of one.

To keep this from happening, recruit new people and new professions to extend your network for the benefit of all members and take every opportunity to enhance your networking partners’ businesses. A true master networker works on building not just their own business, but the businesses of their fellow networkers, too.

21Jun2021

2021 BNI Founder’s Daystring(24) "2021 BNI Founder’s Day"

June 21, 2021

Ivan Misner

2021, Founder’s Day, June 24, one-to-one, One-to-One Meetings Founder's Day, Ivan Misner, world tour 2

Welcome to the 2021 BNI Founder’s Day. Later this week, I start a new tradition at BNI. I selected 17 BNI members from around the world for a one-to-one meeting with me on June 24th. These seventeen BNI members represent eleven different countries. I am looking forward to these 17 individual one-to-one meetings.

The 2021 BNI Founder’s Day

It is going to be an amazing BNI Founder’s Day as I have one-to-one meetings with our BNI members. Furthermore, I am anticipating great questions from the BNI members during our one-to-one meetings on Thursday. The purpose is for BNI members to ask any business or networking-related questions during their meeting with me. Congratulations to those who were selected for a one-to-one meeting on June 24th.

187 requests were submitted from my April 15th blog. Thanks to the more than 170 additional BNI Members who also submitted request forms. I wish I had the time to have a one-to-one meeting with all of you. Founder’s Day will become an annual event on the third Thursday of June every year. I recommend that you reapply again next year (starting in 2023, it will be the last Thursday in June each year). Therefore, I will be planning to schedule another day full of individual one-to-one meetings with BNI members from around the world. The 2022 BNI Founder’s Day will be on June 30th, 2022. Look for the announcements in mid-April 2022 and submit your request form to my assistant by mid-May.

Celebrate Founder’s Day by Scheduling One-to-One Meetings this year on June 24th

I invite all my followers to help me celebrate BNI Founder’s Day 2021 globally by scheduling several on June 24th too.

Your one-to-one meetings should be both structured and social. The more you can find overlapping areas of professional and personal interest, the more successful your one-to-one meetings are going to be. The Gains Exchange form (Available on BNI Business Builder for BNI members) is an effective tool for discovering these common interests. There is a direct linear correlation between the number of one-to-one meetings conducted and the number of referrals. Those who do three or more one-to-one meetings per month give and receive twice as many referrals as those who do one or fewer one-to-one meetings in a month. More One-to-Ones equal more referrals.

BNI Founder’s Day, on June 24, 2021, is an excellent opportunity. Schedule your own one-to-one meetings with your fellow chapter members or even BNI members from around the world. Reach out and invite other business owners and professionals to have a conversation with you to learn more about their business. Share your G.A.I.N.S. profile and ask some questions. It can be a great way to build and strengthen your business relationships.

27May2013

Facts Tell, But Stories Sellstring(28) "Facts Tell, But Stories Sell"

Over the past few weeks, I’ve posted blogs on how embracing quality, adding members, and seeking engagement are all things that will help networkers and entire networking groups achieve success. Today, I’d like to talk about an additional tactic for obtaining stellar networking results–sharing stories.

Listening closely to the information shared by those in your referral network will help you in telling positive stories about them when you come across potential opportunities to refer them. Conducting regular one-to-one meetings with each of your networking partners will also help you become more able to share stories when you refer others to them. Think about your many positive experiences with your fellow networkers and write them down.

A number of years ago, I met Robert Dickman, author of The Elements of Persuasion, and he taught me the formula for a good story:

A story is a fact
Wrapped in emotion
That compels us to take action
That transforms us in some way

The key here is that a good story compels people to take action and that this action transforms or helps them in some way. I always try to re-live a story, not just re-tell a story. Make it sound fresh and alive. That is an important aspect of storytelling.

Remember that facts tell, but stories sell. If you want to build your network in order to generate more referrals, overlay storytelling on top of your efforts.

The keys to success within networking groups which I’ve previously posted blogs about (embracing quality, adding members, seeking engagement) can combine with sharing stories for a powerful formula that will help members of networking groups obtain optimum networking results and business growth:

3+1 = Member Success

1-Embrace Quality
2-Add Members
3-Seek Engagement
+1 Share Stories

Understanding this formula can improve your business networking success in amazing ways.

If your networking group already employs this formula, I’d love to hear about the impact it has made on your group’s performance and results. Please share your feedback (and stories) in the comment forum below. Thanks!

20May2013

Seeking Engagement: A Critical Step for Networking Groupsstring(57) "Seeking Engagement: A Critical Step for Networking Groups"

Engagement involves a promise and an action. In order to achieve success in your group of networking relationships, you and your relationships must promise to support one another and then take the actions necessary to fulfill that promise.

There are many ways that you can become engaged. Have you taken the time to regularly meet with the people in your network? Have you taken the time to educate them regularly on the key features of your business so that your products or services will be top of mind in the event they meet someone with a need for what you supply? Have you taken the time to become educated on the key features of your networking relationships’ businesses so that you can do the same?

The higher the number of people in your network who are engaged in these activities, the more likely it is that the entire group will be generating more referrals. The reason for this is a shared vision of success and a shared implementation of that vision.

Another way to be actively engaged and educated about each others’ businesses is to do regular and consistent meetings. Over and over, I see that business owners who have regular one-to-one meetings with their business networking relationships tend to both give AND get more referrals.

Lastly, are you focusing on your “elevator pitch”? The best way to ensure your referral sources are going to remember what you do is to focus on communicating your business to them by breaking it down into laser-specific elements. Sharp-shoot your pitch, don’t shotgun it. In each of your regular one-to-one meetings, talk about one key element, product, or benefit of what you do.

According to Psychology Today, research has found that people who are “actively engaged” in a business environment are “43% more productive” than those who are not. Furthermore, they state that engagement includes “regular dialogue, quality of working relationships, perceptions of ethos and values of the organization, and recognition.” There’s research behind my recommending reciprocal engagement between you and your referral partners. In fact, it’s critical to your success–and theirs.

This week, think about new ways in which you can support your networking partners in order to promote engagement within your networking group. I’d love to hear what ideas you come up with so please leave your thoughts in the comment forum below. Thanks!

22Dec2011

Do Your One-to-One Networking Meetings Seem Like a Waste of Time?string(65) "Do Your One-to-One Networking Meetings Seem Like a Waste of Time?"

December 22, 2011

Ivan Misner

Anson Corporate Media, BNI, Cup of Tea, effective networking, Lawrence Conyers, One to Ones, One-to-One Meetings, UK Guest Blog, Networking, Networking Prep, Networking Tactics, Referrals, Video Blog 14

Have you ever heard someone in your network say, “If you don’t do one to ones effectively, you might as well talk to yourself”? Well, it really is true–if your one-to-one meetings seem more like a waste of time than productive, relationship-building, referral generating sessions that equal time well spent, I highly recommend you watch this fantastic video.

In this short video, Lawrence Conyers of UK based Anson Corporate Media, who is not only an experienced networker but also a gifted and creative photographer, videographer, and artist, demonstrates the actions, behaviors, and strategies that make the difference between one to ones that will take you and your business to new heights of success and one to ones that will take you . . . well . . . nowhere.

Take a few minutes to watch this video (Not only will you learn from it, I’m willing to bet you’ll get a good laugh as well!) and let me know what you think of it–I think the “Cup of Tea” acrostic is pretty clever and I also realize that now I’ll have to add “great actor” to Lawrence’s list of creative talents! 😉 Also, I’d love to hear about your experiences with one to ones–what tactics have you employed that got great results and what tactics do you think make for a complete waste of time?

To learn more about Lawrence Conyers and Anson Corporate Media, please visit: www.AnsonCorporateMedia.co.uk