Episode 177: “The Double Triple Effect”

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Synopsis

Tom Fleming, Executive Director for West Central Florida, joins Dr. Misner for a second time (the first time was in Episode 168) to talk about how to get an average membership of 39.2 in his forty-chapter region.

It’s called the Double Triple Effect because doubling the number of members can triple the number of referrals. Here’s how to make it work.

• Start with a vision of what you want.
• Run the chapter like a business.
• Have goals and mechanisms.
• Put systems in writing and follow them.
• Celebrate successes.

Interested in how to run a 60-member BNI chapter? Leave a comment here, and if enough people are interested, we’ll bring Tom back a third time.

Brought to you by Networking Now.

Complete Transcription of BNI Podcast Episode 177 -

Priscilla:
Hello everyone and welcome back to The Official BNI Podcast brought to you by NetworkingNow.com, the leading site on the net for networking downloadables. I am Priscilla Rice, and I am coming to you from Live Oak Recording Studio in Berkley, CA. I am joined today by the Founder and Chairman of BNI, Dr. Ivan Misner.  Hello Ivan. How are you and who do you have with us?

Ivan:I am doing great, Priscilla. Thank you very much. I have with us a gentleman who I am going to introduce in just a moment, Tom Fleming. Tom, I believe, is the only guest I have ever had on the podcast twice so far. So congratulations to Tom for that.

Tom has been a member of BNI- he joined in 1996 as a member. In 2003, he became the Executive director and is now the Executive Director in Tampa and West Central Florida. 13 of his 40 chapters in that region have more than 45 members. He has an average member size, with 40 chapters, of 39.2 members per chapter. His largest chapter is 70 members with a number of chapters in the 60′S. That is just amazing to me. That has absolutely created a new paradigm in my mind as to what is possible. I just want to welcome Tom to the podcast and turn it over to him. Tell me, Tom, how in the worlddo you get an average member size of 39.2? What is your secret?

Tom:
Thank you first and foremost, for having me back on again, Ivan. I think the secret is really creating the intention that we want to maximize members’ value and have the value of their seats be worth the most amount of money possible. That is why the title of this podcast is called “The Double Triple Effect.” I think we are all familiar with the concept that when you double the size of the chapter, you triple the amount of  referrals.

Ivan:
Right. So where do you begin?

Tom:
I think you begin with vision. A leadership team begins with vision. Whether you are a part of a startup chapter or an existing chapter, you have to ask yourself where do we want to go, first and foremost. We want the average revenue per seat to be worth in the chapter? How tmany referrals do we need to be passing to hit those members? It’s  not about just having a number of chapters. It’s about having a productive chapter. You’re just not going to be a three million dollar or four million  dollar chapter per year with unproductive members, if that makes sense.

Ivan:
Good point. So you begin with the very end in mind.

Tom:
Absolutely. I  think the balance of the secret, in terms of increasing the number of members to take advantage of the double triple effect has to do with the leadership teams- how they manage the chapters, with the directors supporting their efforts. In fact, one of the first things the leadership team needs to embrace is what to we want the culture of this chapter to be? Do we want it to be a business culture or a club culture? Obviously, if it is run like a business, everyone is going to make money, but if it’s run like a club, they are going to make friends.

Ivan:
Good point. I have often said that one of the strengths of a good BNI chapter is that many of the members are friends, and one of the weaknesses of a good BNI chapter is many of the members are friends. It’s both a strength and a weakness.

Tom:
It does present a challenge, but I think in order to take advantage of being the money making machine that any BNI chapter can be, it needs to embrace a culture of business. From there, it is basically a matter of implementation of different Management 101 principles, in terms of executing that vision.

Ivan:
So give me some examples.

Tom:
I think any successful business has a set of goals and a set of mechanisms or strategies that support the business heading towards those goals. Therefore, I think chapters need to have goals and mechanisms.

Ivan:
Right. You hit what you aim at, don’t you?

Tom:
Absolutely. I like to say what gets measured gets done. From there, once we set goals and strategies to make those things happen, I think businesses do an effective job of tracking and communicating the results. So many organizations go through this goal setting exercise and say to themselves, phew, glad that’s over with! Then they set the documentation aside, never to be looked at again.

Ivan:
Right. So what else?

Tom:
One of the things that we do in terms of maximizing the average chapter size in pursuit of making the most money possible-  we then need to keep that documentation alive. Presidents and vice presidents jump on it three times during their weekly call with directors so that, really, the conversation can be centered around what are your goals? Where are you headed? Really the focus of that  conversation is do we have our mechanisms in place now, over the next few months, so that we hit our intended goals.

Ivan:
What do you mean by mechanisms?

Tom:
Strategies. Are we going to have a BNI game put in place over the next few months? Are we going to do a visitor’s day? Are we going to have a  bring your substitute day? Those sort of strategies might stimulate either attendance, one-to-ones, referrals, or thank yous for closed business.

Ivan:
All the things you mentioned we have systems for in writing that they can follow. I think sometimes people follow the program that we’ve got, but sometimes do a “visitor’s day lite” without really  following the system. What you are talking about is really following the the program that we have and  implementing it fully as opposed to just kind of winging it.

Tom:
Flawless execution is the secret to success.  I often analogize BNI with baking a cake. When the recipe says one and a half cups of flour and two cups of sugar,or whatever, you can’t change that or you are not going to get the desired results. It is the same way with BNI.

Ivan:
That is a great analogy. What else?

Tom:
The other thing, one of the last key components that we do in terms of the members making more money and the chapter succeeding in growth, is we celebrate our successes.  How we do this is we bring our presidents, vice presidents, and directors from 8-12 chapters together on a monthly basis. Literally, the chapters share successes. “Wow. Look at the one-to-ones per member that your chapter is doing. How did you do it? Look at the closed business per member your chapter is doing.” Literally, we have chapters here where the average revenue per seat per year per member is in the $50,000 range. There was one chapter that did $65,000 per member last year.

Ivan:
Wow. That is amazing.

Tom:
As we pointed out earlier, it’s not just about quantity. It’s about quality. How do we train the members to be passing out referrals? How do we inspire them to  engage in the relationship development process, do one-to-ones, build that trusting?

Ivan:
The idea of a large group in and of itself is not critical. It’s the large group that is high quality. That is what is critical. I get members who say to me all the time, “50 members? I don’t want 50 members because they are not all good and it’s going to take up time.” The idea is to be good at screening the members. If you have 50, 60 or 70 great members, you are going  to be passing a ton of referrals. What are some of the high numbers? You are talking about millions of dollars a chapter that they are generating?

Tom:
Absolutely. We have chapters that are doing 2.8, 3 million, 3.1 million dollars per year. I don’t think a chapter needs to be 50 members in order for the average value per seat to be $50,000 – $60,000 per year, but I do truly believe that under the auspices of the double triple effect, that it increases the likelihood of a chapter doing those numbers per member when you are up at the 40, 50 or 60 member range because the referral  opportunities are exponential then.

Ivan:
Absolutely. We have seen that from day one, that when a chapter doubles its  size, it triples its referrals. It’s a common characteristic of the successful group. We are almost out of time. Priscilla, did you have a question?

Priscilla:
Yeah. When you say that you have each member receiving $40,000 or $50,000 per seat, does that include the members that are harder to refer? I know that, for example in our chapter, the construction contractor has really high numbers, so it skews the average- and the lawyers.

Ivan:
I am sure I can answer that. Tell me if I’m wrong. When you are talking about an average, it’s just that. It’s an average, which means especially if you are talking about the mean.  About half, roughly, of the people are going to be  doing more than that and half are going to be doing less than that. Nobody is doing that. It’s all more or less, but the statistical mean averages out at that number. Would you agree, Tom? Some are way over that and some are under that.

Tom:
Absolutely. As an executive director, I have trouble managing down to each individual member in a 1,600 member region. I need to find some way to measure success, and I have chosen average revenue per seat member per year.

Ivan:
Certainly from a chapter perspective, it gives you a real sense of the health of the chapter. If you have one chapter doing $10,000 per member, you can clearly see that they are struggling. If you have a chapter running $40,000 to $50,000 per member, that is huge, way on the high end of what we see.

Tom:
At BNI, our intention is to maximize the value of a member’s membership. Happy members don’t leave. If you have someone in the chapter who is making $30,000, $60,000 or $90,000 per year, I would think that they wouldn’t be leaving the chapter anytime soon.

Ivan:
Absolutely. Any closing comments before we wrap up?

Tom:
I think my closing comment goes back to something that we talked about earlier, and that is the power of following the recipe. I think whether as a member or a leadership team member that learns part of a success system out of BNI and then they can apply that to their own business, I think that is part of the value of BNI.

As I have talked to members who are seasoned in the system and asked them, what have you gotten out of BNI? They always share with me that the referrals and the increased revenue has been great, but the communication,  the leadership, the management skills, the personal development they have picked up and applied to their own company, those are the things that are so valuable. If people are following this system, embracing it, for five, 10, 15 years, as I have here, I don’t know  how they could go wrong, to be honest with you.

Ivan:
Tom, you and your region are a real inspiration to the organization. I appreciate what you do, and please pass on my congratulations to your groups for really being, I think, a standout region for this organization. I greatly appreciate it. I know that when chapters get to 40, 50, 60 members, that it’s very difficult to get the meetings over on time.

Priscilla, you wanted at one point for us to talk about what do you do when you get groups that size? I was thinking- you suggested before we started recording, Tom, that if our members are interested in that topic, to leave a message up on the podcast to say, “Hey, I’d like to know. How do you run a 50-member chapter? How do you squeeze it in?”

 If you are listening to this podcast and you want to do the types of things that Tom is talking about, but you want to know how to squeeze it in, leave a message on this podcast. Type us a message. If we get enough people saying they’d like to know, we’ll bring you back a third time, Tom, and we’ll have another conversation about how you run the meetings when there are that many members.

Tom:
It’s a true honor. I thank you, and thank you for your leadership.

Ivan:
Thanks Tom. I appreciate that. Priscilla, great question. I’ll turn it back over to you.

Priscilla:
Okay. Great. Thank you, Tom. I personally am looking forward to hearing that particular topic discussed. I think that’s it for this week. I’d just like to thank  both of you and 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.