Episode 153: “The Greatest Weakness of Networking”

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Synopsis

This week Dr. Misner joins us from BNI’s German-speaking conference in Switzerland to talk about a Referral Institute-sponsored study.

In response to the first question, “Has networking played a role in your success?”

• 91.4% of respondents said yes.
• 6.0% said no.
• 2.7% said the question was not applicable.

In response to the second question, “What do you feel is your greatest weakness in networking?”

• 27.6% said “Being unable to turn relationships into business opportunities”
• 22.6% said “Using a follow-up system.”
• 22.0% said “Approaching someone for the first time.”
• 11.8% said “Knowing how to gracefully close a conversation.”
• 8.7% said “Other”
• 7.3% said “Continuing a conversation after a few minutes.”

For those whose weakness is follow-up, Dr. Misner recommends Relate2Profit, which uses the BNI V(isibility) C(redibility) P(rofitability) process. BNI members can use the discount code ASK-IVAN to get 50% off for life.

Brought to you by Networking Now.

Complete Transcription of BNI Podcast Episode 153 -

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’m joined on the phone today by the founder and the chairman of BNI, Dr. Ivan Misner.

Hello, Ivan. How are you and where are you?

Ivan:
Hi, Priscilla. I am doing great, and this week I’m actually in Switzerland.

Priscilla:
Wow!

Ivan:
We have our German speaking conference for BNI. Luckily, there’s enough who speak English that I’m here in Switzerland to do the conference. So it should be really exciting, and we’re expecting a really, really big turnout. Germany and the German speaking countries are one of the, I would say, two or three countries in the world for BNI that will see the most growth over the next couple of years.

Priscilla:
How many people do you think are coming to that conference? Do you have any idea?

Ivan:
It will be in the hundreds; I don’t know exactly.

Priscilla:
Oh, great! Well, what do you have to share with us?

Ivan:
Well, today I’m going to talk about some data from a study that I just completed. It’s a Referral Institute sponsored study, and it’s of more than 12,000 business professionals. And BNI members, I’ll be sharing some of the results of this. The data will end up being used in a book on gender and networking, but some of the combined data, I’m starting to talk about now. And so I’ve been going – this is a study that people from all over the world, not just BNI people, but business professionals from all over the world, and I’ve been going through mountains of statistical data, I mean hundreds and hundreds of pages of data, oh joy.

Priscilla:
Yeah, really.

Ivan:
Lots of stuff, but what I thought I might do is share some important ones with BNI members in this podcast as I discover some of these results, and there’s two that I wanted to talk about today.

One related to a question about, has networking played a role in your success, and the second part of it is, okay, so what are some of the weaknesses. If it’s played a role in your success, what are some of the challenges that you’ve had, some of the weaknesses in the area. So in this podcast, there will be two graphics included for you to look at so you can actually be looking at the graphics as you’re listening to this podcast. And if you’re listening to it on a mobile device, just go back to the podcast and take a look at the graphics so you can see what it is that I’m talking about.

The first statistic was, has networking played a role in your success, and I was really amazed that 91.4 percent of all the respondents, and these aren’t just BNI members, they’re many different people, claim that networking played a role in their success. 91.4 percent!

Priscilla:
Right.

Ivan:
Only 6 percent of the respondents, and this is out of over 12,000 people, said that it’s not. Only 6 percent said it did not. And 2.7 percent said that networking wasn’t applicable. I’m guessing that those were full-time college professors who said it wasn’t applicable, because they’re generally pretty clueless about how important networking is. I’ve talked about this a lot; we don’t teach this stuff in college. It drives me absolutely nuts. We don’t teach any college – yet 91.4 percent of 12,000 people from all over the world said networking played an important role in their success. So that’s the first number that I think is really interesting. Clearly, networking makes a difference in the success of business professionals, particularly in a recessionary economy like we’ve been going through.

Priscilla:
Right.

Ivan:
So one of the other questions we asked, we asked about strengths, and I’ll be sharing that, and weaknesses in networking. This is about some of the weaknesses. Out of the 12,000 people, the top four weaknesses that were identified were, first and foremost, being unable to turn relationships into business opportunities. That was the number one. And about 27 percent of the respondents said that was the most difficult on, that was the weaknesses, that they have the connections but turning those connections into business was number one.

Number two was a follow-up system; having any kind of follow-up system was a weakness, a way of tracking the kinds of contacts and referrals they get.

Number three was approaching someone for the first time; there’s our introverts. Just walking up to someone for the first time – and by the way, two and three were almost identical. Using a follow-up system represented 22.6 percent of the respondents, and approaching someone for the first time was 22 percent. So meeting them and following up, if you combine those two, was clearly the largest issue for people is meeting them and then following up.

Interestingly enough, knowing how to gracefully close a conversation was number four; that was about 11 percent. Things like continuing a conversation after just a few minutes was a very small percentage, about 7 percent.

So here’s the deal. If you can learn, I believe if you can work on the follow-up system and learn how to approach somebody for the first time, you’re going to have a pretty substantial change in the results that you’re getting. A follow-up system that I’ve recommended for many, many years, and I’m not really associated with this company, I just refer them and I love their product, is Relate2Profit.com. So if you’re a BNI member and you want to have some kind of tracking system, database tracking system to follow up with people, Relate2Profit.com is a great Web site. Take a look at it. I’m going to give you a discount code here in a minute, Priscilla, that I think if BNI members want to use this, you can, and it will give you 50 percent – this is for BNI members – it will give you 50 percent off of their program for life, not just a one-time deal, but 50 percent for life. Take a look at it, Relate2Profit.

So if you’re one of those people that follow-up system is a problem, then check this out, because Relate2Profit is really good; it’s a follow-up system. And what I love about it is I’ve allowed them to use my VCP process, Visibility, Credibility, Profitability, so in the database, you can actually list whether you’re at Visibility with somebody or whether you’re at Credibility with somebody or whether you’re at Profitability with somebody. And that’s really important, because when you’re following up with people, you want to know what kind of follow-up. You have a completely different conversation that you’re at Profitability with than you do with somebody you’re at Visibility with. And they have built that into the system.

Here’s the code, if somebody wants to go look at it and try it out, it’s Ask-Ivan, Ask-Ivan, A-S-K dash I-V-A-N, no spaces, Ask-Ivan. And Mike Zinni, who’s the developer of the program, will give you 50 percent off. That’s a pretty good deal.

So these are some interesting statistics, and as I do the study and evaluate it more, I’ll be sharing this on our podcasts.

Priscilla:
You know, Ivan, I’m really surprised that being able to close a conversation gracefully was rated so highly as a problem.

Ivan:
Yeah, with that number, it was 11.8 percent, so in the bigger scheme of things, it’s not big, but it was with the top four. And that surprised me a little bit, because closing a conversation gracefully, to me, that’s never been a problem; I’ve never really had a challenge with that. People ask me about that from time to time, “How do you close a conversation gracefully.” For me – first of all, make no apologies. Don’t say, “Well, listen, I’m really sorry ,but I need to meet some other people.” That’s just so awkward.

Priscilla:
Yeah.

Ivan:
For me, it’s very simple. It would be, “Priscilla, it was very nice meeting you today. Thank you so much. Do you have a business card? I’d love one of your business cards.” And you take a business card; it’s an easy way to close a conversation, but just to say to somebody, “It was really a pleasure meeting and talking to you today.” An expression I like to use is, “I hope our paths cross together. I hope we meet again and look forward to connecting again sometime.”

Priscilla:
That’s nice.

Ivan:
There’s nothing wrong with that. It’s got to be genuine. If you meet somebody who you never want to do business with again and never want to talk to again, don’t say that. But the overwhelming majority of the people I meet, I’d love to meet them again. I’d love to talk to them again, get to know them over time. There’s very few people that I’ve met that I just had no interest in ever talking to them again.

And so, for me, it’s very easy to say, “Hey, it’s a real pleasure to meet you. Thank you so much.” And you end the conversation. The worst thing to do is to apologize, “Hey, I’m really sorry, I want to meet some other people today.” Ooh, that sounds really bad. But I’ve had that happen. “I need to network; I need to get around and connect with people.” That’s the kind of thing you only say with a close friend. “Love you, man, but I’ve got to go network!”

Priscilla:
Yeah, right!

Ivan:
That’s somebody you know. But you don’t need to say that to people you don’t know.

What do you think? That’s pretty straightforward, isn’t it?

Priscilla:
Yeah, I like how you do it. I think that it assumes, from your statistics, that people get kind of trapped, that somebody’s just going on and on and on and on, and you don’t know how to end the conversation and kind of back out, you know?

Ivan:
Yeah, I think you’re absolutely right, people don’t know how to end the conversation, and then they do feel trapped sometimes. But at some point, the person’s got to take a breath, and that’s the point at which you say, “Hey, it was really nice meeting you and nice talking to you.” Certainly asking them for their business card is a nice thing to do. If you have no intention of ever keeping that card, don’t ask. But if you mean it, if it was nice connecting with the person, ask for the card; it’s a real smooth way to end the conversation.

Priscilla:
Okay, so one more question.

Ivan:
Yeah?

Priscilla:
What do you do with all you cards, because you must have hundreds and hundreds of cards? So what do you do next with them?

Ivan:
I used to have a Rolodex that I kept all the business cards, but anymore, business cards, for me, are very disposable. I enter the data into a database. I have a . . .

Priscilla:
Scanner?

Ivan:
. . . CardScan. I’ve used CardScan for many years. It’s another product that I recommend. I don’t own any stock in CardScan, but I love their product, used it extensively particularly for the book – I started using it for the book It’s In the Cards, the book I wrote about how to design business cards and what should be on them. And we had to look at more than 2,000 business cards for that book. So the best way to collect them was using CardScan, which allowed you to keep the visual image, but it also allowed you to transfer the database into Act or Outlook or any other database that you use. So I use CardScan for my cards.

Priscilla:
Great! And then you do call them?

Ivan:
But I don’t keep the cards, as a rule.

Priscilla:
And you kind of make notes and say that you know this person or this is just a light contact?

Ivan:
Yes, yeah. If there was a conversation – and this is one of the things. I’m not really in a position where I’m doing direct sales anymore where I’m trying to close some deal on the spot, you shouldn’t be doing that anyway, but I’m just not in the same position that I was maybe 10, 15, 20 years ago where I was doing more direct sales.

So notes are really important, really important. And the more notes you can take about the conversation on the back of the card, the better, especially if it’s important that you stay in touch with that person. So, yes, if you’re going to scan it, you want to put in those notes on the back so that you don’t lose that conversation.

People like Harvey Mackay, who’s written a number of books on sales and on networking, this guy is a master at keeping notes on conversations in both meeting people and talking to them on the phone. And I’d recommend a couple of his books, any one of his books, Swim With the Sharks, How to Dig Your Well Before You’re Thirsty. And he talks a lot about taking notes and keeping those notes in your database.

Really good point.

Priscilla:
Great! I think we’ve come to the end of this podcast. Do you have anything –

Ivan:
I think that’s it for today, Priscilla. Thank you very much.

And for the listeners, keep your eye out; you’re going to see some hard data. I think it’s really important to start having hard data to provide so that it’s not just experiences, it’s not just an experiential kind of process in terms of explaining why networking works, but we can provide some hard data, and things like this will help us to do just that. So you’re going to see more of it as time goes on over the next year or two.

Priscilla:
Great! Well, thank you, Dr. Misner.

Ivan:
Thank you, Priscilla.

Priscilla:
I’d just like 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. 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.