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Synopsis

A referral relationship is more than just doing business. You need to find common ground on a personal level.

One exercise that can help accomplish this in a BNI chapter is the GAINS Exchange, discussed in Episode 5 of this podcast.

Even though many members are reluctant to do this exercise, it has tremendous results.

Two guys who had barely spoken to each other in their first year in one chapter formed a relationship over their shared interest in soccer and began passing business to each other as a result.

Ivan encourages Priscilla to go back to her BNI chapter and propose a new GAINS Exchange exercise.

See Business by Referral for more on this topic.

Brought to you by Networking Now. Enter “freesixmonths” for a six-month free trial and get access to live teleconferences with Dr. Misner.

Complete Transcription of BNI Podcast Episode 126 -

Priscilla:
Hello everyone, and welcome back to The Official BNI Podcast which is brought to you by NetworkingNow.com, which is the leading site on the Net for networking downloadables.

I’m Priscilla Rice, and I’m coming to you from Live Oak Recording Studio in Berkley, California, and I am joined on the phone today by the founder and the chairman of BNI, Dr. Ivan Misner.

Hello, Ivan.

Ivan:
Hi, Priscilla.

Priscilla:
What’s going on? How are you?

Ivan:
I’m doing great. Today we’re going to be talking about, I think, a subject that, when I started BNI, I don’t think I fully understood how important this was.

Priscilla:
Great. What is it you’re going to share with us, then?

Ivan:
Well, the fact that networking is more than just talking business, and when I started BNI, my primary focus was, “Hey, it’s all about business; let’s focus on business.” I mean, even in the introduction of the weekly speaker, I talked about the fact that I trained people to talk about their education, talk about their background, talk about their experience. And I really didn’t suggest that you talk about some of your personal interests. And that, I found over the years, was a mistake. People often think that networking is talking about business and exchanging cards, and that’s definitely part of it, but it’s not all of it.

In a networking group, you should talk about more than just business with people. A referral relationship is more than just, “I do business; you do business; let’s do business.” A much better approach is when you find common ground on a personal level and then make these connections and build business with other people.

I think the longer I’ve been involved in networking, the more I’ve seen the power of those personal interests making connections with others. Networking is really about building those personal relationships, and if you remove the personal from the equation, you limit that amount of business that can happen.

I talk about this at length in a podcast a long time ago. The listeners might want to go back to that podcast. It’s podcast number 5, podcast number 5, 005, and I talk about the gains exchange. One BNI group that I worked with, I introduced the GAINS Exchange before it came out in my book, Business by Referral. The GAINS Exchange is an exercise that’s available in BNI. Any member can get it. It’s in Business by Referral, but go to your director and get the form if you want to try it out. It stands for Goals, Accomplishments, Interests, Networks, and Skills. The idea is that you have people share their personal and professional information about themselves in those areas, Goals, Accomplishments, Interests, Networks, and Skills.

Well, two of the participants, when I tested this out years ago, had not done any business with each other, and they’d been in the chapter for a year, hadn’t done any business with each other, really didn’t make a connection at all. It wasn’t that they didn’t like each other; they just didn’t have anything in common; their businesses were really different. And they found out by doing this GAINS Exchange – which, by the way, they dragged their feet, kicking and screaming into this exercise, did not want to do it. Once they did it, they found out that they were both coaches for their sons’ soccer teams, or football teams, as it’s called in some countries. And they quickly became close friends and started helping each other conduct certain aspects of the soccer practices. And they would share coaching techniques with each other, and eventually, they began to scout other teams for each other, so that they would scout the other team and report back what a team was like.

Guess what? After they started doing this for each other on a personal level, within a few months, they started passing business to each other. They began referring business to each other. Two guys who had barely spoken to each other in the first year, because they had so little in common, ended up doing business with each other because they built a relationship over soccer, over football. Go figure! Who would have thought that? I certainly didn’t. But when I saw that done, that nailed it for me, and I knew that that technique had to be put in Business by Referral, and that’s where it was first introduced, was in Business by Referral.

Priscilla:
Yeah, I think that’s a tremendous tool. I mean, knowing the other person on a personal level is exactly what’s it’s all about, I think.

Ivan:
That’s where you kind of make connections with people. If you can find a common interest and start with that, we can make connections and have a very good chance at turning into business. And I really recommend that BNI members experiment with this. I’ve seen chapters where they’ve had every single member complete a GAINS Exchange and come back to the chapter with 30 copies, or however many members were in the chapter, and hand that out to everybody.

I’ve even seen some chapters that have a running three-ring binder so that when a new member joins, they get a binder of all of the members GAINS Exchange, so they, at a glance, get information about that person’s Goals, Accomplishments, Interests, Networks, and Skills. I’ve even seen where maybe they don’t do it to that level of detail; I’ve seen chapters where that week’s speaker also completes a GAINS Exchange. Besides the speaker information for the secretary/treasurer, they also complete a GAINS Exchange. And the member makes 30 copies, or however many for the members, and passes that out at the beginning of the meeting to say, “Hey, here’s who our speaker is going to be later today. Glance at it so you have a little bit of background about this person when he or she speaks.” And it’s really interesting to see how personal interests, whether it be something like soccer or sewing or cooking or wine or chess or anything, between two people makes a personal connection, which makes them feel closer and more connected, which leads to business.

Priscilla:
That’s totally true. I remember when I had to fill mine out, because that was a requirement of our chapter, it doesn’t seem to be right, but it was when I first joined, and I was so stressed about it.

Ivan:
Why so? Why were you stressed out about it?

Priscilla:
Well, it seemed like it just took forever, and I was just agonizing over the format and putting it together. And I remember I stayed up really late doing it and getting it to print right. And it was just like a job, but it was a good thing. I was glad I’d done it.

Ivan:
Well, certainly, spending time and effort in doing it accurately is important, but I’m a real believer of the concept of – Tom Peters talked about it in In Search of Excellency – do it, fix it, try it. Do it, fix it, try it. Do something, lap it around a little bit, see how it works out in the marketplace, fix it, and then try it again. So take that GAINS Exchange that you write and put it out there, see what kind of response you get from people. And then bring it back in and redo it, hang onto it. Redo it; maybe do it digitally. And then every year or so, you revise it and redistribute it. And as you get it out there and you see what seems to connect with people and what doesn’t, then you emphasize some of those things and try it again.

It’s not a one-of-a-kind of deal; it’s a thing that the chapter should do regularly. So one of the things I’d suggest is go back to your chapter and say, “Hey, we haven’t done this for a while. Let’s listen to this podcast, and then let’s all incorporate the GAINS Exchange in some way that makes sense for us over the next two months.”

Priscilla:
Okay.

Ivan:
All right. So are you going to report back and let me know how that goes in a couple months?

Priscilla:
Okay. I just had an idea where if you had the person next to you with your GAINS Exchange and then they announce to the group some unusual fact or some unusual thing you were involved with, and then you kind of went around the table, that might make it fun.

Ivan:
It does make it fun. I’ve seen that done. I’ve also seen it where members had to do a one-to-one with somebody else, and they gave them two or three weeks to do it. You’ve got to do it one to one; you’ve got to take a half hour, do a one-to-one with somebody else, minimum half hour one-to-one with somebody else. And then, four weeks from now, everybody is going to stand up and they’re going to do a 60 second presentation on the other person and what they really found interesting about them from the GAINS Exchange.

Priscilla:
Okay. There’s a great idea.

Ivan:
Yeah, yeah. I love it. Give them enough time; give them three weeks or so. That gives everybody a chance to meet; they do their one-to-one; and then they meet four weeks from then. And I would stand up and I would say what I had learned that was really interesting about you from what you did in the GAINS Exchange and what I read. It’s a great technique. I highly recommend it, and it’s a great way to implement this concept.

Priscilla:
Okay. I’m going to take that one back.

Ivan:
Okay. And you’re going to report back in a few months as to how it’s gone, right?

Priscilla:
That’s right!

Ivan:
Okay, good.

Priscilla:
All right. Well, thank you, Dr. Misner. I think we’re kind of out of time today.

Ivan:
Yup! I do have a special offer on NetworkingNow.

Priscilla:
Oh, okay.

Ivan:
At the end of all of these podcasts, we talk about NetworkingNow and the downloadables. If you’re a BNI member and you would like to be involved in telebridges with me, every month I do a telebridge called the Networking Café, which is part of the NetworkingNow program. And NetworkingNow has tons of downloadable material, videos, audios, PDFs; there’s even some of my books. And so I’m going to give you a password right now that you can type in this password and get six months free in NetworkingNow, which is worth almost $70.

So the password is – it’s one word – freesixmonths. Spell it out; no number. So it’s F-R-E-E-S-I-X-M-O-N-T-H-S, freesixmonths, no spaces. That’s the password.

So when you go to NetworkingNow, you sign up, you punch that in, and you absolutely, positively, unequivocally will get six months free. And if you want to renew, then you can renew; or you can cancel it at six months, and you’ll never be charged anything.

But you’ll have access to tons of downloadable content, and you’ll get an e-mail from us every month saying, “Here’s when the Networking Café next one is, and you’re welcome to join Ivan, and here’s the subject.”

Priscilla:
And how does that work? I know we’re almost out of time, but what does it mean that you’re on this telebridge?

Ivan:
Well, I do a telebridge on subjects that – imagine that I did this topic that networking is more about talking business, but this is a podcast that is one-way communication. You can post a message, which is great. But what if you had a question? The same with the telebridge is that we open them up; we open up the lines and say, “Okay, what questions do you have?” And so it’s really a dialog with anybody as opposed to just a podcast or a one-way communication. If you have questions, you can chat with me directly on these telebridges which are done through NetworkingNow.

Priscilla:
That sounds great. Okay, well, thank you, Dr. Misner.

Ivan:
Thank you, Priscilla.

Priscilla:
I just want remind the listeners that this podcast has been brought to you by NetworkingNow.com which is the leading site on the Net for networking downloadables. Thanks so much for listening. This is Priscilla Rice, and we hope you’ll join us next week for another exciting episode of The Official BNI Podcast.