Episode 135: “The Card File Thingy”

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Synopsis

Today Dr. Misner is joined by BNI Hall of Fame Director Dawn Lyons from Northern California. Dawn trains people how to be proactive rather than reactive about making referrals.

Here’s the technique:

• Toward the end of a meeting with a new client, tell them that you’re part of a referral network that allows you to offer additional services.
• Then offer them your card file and walk away.
• When you come back, ask whether the client needs the services of any of these people.
• If they do, provide specific recommendations for that persons.

To make this work, you have to know your fellow BNI members and their work well.

Card File Challenge

Run a contest in your chapter to see who can do “The Card File Thingy” the most in a month, and what results you get. Leave a comment here on the blog to let us know what you think of the idea and how your chapter’s Card File Challenge turned out.

Brought to you by Networking Now.

Complete Transcription of BNI Podcast Episode 135 -

Priscilla:
Hello everyone, and welcome back to The Official BNI Podcast 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. How are you?

Ivan:
Hi, Priscilla. I’m doing great. It was really nice meeting you at our International Directors Conference last month. We’ve done these podcasts all these many months now, a year-and-a-half, and it was a pleasure to finally meet you.

Priscilla:
I know. I just enjoyed it so much; it was just great! Thank you for inviting me.

Ivan:
Yeah. Listen, talking about directors, I have with us today an executive director who’s going to be doing this podcast with me. Her name is Dawn Lyons. She is a BNI executive director up in Northern California, and she’s been an executive director since 2000. She’s also a partner in the Referral Institute, and I think most notably, she’s a Hall of Fame director for BNI, having opened up a large number of chapters in one year, 20 chapters in one year. And she’s one of only five or six directors in the world who’ve ever done that, the only woman who has done it, so I’m really pleased to have on the podcast with us Dawn Lyon.

Hi, Dawn.

Dawn:
Hi, Ivan. Hi, Priscilla. How are you?

Priscilla:
Very good, thank you.

Ivan:
You’re on the podcast today to talk about the card file thingy that BNI has and really how to use the BNI card file, and you train your members to do referrals proactively instead of reactively. And I thought maybe this would be great material for our BNI members, so let me turn it over to you.

Dawn:
Okay. One of the things that we see a lot is that people actually are in a reactive mode when they’re trying to generate a referral. Someone will literally say, “Gosh, I’m having problems with my Web site. Do you know a Web site designer?” And they will literally ask you and, therefore, now, all of a sudden, you’re excited because you have a referral.

Well, what we want to train people on is how to do referrals proactively, literally being out there working on our chapter members’ behalf so that we can generate more referrals for the entire chapter. And Priscilla knows this because we actually train this in our region. Our members all across the world have the tool that they can be using more effectively.

We haven’t come up with a very fancy name, so we do call it The Card File Thingy because it’s just this approach that if we use this approach, we had one gentleman, whose name is Brian Johnson, he got seven referrals from one person in about five to eight minutes.

Priscilla:
Wow!

Ivan:
That’s amazing!

Dawn:
Yeah, just using this technique. So if I can, I’ll just kind of role play it a little bit and have people understand a little script that we utilize, because the script is actually very, very crucial to the success of the outcome of using The Card File Thingy. So we all have our burgundy card file holders, we all have our members’ cards in there, but if we carry it around with us and we use it at our appointments, this is when it become proactive referral marketing.

So let’s say that I am in Web site development and I’m working with one of my clients or I’m on a customer service call, I may be out and about, I may be meeting with friends or even working with co-workers, but if I say something to a client that’s really specific, this is the script that we find, used well, works incredibly well.

I do my appointments, and towards the end of the appointment, I’m going to say something to the effect of, “You know, I don’t know if you know this or not, but as an added service to all of my clients, I actually belong to a referral organization which allows me to help you with more than just your Web site needs. I happen to know 35 or more local business people that I know, like, and trust would do a great job for you if you ever needed any of their services. So I’ll tell you what, I have some paperwork that I need to go grab. Why don’t you look through here, and I’ll be right back.”

Well, what do you think happens as soon as you walk away?

Ivan:
They always open up the card file.

Dawn:
Yeah, they’re always going to open up the card file. And here I am sitting there asking them questions about their Web site needs, I have no idea if they want to get their carpets cleaned or if they’ve been thinking about doing some landscaping or they want to get some new blinds in their home. I don’t ask questions about that type of stuff, but I definitely have members in my chapter that are looking for those kinds of client referrals. And so the key is, and there’s a couple secrets to this technique, you absolutely have to walk away from the person that has the card file in their hands. Could you imagine if you were standing over their shoulder watching them?

Ivan:
Yeah. No, that doesn’t work. But what are they going to do? Open it up.

Dawn:
Yeah, you just want them to open it up and then they flip through it and they know what services they might be needing in the next couple of months.

When you come back, there’s another key step. So when you come back, you simply say something like, “So, gosh, do you or your family need any of the services of all these folks that I know?” They’re either going to say yes or no, and either one is okay. And the reason for that is, as a business person, you just made yourself more likeable and more appropriate to them as far as them wanting to come back to you later, because you have shown them that you know these 35-plus local business people.

So if they say, “Yes, you know, gosh, I didn’t know that you knew someone who was in financial advising, or “Gosh, we were looking for a new chiropractor.”

The key here is you’ve got to be able to promote your member really, really well. You can’t just say, “Oh, you should go see Joe because he’s a really nice guy.” You need more information than that. For instance, if someone came back to my card holder and said, “Well, I was really looking at this CPA; we’re not real happy with our CPA,” I would want to be able to say, “My CPA, Tim, has literally saved two of my dear friends; one of them $1200 and the other one over $6,000, and he only looked at their tax returns for less than ten minutes.”

Ivan:
Wow, that’s amazing! And this is similar conceptually to what I’ve talked about in a previous podcast as being a gatekeeper, that you want to be in a position where you’re referring people, particularly to your clients and customers and associates because it builds your credibility with them as well as enabling you to pass referrals.

Dawn:
Yeah, absolutely. And I think the real key is compelling the person to want to take the members’ phone call, and just letting them know that they’re a nice guy or they have a great personality is kind of like the blind date. If they have a great personality, what do you normally think of?

Priscilla:
They don’t look good.

Ivan:
I don’t want to say!

Dawn:
So here, you really want some really good information, so always have a couple of your BNI members’ best stories, how have they helped someone. Because now the person is looking for those services, you tell a great story about your member and say, “Is this the kind of expert you’d like to talk with? I can get you that personal introduction.”

Priscilla:
Right.

Ivan:
That’s great. What kind of results? You mentioned one, but can you give us a couple of other examples of results people have had using this technique.

Dawn:
Yeah, absolutely. My first ever experience with this was probably four or so years ago. I had a gal come up to me at a Members Success Program, and she said, “You know what? This is my second time through Members Success, and the reason why is because I am the lowest referral giver in the chapter, and I want to do something about it.” We showed her this technique. It was kind of off to the side, it wasn’t even in the big presentation, and she e-mailed me the following weeks and said, “By the way, just be using that technique, I generated 11 referrals for my chapter members this week.”

Ivan:
Wow!

Dawn:
In one week’s time, just by doing The Card File Thingy, walking away from her clients or anyone that she had that appointment with, letting them look through the book and see what services they needed, she was able to do that.

I also just had a gal by the name of Mylie Colmer, who is a Realtor, she showed the book 29 times and got 16 referrals.

Ivan:
Wow, that’s amazing! It’s amazing how simple techniques like this can really make a difference. I tell people all the time, a lot of what we talk about is simple but not easy. If it were easy, everyone would do it. And the hard part about this is remembering to do it consistently. And if you do it consistently, it’s a simple idea that can make you one of the top referral givers in the chapter, can’t it?

Dawn:
Um-hmm, absolutely.

Priscilla:
I have a question.

Ivan:
Sure, go ahead, Priscilla.

Priscilla:
In my chapter, we have a brochure that’s written, it’s a handout really, with everybody’s name and information and Web sites on it, telephone numbers. Do you think it’s as effective to give them the brochure as it is to show them the card file?

Dawn:
Personally, I don’t, and here’s why. Even though the cards have all of the person’s information on it, I think the brochure is almost a way that they could just contact the person alone. And what we always want to do in referrals is make the connection.

Priscilla:
Um-hmm, right.

Dawn:
We want to make sure that the BNI member has the availability and the expectation that they can make that phone call and talk to that prospect.

Ivan:
You know, I agree. I certainly don’t think it’s a bad idea to have some kind of flyer with the different businesses on it, but to be honest with you, nothing beats the person’s business card. I think it’s more effective, and that card file is a great way to get people to do that. I saw it done many, many years ago with somebody who would take orders. He would be filling out the paperwork, and he would hand the file to them. Now, he didn’t leave the room, but he was busy filling out paperwork. His head was down and he’s writing stuff out while the person was going through it, and it was a effective way to generate referrals. That was the first time I ever saw.

Well, we’re just about out of time, Dawn. I think you’ve got an assignment for everyone, don’t you?

Dawn:
Well, you know, we were thinking that it would be kind of fun to have people in the chapters actually create a challenge around this. Who could just do The Card File Thingy approach however many times in maybe a month? And so if all the chapters want to get on board with this and really proactively market their chapter members, this would be the easiest way to create a habit. It makes them look good, and they’re offering an additional service to their clients to really be that contact person that can connect them with anyone they need to in the community.

So my challenge is why not run a challenge in the chapter and see who can do The Card File Thingy the most amount of times in a month!

Ivan:
I love it! So there’s the challenge. Everyone listening to this podcast, take it back to your chapter, explain the program, and let’s see what kind of results your chapter can get. And by all means, leave a message here on this podcast where you can leave comments about what you think of the idea and how it worked out, if you did it.

Dawn, thank you so much. You’re a great director for BNI, and we appreciate your idea here today.

Back to you, Priscilla.

Priscilla:
Okay, great! Thank you, Dawn, and thank you, Ivan.

I think that’s it for this week. I just want to 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. Thank you 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.