Dr. Misner is about to start his book tour for Business Networking and Sex—Not What You Think, which is about gender differences in networking. One of his co-authors focused on the man’s perspective, one on the woman’s perspective, while Dr. Misner took the networking expert’s perspective.

One of the important questions the book addresses is “Are men and women really so different?”

Both men and women want business from networking and both are willing to work hard to get it. But they approach it in different ways, and need to learn the style of the opposite sex.

Here are some tips for women dealing with men:

• When asking for help, communicate clearly what you want
• When speaking to men, try to impress them and share your accomplishments
• When spoken to inappropriately, speak up immediately. Don’t accept it.
• Convey an image that you’re a serious business person at all times.

For men dealing with women:

• Slow down. Build the relationship.
• Don’t assume that women don’t take their business seriously.
• Edit what you’re about to say. Filter out anything that’s not business-appropriate.
• Remember that women are at networking events for the same reason you are: to get business.

Find out more about the book here.

Brought to you by Networking Now.

Complete Transcript of BNI Podcast Episode 238 -

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 am Priscilla Rice, and I am coming to you from Live Oak Recording Studio in Berkeley, CA. I am joined on the phone today by the Founder and Chairman of BNI, Dr. Ivan Misner. Hello Ivan, how are you and where are you?

Ivan:
Hey, I am doing great. I wanted to remind everyone I did a podcast a few weeks back, #234, as to why I mention where I am. I think it’s really important for members around the world to know that I am out visiting you, visiting regions, talking to members. I am not sitting back at BNI HQ in an ivory tower. I am getting out there. It’s actually one of the fun things about what I get to do.

This week, I am in the Bay area for a conference and for the beginning of the Business Networking and Sex book tour.

Priscilla:
I am going to see you then.

Ivan:
That would be great because you are in that area.

Priscilla:
That’s right.

Ivan:
I would love to see you. Now, what I wanted to talk about this week was the title of the book: Business Networking and Sex. The subtitle is Not What You Think. I know a lot of people are going to be disappointed because it’s really not about sex. It’s about gender. It’s a really interesting book, and I think that this book is going to help give a lot of exposure to BNI (no pun intended), a lot of branding for the organization because this is one of the best books that I have done. What I wanted to do today is talk about some of the content.

There have been a lot of books written about business networking and referral marketing. I have written quite a few of those myself. There have also been a lot of books written about the difference between men and women, which is what this book is really about. However, it dawned on me and my co-authors a few years ago that no one has ever made the effort to combine the two subjects. So that is how this project got born. Business Networking and Sex, Not What You Think is all about the difference between men and women.

Over a 4 year period, we did a survey of more than 12,000 business people, including the analysis of it. We surveyed 12,000 business people and we asked a couple of dozen questions. After analyzing the results of the survey, which was open to the public and we had respondents from all over the world, every populated continent. We took these survey results and developed the book because of it. My fellow networking experts, Frank Girafle, he writes from the male perspective. Hazel Walker writes from the female perspective. I take the expert prospective. So every chapter is kind of split into three sections: The Survey Says, which is my content, which I try to do as much as possible in a gender-neutral way. Then Frank talks about the He Says. He does anything but gender neutral. He takes the male perspective. Then Hazel does the She Says. Again, it’s not gender neutral. She talks about it from the female perspective.

Priscilla:
What are some of the questions that you asked?

Ivan:
There were a lot of questions that we asked. Most of the questions really didn’t apply to gender so much. They were about basic networking. How much time do you spend networking? What kinds of organizations do you belong to? Where are you located? How many hours do you spend? How much business do you generate? Just basic networking questions that we wanted to compare and contrast the differences between men and women.

It was our desire to understand the communication issues that occur between men and women in the networking process. The three of us focused on combining our personal networking experiences and the data to interpret it in a way that gave meaning to the readers. One thing that we explored in depth was the following very basic question. This isn’t a question that we asked people but a question we went into the book with. Are men and women really so different? Or do we have a tendency to focus on what makes us different instead of how we are similar? Coming to an answer that we could all agree on probably became the foremost concept of the book.

As it turns out, men and women are alike in many ways, as it comes to business networking. They just seem to get to the same place using different roads. If men and women could just understand some basic fundamental points of their different styles, then they can certainly be more successfully when referring the opposite sex.

It’s interesting that our study revealed two very distinct facts, seemingly at odds with one another. The first is that men and women want to get business from networking and are willing to work hard to get it. The second is that they seem to make things so difficult for themselves by only networking in the style that their own gender prefers and understands. This is counterproductive as a professional relationship between a man and a woman based either on what the man wants and is looking for or what the woman wants or is looking for. If they both want to stay connected, they quickly figure out that it takes more to make the other person work effectively with them than what it would seem at first glance.

A lot of men need to get to the point where they no longer offend women. These are some of the things that we came up in the book with- or are no longer misunderstood. Until that happens, they will continue to miss out on the potential to do business with women. The fact that almost half of the world’s population obviously is women and more and more women own businesses and work in companies as sales people.

On the other hand, the guys may sometimes act offensive. Most women need to realize that they play a big part that enables men to continue that behavior without even realizing it. Here is where some of the stuff gets a little controversial with the he said/she said. They certainly play that part every time they have been offended by an off-color comment and yet said nothing and sulked away. They do it when they have been ignore, discounted or rudely referred to but instead of speaking their mind, they just vowed not to do business with that person any more. They do it every time they have ever worn an inappropriate outfit to a business function and then felt offended that no one was taking them seriously, or worse yet, people were asking them out on dates instead of listening to their business ideas.

These are some of the things that we talk about in the book, so it’s a little controversial. We started out with a warning that this book may push some buttons. I just did an interview with a newspaper and the reported said, “Wow. You have tackled issues head on and give a pretty unvarnished position on not only the survey results but the male and female perspective.

What I am sharing with you here, Priscilla, by the way, is not just my perspective. It is the perspective that Frank and Hazel bring to it. I actually have the easy stuff. I am just talking about the data. They get to talk about the more controversial things.

Here are some tips that we give in the book to help people in their networking with the opposite gender. Women, when asking for help, communicate clearly exactly what it is that you want. When speaking to men, try to impress them and share your accomplishments because men have a tendency to impress one another. We talk about that in the book. They start a conversation with what they do, who they are. Women don’t tend to do that, so to deal with men sometimes they need to do that a little more directly. When spoken to inappropriately, speak up immediately. Don’t accept it. Convey an image to others that you are a serious business person in all that you do.

For men, slow down. Build the relationship. Don’t assume that women don’t take their business seriously. Edit what you are about to say using filters to sift out what is not business-appropriate, and comments that aren’t business-appropriate just virtually never go over. It’s interesting that some guys just don’t get that. Remember that women are at networking events for business just as they are. They are looking to generate business just as men are, and they need to be treated the same way in terms of a networking perspective.

Those are a handful of the recommendations that we have. I would invite members listening to this podcast if you think the topic sounds of interest to you, take a look at BNI.com for the book, or Amazon or local book stores. It literally comes out this week, and I think this will be a huge brand builder for BNI because I will be, along with Frank and Hazel, doing literally hundreds of interviews over the next 6 months to a year. Anytime we do an interview, we’ll have an opportunity to mention BNI. This is going to be great exposure, no pun intended, for the book.

Priscilla:
That sounds great. What an interesting book. I am looking forward to reading it.

Ivan:
Thanks. We were pretty excited. It was a lot of fun to do. It was really interesting to do. Just interviewing people for the book was really so interesting. We interviewed John Gray, who wrote Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus. He is in the book and also did an endorsement of the book. We have many other people, people who have been on my podcast and good friends of the organization, like Susan Roane. She contributed to the book. We interviewed her. She gives some great insights. One of the things that we put in the book from her was that women have a tendency to- she in particular reads the sports page everyday. I may have talked about this in a previous podcast, but she reads it everyday so that she can have a conversation with men. Men don’t do that kind of thing. We got that concept from Susan.

A lot of great stuff. We tried to integrate some data in there. For example, one bit of data that we think is really important is how much time should you spend networking? We found that people who are successful at networking spend an average of 6.5 hours a week. The people who are not successful in networking spend less than 2 hours per week. Men or women. It’s pretty consistent, although one gender spends a little more time than the other. I plan to talk to you about that in a future podcast. On average, it’s about 6.5 hours a week for people who are successful in networking.

There is a lot of great data in this book, integrated into it. We ended up taking on almost 90% of the tables that we had produced because we didn’t want it to be a book on just statistics. There is not a lot statistical stuff out there, but there is some and it really substantiates or supports the positions that both Frank and Hazel take in their gender perspectives.

That’ all I’ve got for today, Priscilla, other than I want to give a website out to the listeners: www.businessnetworkingandsex.com. If you want to get more information, a free chapter of the book, and listen to some of the stuff that Frank and Hazel say, go to that website. Thanks Priscilla.

Priscilla:
Thanks so much for sharing that. I would 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. Thank you so much for listening. This is Priscilla Rice and we hope you will join us next week for another exciting episode of The Official BNI Podcast.

A survey of 12,000 businesspeople that Dr. Misner conducted for his upcoming book, Business Networking and Sex (Not What You Think), showed that people who focused first on relationship and then on business scored much higher in success than those who focused first on business and then on the relationship.

Also according to this survey, men are much more transactional than women are, which is why women are usually more successful at networking. This is part of why Dr. Misner created the GAINS Exchange: because he’s not good at being relational. And the reason Dr. Misner starts each episode by saying where he is that week is to show members that he takes meeting BNI members in different chapters seriously.

Networking expert Susan RoAne reads the sports page every day in order to be able to start conversations with men—even though she hates sports. How many men read Cosmopolitan or Home and Garden in order to be able to talk to women? But if you make an effort to be more relational, it will pay off in your networking.

Brought to you by Networking Now.

Complete Transcript of BNI Podcast Episode 234 -

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 am Priscilla Rice, and I am coming to you from Live Oak Recording Studio in Berkeley, CA. I am joined on the phone today by the Founder and Chairman of BNI, Dr. Ivan Misner. Hello Ivan, how are you and where are you?

Ivan:
Thanks, Priscilla. I am doing great and I am going to tell you where I am at the end of my podcast today because I want to talk a little bit about why I say where I am and why I think it’s important. I am going to connect that, believe it or not, to this topic. Transactional vs. relational.

I recently got a message on this podcast from Michael. I won’t give his last name. You are going to love this one, Priscilla. This is an interesting one. He says, “You people are real blowhards. I don’t need to hear you people bloviate about your navel.” By the way, very good vocabulary, Michael. I am very impressed with your vocabulary. “ I don’t need to hear you bloviate. I know you think you’re important. I don’t give a care where you are, what you are doing or anything else about your life. All I need to know is the information, not how important you find yourself.” How do you feel about that, Priscilla?

Priscilla:
Oh wow.

Ivan:
If it’s any consolation, he is talking mostly about me.

Priscilla:
No, I think he is talking about us and our little banter back and forth.

Ivan:
That’s possibly true. First, I want to talk about why and then I want to come back to another email I got, interestingly enough, on the same day. That will take us to our topic of transactional versus relational. So why do I say where I am in the world? Let me tell you why. It’s done on purpose. I, for a long time, would have members send me emails and they would be really upset and talking about where are you and how come I haven’t met you? Where are you? Are you in your ivory tower in BNI? Are you on the beach drinking margaritas? No! I travel a lot. I think it’s really important to meet directors and meet members. It’s part of the job I love. I love traveling around and telling people how they can increase their business.

So the reason I start off every podcast with where I am is to give people a sense of just how much I travel to regions and care about and want to connect with members around the world. Listen, anybody who has done business travel really knows I’m not bragging. Business travel isn’t a lot of fun, but it’s the career I have chosen, and I love doing it. I want members to know that I am out there meeting people almost every other week, sometimes every week for months at a time and that’s really why I say it.

But I think there is a deeper issue here that I really want to talk about. That is the transactional versus relational approach to networking. That exact same day, Priscilla, no kidding, I received another email from Tammy. It was a longer email. Let me read a sentence out of it. She thanks me for BNI. It’s her third year in BNI and she says, “BNI has taught me how to talk to complete strangers and to be interested in their lives instead of trying to sell something to them.”

Now let’s compare and contrast. The first email was “just give me the facts”. It was almost like Dragnet. People listen from around the world who don’t know what Dragnet is. It was a great TV show. I loved the TV show. What did he always say? “Just the facts, ma’am. Just the facts.” That’s what Michael’s approach is. Just give me the facts. I don’t need anything else. I don’t care about where you are at. Just tell me what I need to know. The second email is what I love about BNI is it has taught me to be relational. It has taught me about relationships.

I wanted to compare and contrast the emails because interestingly enough, we have a book coming out in January, Business Networking and Sex, Not What You Think. Long title, talking about some of the findings. It’s based on a survey we did of 12,000 business people. We found that people who focused first on relationship and then on business scored much higher in success. They said that they were much more successful at networking than people who focused first on business and then relationship.

Here’s the real kicker, Priscilla. You’ll like it. I hate it.

Priscilla:
I think I know what it is.

Ivan:
Women scored better.

Priscilla:
Right. Of course.

Ivan:
They did. They scored better. They were a little higher on the relational side than men, but when it came to the transactional side, men were definitely higher. If you said you were not successful in networking, you were 60% likely to be a man.

Priscilla:
Oh really?

Ivan:
Yeah. 60% of those who said they were not successful at networking and were transactional- focused on the business first- were men. Men tend to focus more on transactions than relationships. Now look at these two emails that I just got. Same day. They were about two different podcasts but same day. One says I don’t care anything about you. I don’t care anything about where you are at. You are just bragging. Just give me the facts. That’s all I want. The other says, you know what I’ve learned is that it’s all about relationships. Who wants the facts? The man. Who wants the relationships? The woman.

Now, one thing that I have learned over the years is that my natural tendency is to just go for the facts. Just give me the facts. The truth is that is not good in networking. That is a bad networking practice. It has taken me many years to learn how to ask more questions and to try to find out about the person.

You know, the reason I wrote the GAINS Exchange, that acronym for Goals, Accomplishments, Interests, Networks, and Skills is that I can’t do it naturally. I am not good at it naturally. So by having a GAINS exchange, it gives me a system to find out about the person. Not just the facts- not just the front of the card but the back of the card. What’s behind the person.

I think that is a really important concept that is identified in these two emails. One from a man who wants nothing about the facts and is all about the transaction. One from a woman who is more relational. Guys, don’t get mad and send me hate mail. I am not saying all men are this way, but the data is the data. It is what it is. It shows that the women tend to be more focused on the relationships.

Let me tell you a couple of things out of the book that I am going to share in advance. The book is not out yet. I interviewed Susan Roane who is an expert on networking. Great lady who wrote many books. Here is something she says that she does, Priscilla, that you might find interesting. I put this in the book. She says she reads the sports page everyday.

Priscilla:
Oh, so she has something to talk about.

Ivan:
Yeah. She hates sports. She said she reads the sports page so she can have a conversation with men in networking environments because they focus on sports so much. She reads the sports page so she can begin the conversation. So let me ask you a question, Priscilla. How many men do you think read Cosmo so they can have a conversation with a woman? Some women are out there going, Cosmo doesn’t represent me, but I did a Google search. Toptenreviews.com said Cosmo came out as one of the top magazines for women. Homes and Gardens another. So how many men are out there reading Homes and Gardens or Cosmo just so they can have a conversation with women?

I would tell you very few. So why is that? Because men tend to be transactional. Just give me the facts, ma’am. And women tend to be relational. When it comes to success at networking, the data is what the data is. And that is relational is better that transactional.

Priscilla:
Women are trained to be relational. That’s how women do business as mothers. They get together in small groups and talk about each other and who does great work. They trade referrals of babysitters and this and that, where to get bargains, and that’s what women do. They are the original networkers and relational networkers.

Ivan:
And it’s all about trust. We have talked about that in other previous podcasts and we have quoted Steven Covey in the Speed of Trust. If it’s all about trust, trust only comes when there is a relationship built, a plausible, credible relationship. So if trust is only going to come when there is a relationship, if you are focused on the transaction, you are never going to get to the relationship, you are never going to get to the trust and you’re not going to generate as much business.

While women have scored better at it in terms of the survey we did, and we have anecdotal information to support that, the bottom line is everyone who focused on relationships versus transaction, whether you are a man or a woman, scored higher. Forget about gender. If someone looked at the question of has networking played a role in your success and focused on business versus relationship, they were twice as likely to say no. About 110% more likely to say no if you focused on business first and relationship second. You were less than half as likely to be unsuccessful if you focused on relationship first.

Even if you take gender out of the equation, it is all about. Tammy, thank you very much for recognizing that it is all about relationships. I love that she said “it has taught me how to talk to complete strangers and be interested in their lives.”

Michael, I have to thank you for you as well. Thank you for reminding me why it is important to tell everyone where I am. I do it because I want people to know that I am out visiting and connecting with members all around the world.

To end the podcast, Priscilla, I will tell you that I am home for a few weeks spending time with my family, reintroducing myself because I have been on the road so much meeting with members all over the world. It is good to be home, but come January, I am hitting over 30 cities next year to meet BNI members all around the world. This was, I think, one of our more interesting podcasts, Priscilla, and I apologize for those things that Michael said. I think you are wonderful and anything but a blowhard. I love working with you.

Priscilla:
Thank you, Ivan. I think you are a really fun person to be with. And thank you, Michael, for the feedback. I think that might be it for this week. Thank you so much. I would 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. Thank you so much for listening. This is Priscilla Rice and we hope you will join us next week for another exciting episode of The Official BNI Podcast.

There’s no need to wait for a class reunion to network with your former classmates. Admittedly Dr. Misner has never passed a referral to any of the other 9 people in his first graduate school class, but he’s more connected to his high school classmates today than he was 10 years ago, thanks to Facebook and Twitter.

Here are three steps to help you reconnect to old school friends.

1. Contact your school’s alumni services department
2. Reconnect using online networks (e.g. LinkedIn, Facebook)
3. Seek referrals GENTLY. People will un-friend you if you adopt a pushy, hard-sell approach. It’s usually safe to announce a special event occasionally.

Brought to you by Networking Now.

Complete Transcript of BNI Podcast Episode 233 -

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 am Priscilla Rice, and I am coming to you from Live Oak Recording Studio in Berkeley, CA. I am joined on the phone today by the Founder and Chairman of BNI, Dr. Ivan Misner. Hello Ivan, how are you doing?

Ivan:
I am doing great, Priscilla. And I have kind of an unusual topic from what I normally do.

Priscilla:
What is this about?

Ivan:
The full title is Don’t Wait for a Reunion to Network with Former Classmates. A lot of what I talk about on these podcasts are really aimed at what members can do a lot of times within the context of BNI. Here we are reaching out a little bit- and a number of my podcasts do reach out. This is reaching out beyond BNI. Here’s a technique that BNI members can use that doesn’t apply to BNI specifically, but it applies to networking and of course, the bigger, broader and deeper your network, the more effective it will be for you and BNI as well.

Priscilla:
Okay, how does it work?

Ivan:
It relates to your former classmates. Every year during the back to school season, I often recall my first day in graduate school in southern California. I was pursuing a doctorate with an emphasis on organizational behavior there. On the first day- it was an 8- hour class once a week, if you can believe that. There were two professors in the class, ten students. Two professors in every class for this course, by the way, for every one of the class sessions. Ten students. There was no place to hide. One of the professors spent the first two hours of class talking about the elite network of peers that we were going to be working alongside for the next two years and how we were going to make relationships that would last the rest of our professional and personal careers.

The sad news is that even though I ended up founding an international networking organization, I have never passed a business referral to or received a referral from one of these high-level classmates that I had. Instead, after graduation, we all spread out to chase our professional goals without really any context with which to keep in touch. We live in a different world today and I feel it is a real advantage to new college graduates and it’s easier because of the tools that are out there. But for us older guys and ladies out there who may have graduated some time ago, the technology that is out there is still helpful for us to connect with classmates. As a matter of fact, I am more connected to my high school classmates today than I was ten years ago because of Facebook, Twitter and other online technologies.

I was working on my doctorate in the early 80′s. Finished it in ’93 well before social networks and web services were available to help people keep in touch. Today there are a multitude of options to help you maintain the relationships that you make as you pursue a college or university degree and after you’ve completed high school, college or university.

I want to talk about three steps to help you reconnect with old school friends and convert those old relationships into current relationships. The first things is to contact your school’s alumni services department. They will be besides themselves to connect with you. Alumni departments really want to find out what is going on with students who have graduated there. Colleges and universities have been creating networking affinity groups and other opportunities to help students stay in their relationship with each other as well as their universities for years. So you can share news about your business that may catch the eye of your fellow graduates. You can also develop that network of current and former students to find out who you want to connect with.

I have found that by getting back involved with universities and sharing my story, I have gotten published in the alumni magazines. I’ve been recognized as an Alumni of the Year. All of that has happened because I reconnected with the universities that I went to, both undergraduate and graduate. As a matter of fact, two of the colleges asked me to speak at a commencement.

Priscilla:
Nice.

Ivan:
Yeah, yeah. I thought it was amazing. So reconnect with your alumni services department. That is the beginning.

Second, reconnect using online networks. LinkedIn, for instance, is the largest business only social network and you will likely find a lot of your former classmates there. And then there is Facebook. Facebook is the perfect social network.It exploded into an international network from students to parents from entrepreneurs to brands to friends to family and much more.I hear stories all the time about how people have reconnected with friends they haven’t seen in a long time. I am an example of somebody who has reconnected with somebody I hadn’t seen in years and years and years. I even did an alumni party at my house because I got on Facebook and started connecting with old classmates.

So we did a party at my house. It was overlapping years, so I met students who were younger than me when I was there, older than me when I was at my high school. So use online networks. Once you start connecting with those classmates, it’s important to keep track of those valuable contacts by setting up and maintaining a database in addition to the standard contact databases that you see in Microsoft Outlook or the most robust contact management system such as ACT. There are web based contact storage where you can store contacts in the cloud. There is Gmail, Yahoo!, or you can use your LinkedIn account or other online address books. There’s a lot out there. So that is number two.

First, contact your school’s alumni network. Number two, connect with other using online networks. And number three, seek referrals gently. That’s important. Ask for referrals. Ask for references. But do it gently. Once you have built and organized your network, the next step is to tactfully tap into your social capital. But be careful. If you conduct a constant hard sales effort aimed at your network, people might drop you or unfriend you. As a matter of fact, they will drop you or unfriend you.

I think of social networks as a brand building tool. But using it to turn followers into sales is possible if you do it tactfully. Do this by asking your contacts if they know anyone who might be a potential customer for a type of business. You can occasionally announce a special deal or announce a special event. I find that really helpful. If you have some special event that you are doing, your contacts are much more willing to promote that than, “ I have a special on my product…” They don’t like that. But an event, a lot of people come.

You can offer something like that directly to your network. A successful offering might not only encourage those in your network to show up, but they will share it with other people who show up in their networks. So it’s okay to ask but remember that VCP always applies. Visibility, Credibility, Profitability. Before you start asking for referrals, you have to be at credibility with people. They will jump before you build that credibility.

Don’t wait for a reunion to connect with former classmates. Do these three things. Contact your school’s alumni services department. Reconnect using various online networks and eventually seek referrals but do it tactfully and do it gently.

Priscilla:
All very good recommendations. I have one question. Some of the contact information that you put in the article that was the basis of this podcast, I read that. It gave some specific information about tagging your contacts and I’m wondering if you are a Mac user if there is anything that you could recommend or you think that the contact information services that you suggest would work for us.

Ivan:
Absolutely. I do have a Mac at home with my kids for their artwork that they do. I don’t use Mac a lot but there is no reason why- the Mac database is as good as any. So using that database is important, although I mentioned Microsoft Outlook and ACT, although ACT probably is for the Mac. It’s not so much the database. It’s the concept. Whatever you like to use is what you need to use. Tagging people- in the article that I wrote, I did mention tagging people. If you have a smartphone, to keep contacts organized, there are tags like go2 tag mobile application allows you to create customized tags for your contacts.

A program that I recommend: www.relate2profit.com has a lot of features in it. For example, VCP is part of that system so that you can say where am I with this person? Am I at visibility, credibility, or profitability? I have talked about them on other calls. Great system. Whatever you use, use it wisely and effectively.

Priscilla:
Well thanks. I think that might be it for this week.

Ivan:
That’s it. If you have some other ideas and are listening to this podcast or reading a transcript and have an idea on not waiting for a network to connect with former classmates, put it up here. I would love to hear more ideas on how you can connect with other people, your former classmates, whether it be high school or college. Put it up here at BNIpodcast.com. Thank you very much, Priscilla

Priscilla:
Okay, thank you, Dr. Misner. I would 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. Thank you so much for listening. This is Priscilla Rice and we hope you will join us next week for another exciting episode of The Official BNI Podcast.

This episode is a rebroadcast of Episode 173.

What do you say when someone asks you what you do? You need to be prepared, and you need to have something quick and interesting. You need a Unique Selling Proposition.

Don’t just say “I’m a consultant.” Say “I work with small businesses to help them attract more clients than anyone could possibly handle.”

The Referral Institute’s USP is “We help people work less, make more, and create referrals for life.”

The natural response to a USP like this is to say “How do you do that?”

Your assignment this week is to come up with a USP for your business and share it here in the comments. Then share it with your BNI chapter.

Once you’ve tested your USP, come back and tell us how it worked and whether you changed it for a better effect.

Read the complete transcript on Episode 173.

Brought to you by Networking Now.

Networking vampires are people who aren’t trying to add value, only to make sales. These are the people who use networking events as a form of face-to-face cold calling. They can suck the life out of your networking experience.

So how do you deal with the people who are only out for what they can get from you? Unfortunately, most aren’t open to learning that networking is more like farming than like hunting, so you need to find a way to extricate yourself before the vampire sucks up too much of your time. If you attend events with your spouse, you can pre-arrange a signal so the other person can rescue you.

Read more about networking vampires on Dr. Misner’s business networking blog.

Have you encountered a networking vampire? Leave a comment to tell us what happened and how you handled it.

Brought to you by Networking Now.

Complete Transcript of BNI Podcast Episode 226 -

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 am Priscilla Rice, and I am coming to you from Live Oak Recording Studio in Berkeley, CA. I am joined on the phone today by the Founder and Chairman of BNI, Dr. Ivan Misner. Hello Ivan, how are you and where are you?

Ivan:
Well, I am in this week for US member extravaganza winners. We are doing a big trip to San Diego and all the people who won the extravaganza are going to San Diego, and I get a chance to meet them all. So if you are coming, make sure to come on up and say hello and that you listen to this podcast.

Priscilla:
Okay great. What are you going to share with us today?

Ivan:
Today I am going to talk about something kind of fun, the networking vampire. I wrote about this in my blog and I want to talk about some of the comments that people made. The blog is businessnetworking.com, so if you have a chance, go drop by and look at the blog that I do. Someone recently used the expression that I really got a good kick out of. It really resonated with me. She said that she met someone and that this guy was a networking vampire. He just sucked the life right out of you and would take all the business that he could get. He would take whatever you were willing to give him and drain it out of you and then move on to the next person.

I talk about networking being more about farming than it is about hunting. Total networking hunter, but she used the expression, networking vampire. I got a kick out of it and I did this blog and got a lot of responses from people. I wanted to talk about some of those responses and then you and I can chat about whether you have had any experiences with this. In my blog, Jason mentioned that he enjoyed it and that he definitely ran into people who were networking vampires. What he did was to try to disengage the conversation as politely as possible, with something like, “ Nice meeting you. I’ve set a goal of meeting X number of people today, so it was a pleasure meeting you.” Then move on to the next person. When you find someone like that, it’s basically cold calling and you just move on to the next person.

Erin posted a message that they really try to go into networking events to add value. So when they find people that they can add value to, they work with them, and networking vampires you generally can’t add value to because they are just trying to make a sale.

There is a really good posting about Jeff where they talk about having a gentleman from a consulting company come into BNI and use the BNI meeting to develop referrals for his lead service. He had a couple meetings and tried to do this hard sell on all the people. He did all these meeting just to do basically face to face cold calling. He tried to meet people and close deals without building any kind of trust or relationship.

There is one I really love from Allen Buchanan. He has been in our podcast with BNI. He said that he goes to networking events with his wife. I love this because I do this. When one of them sees that the other is in a tractor beam, as he says, with a networking vampire and they are being drawn in, they have a signal that they give one another. They will do whatever it is, touch their nose, pull their ear – I noticed he never said what that signal is. When I see him next time, I’ll be looking for a signal . When that signal is given, the other one approaches and rescues them by saying, “Honey, I am sorry to interrupt you, but there is someone who has to meet you and they are leaving soon.” And pull them away. I love that technique with someone who is a networking vampire.

There were several people. Bob was one of them. He said, “When somebody comes up who wants to just get everything they can from me, I try to redirect them and educate them.” Those are my words, not necessarily Bob’s. Do a little bit of networking education. Several people said that. I say good luck to that. Generally speaking, these people are not prepared to be educated. They have a one track mind and that is to close deals. Unsolicited advice is rarely taken. I don’t find these people generally in a mindset that they are willing to take suggestions and recommendations.

There was one other comment that I wanted to share from Terrance. I met Terrance. He does a great sculpture with soundwaves. He did the soundwaves of me doing givers gain. He’s got a sculpture for it. So Terrance, if you are listening to this podcast, put your website up here on this podcast. It’s a 3-D acrylic thing, really beautiful. Terrance came up with a term that he liked better than vampires, who drain all the blood. He said most people don’t do that. They just take what they can and move on. He had another term called networking mosquito. They’re annoying as heck. They flutter around. They take what they need and move on to the next person. That is probably as good or better a term than networking vampire.

So have you run across any networking vampires or mosquitos.

Priscilla:
Let me ask if you would consider this person a vampire or a mosquito. It was a member who joined our group and he did more one on ones than anybody else we ever had. He must have done over 40 and then he left the group. It was kind of interesting. Then he left the group. Is that a vampire? I was very curious.

Ivan:
It’s hard to say. It’s quite possible. It’s one of two situations as a rule. Either he was just there from the very beginning to get what he could and move on, so he met with everybody to get what he could in referrals and then once he met with everybody, he decided he was going to go network someplace else. That would absolutely be a networking vampire. Or he could have possibly not understood that it just takes time and the one to ones are a great way to help expedite it, but I think you said he was a member for like 4 or 5 months. It’s just not enough time. We have have hard data to show that for most of us, not all, it takes 6 months to a year to start generating the kind of referrals that you would like to get out of a networking group.

As a matter of fact, as part of my doctoral dissertation, we found that people who were in two years, compared to one year, substantially more referrals. Not only the quantity of referrals but the quality of referrals given that second year compared to that first year. Why is that? It’s all about trust. When you give a referral, you give a piece of your reputation away.

You told me off air what the company was. I know that company. Nice company. They have a great product, but it was expensive. You don’t just refer that to anybody. So you know, you have to find the right person and make sure that this representative is a good representative and that they are going to do a good job. It takes a little bit of time. So yes, either a networking vampire or he just didn’t understand the concept of networking being more about farming versus hunting.

Priscilla:
I think you’re right. Well, great. Thank you so much.

Ivan:
That’s all I have for today, Priscilla. If you are listening to this podcast, we would love to hear your stories of networking vampires that you’ve met. How did you handle it? How did you do? Not everybody out there is a networking vampire. I’m telling you. We have a lot of BNI members who are out there to give business. But we do run into people and we certainly run into people in other networking organizations. So tell us your stories on this podcast. Thanks Priscilla.

Priscilla:
Okay. You are so welcome. I would 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. Thank you so much for listening. This is Priscilla Rice and we hope you will join us next week for another exciting episode of The Official BNI Podcast.

Today’s podcast is a rebroadcast of Episode 144.

Today’s podcast topic comes from Dr. Misner’s book Networking Like a Pro. Here are five questions to ask at networking events that will help you leave a lasting impression on the people you meet.

1. What do you like best about what you do?
2. You mentioned you were in ______ industry. What got you started in that business?
3. Where else do you usually network? Are there other groups that you go to?
4. What are some of your biggest challenges? (Don’t start a conversation with this one.)
5. How can I help you?

Read the complete transcript on the post for Episode 144.

Brought to you by Ask Ivan Misner.

It would probably surprise you to know about some of the influential people that some of your fellow BNI members know. Don’t assume that just because someone works in an unrelated industry, that person isn’t a referral source for you. It doesn’t take a corporate executive to connect you with a corporate executive. Members of your chapter have connections through their family, friends, and hobbies, as well as their clients and colleagues.

Never overlook the networking possibilities of an event or a possible BNI member, no matter what kind of event it is or how unlikely it seems. The dentist, the cosmetic salesperson, the gardener, may be the biggest source of referrals in your chapter.

If you have a story about someone walking away from business—or unexpectedly getting business—because they didn’t realize who another person knew, post it to the comments here.

Brought to you by Networking Now.

Complete Transcript of BNI Podcast Episode 206 -

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 am Priscilla Rice, and I am coming to you from Live Oak Recording Studio in Berkley, CA. I am joined on the phone today by the Founder and Chairman of BNI, Dr. Ivan Misner. Hello, Ivan. How are you?

Ivan:
Doing great, Priscilla. I’ve got an interesting topic today. You never know whom they know. We don’t walk around wearing signs displaying everyone that we know. It would probably surprise people to know about some of the influential people that your fellow BNI members know but haven’t told you about. You can assume that your BNI members, family, friends, acquaintances, referral partners do have powerful contacts that can help you and help you in a number of ways, but they may not have shared that for a number of reasons. It could be they don’t know you real well yet, and these are their best customers or clients. Or could be that you haven’t asked, which I think is really important.

It always surprises me when I do that exercise in a chapter, we get really specific and we name somone that we have been trying to get to. It always surprises me how somebody says, “Oh, I know that person,” or, “That person is my relative.” That was one of my favorites. “That is my sister-in-law.” I was like, “Really? You never told me.” “You never asked.”

You never know who people know, and you never want to underestimate the depth of the contact pools that your fellow members are swimming in. There is a great story that I heard about a project management consultant who did business with large manufacturers and was asking for referrals. He was talking with a woman who owned a small gift basket business and she expressed interested in helping the consultant. Haughtily, he said he didn’t see any possible way she could help him, this gift basket person. She said, “I don’t know. Tell me what you do.” He said, “I go to manufacturers and help them with their processes. I am sure that you have never heard of any of the people who I need to meet.” He turned and walked away. He was just like, you know- we’ve seen people like this.

Priscilla:
This is a real story?

Ivan:
This is a real story, yeah. He just basically said, “There’s nothing you can do. Thanks but no thanks.” He left, and the gift basket woman, who was a BNI member, smiled and said nothing. She basically had a secret that she didn’t share. That was that among her clients were several large manufacturing companies. She knew them personally, including many executives at higher levels in the companies because they had used her business. More importantly, her father-in-law owned the largest manufacturing company in town. She was a great referral source for this consultant, but he was basically rude to her, turned his back on her and walked away without realizing how much money he just left on the table.

That is the kind of thing that we have to be cognizant of. You just don’t know who these people know. The value that you bring to a referral network or to a strategic alliance is directly related to the number of relationships that you have and the quality of those relationships. In a typical referral networking group like BNI where you have 20-40 people, the number of referrals that can be created among all the possible contacts within one or two degrees of separation is almost incalculable. It doesn’t take a corporate executive to connect you with another corporate executive, or a rich person to introduce you to another rich, influential person. That’s not the way the world always works. Quite honestly, I’m not sure that it ever has worked that way.

I had a BNI Director who told me about a high end property developer who was invited to a networking group- it wasn’t a BNI group. He was invited to a networking group’s gold tournament as a guest to see what referral networking was all about. He came but only because he loved golf. As a big money developer, he didn’t need to network. He came to the awards dinner afterwards only because his foursome won. At the dinner, he happened to be seated next to a financial advisor who had grown wealthy through the referral networking process. This was a BNI member. He had become a property investor. Through conversation, the guest mentioned to this financial advisor that he was having trouble getting a bank loan on a property deal. The financial advisor said he might be interested in investing. Over the next few days, the two were negotiating a six figure deal.

The moral of the story is you always pursue the networking opportunity of an event. You never know who you are going to sit next to. I have had that exact situation happen to me personally at a networking group many, many years ago. You just don’t know who you are sitting next to, and you just can’t determine whether they are going to have a great contact or be a great contact just by the professions that they are in.

I could spend time giving you more and more stories, all similar, about a gardner, a cosmetics consultant. I think I shared a story on a podcast some time ago about a dentist who gave one of the biggest referrals in the history of BNI. We have some groups that say, we want business to business. We don’t want a chiropractor, a dentist or a cosmetics person. And yet, a couple of the biggest referrals I have seen given were by a cosmetics person and a dentist. You just don’t know who these people know. The key to building a powerful personal network is to surround yourself with quality business people in diverse professions.

I’ve been doing this 26 years. I still get people who don’t get that. They still go, “Yeah, but I need to meet the CEO of whatever organization.” Well, the CEO doesn’t want to meet you. They are hiding from you. They are. Listen. They say they want to get in this organizations, but the CEOs aren’t in the organizations that you can get into. There are organizations for CEOs. There are several that come to mind. I don’t want to name them on the podcast, but they cost more than $1000 a month to participate in and you have to prove that you are the CEO of a multi-million dollar company. Otherwise they don’t let you in. Period. So they are hiding from you.

Forget about that. That’s not the best way to build your business. Surround yourself with quality people in a lot of different professions because you never know who those people know. When people get that and understand that networking is more about farming than hunting and it’s about cultivating those relationships with people in diverse professions, those are the people who do well in BNI.

Priscilla:
And it has to do with your attitude towards people in general. That’s very attractive and can bring you all kinds of referrals just by showing the kind of person you are.

Ivan:
Yeah. And being professional with people even when you don’t think they have something to give you. What happens is some people look at others and go, “This person can’t do anything for me. I’m out of here.” You know, to be honest with you, those aren’t the people who I want to network with anyway. They just don’t get it as evidenced by a couple of stories that I have shared here today on today’s podcast.

Here is what I would like from today’s listeners. If you have a story, something that happened to you or someone you know, maybe another BNI member, about not knowing who somebody knows, share that here on the podcast. Tell me a brief story that has happened to you or someone you know where somebody walked away from business because they didn’t realize this person had that contact or they someone stumbled upon it, that this person had that contact. Anything relating to the subject. I would love to hear more stories. Please put them up here on BNIpodcast.com.

Priscilla:
Okay. Perfect. Thank you, Dr. Misner.

Ivan:
Thank you, Priscilla.

Priscilla:
I think that’s it for this week. I would 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. Thank you so much for listening. This is Priscilla Rice and we hope you will join us next week for another exciting episode of The Official BNI Podcast.

Tim Houston, Area Director for BNI NYC Outer Boroughs, joins Dr. Misner today to talk about his best-selling book, The World’s Worst Networker: Lessons Learned by the Best from the Absolute Worst. Tim is part of Dr. Misner’s Author Mentoring Program for BNI directors.

There are lots of books that show people how to network properly; Tim wanted to examine the subject from the opposite perspective. The book’s contributors include Bob Burg, Susan RoAne, Michelle R. Donovan, Robyn Henderson, and Ivan Misner.

The common trait of the world’s worst networkers is a mercenary attitude. They make networking all about them. That said, the world’s worst networkers fall into three categories:

• The Most Unwanted
• Environmental disasters
• Online outlaws

Brought to you by Networking Now.

Complete Transcript of BNI Podcast Episode 201 -

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 Berkeley, CA. I am joined today by the Founder and Chairman of BNI, Dr. Ivan Misner. Hello Ivan. How are you and who is with you today?

Ivan:
Hi Priscilla. I am doing great. I have with me today a good friend, Tim Houston. Tim is an area director for BNI in the NY area and has been involved with BNI, first starting as a member in 1996. So as of today, he has been with the organization for 15 years. That’s one thing I really love about BNI. We get people who are in for a long, long time. Tim is now the author of the best selling book- I’m really proud of you, Tim- the best selling book on Amazon.com called The World’s Worst Networker. The subtitle is Lessons Learned from the Absolute Worst. Tim is part of my author mentoring program that I’ve been running for a few years with BNI directors. Tim, it’s a real pleasure to have you on the podcast, and congratulations on the best seller status.

Tim:
Thank you. I’m really thrilled to be here. Thank you.

Ivan:
So how did you come up with the subject for the book, The World’s Worst Networker?

Tim:
Well, Ivan, as you said, I have been with BNI since 1996, so I have been networking professionally for almost 20 years now. No matter where I went, even back then, even today, sometimes you run into people that you just scratch your head and say, “Is this really networking? How are they conducting business? How are they surviving in business?”

You see them doing certain faux pas and getting themselves into certain fiascos, and they think that they are actually networking. I found out that this is a phenomenon that is happening around the world. Through sharing stories from BNI directors around the world, we found that there is a commonality here. There are so many great books, including yours, that are out there that teach people how to network. I wanted to look at it from a different direction and show people what not to do. More importantly, what lessons did some of us, who were once the world’s worst networker learn in the process. That is how I came up with the idea for this book.

Ivan:
You have a lot of great contributing authors. Bob Berg is good friend of BNI’s, a good friend of mine. Susan Roanne, Robin Henderson. Susan Roanne is also a great friend of the organization. Robin Henderson from Australia. Michelle Darbin who is a co-author of mine in the 29% Solution. Mene Stevens slipped in a couple contributions for me. I’m really proud to be a part of your book, Tim. Thank you for inviting me to do that. So you have some great people contributing to it. What are some of the kinds of things that people do to hinder or complicate their networking efforts, based on the stories in the book?

Tim:
One of the things that I have noticed, the common theme that I noticed is that some of these networkers have what I call a mercenary mentality. They go to networking events. They go to business groups. They go to trade shows and it’s all about them. They don’t care about building relationships. They burn bridges in the process, and they really think, though, in their own mind that they are really accomplishing something. In reality, they are just getting in the way and losing a lot of credibility. As you teach in BNI and also The Referral Institute about the VCP process, they have no or very limited visibility, any credibility they might have had is completely destroyed by the things that they do or the things that they actually say. Then there is absolutely no profitability whatsoever. They don’t have a grasp of that.

I think that is in part because they way, in some cases, they think they are supposed to network. No one has actually taught them. They think they are natural born networkers, but I don’t believe that is the case. Networking is a skill that you build up over time, with trial and error through learning from other people and the experts, like yourself.

Ivan:
One of the things that I have learned over the years is sometimes you have to talk about the mistakes that people are making, the problems that people are creating for themselves. You used a couple of articles that I wrote in the book, Premature Solicitation, which is a funny piece that I did on networking faux pas. So I think these are good examples, and it helps business people, BNI members in particular, who are listening to this podcast learn what not to do so you’re not one of the world’s worst networkers.

With that in mind, can you give us an example of a few people, maybe an example or two on who may be one of the world’s worst networkers based on your book?

Tim:
Sure. Absolutely. One of the things that we’ve done because there are so many different categories, we’ve actually put them into three classes. We have what is called the most unwanted list. These are people you could find in almost any networking situation. They are almost universal. The other types are environmental disasters, which you typically find in one or two specific environments or locations. Then of course, with the advent of social networking we have, the online outlaws. These are people who misbehave online or act in such a way while they “network” online, but it’s very different from what they do in real life and they totally destroy their credibility.

What I wanted to share. This is one of the folks who is on the most unwanted list. It’s called the outsourced networker. It’s a true story of two scares that I had in the early 2000′s. I’ll share one of the stories. I was at a networking event where a gentleman came up to me and told me he was a financial advisor. He had no business card and he knew nothing about the services that he allegedly sold. In the room, Ivan, there were about 15 or 16 other financial advisors there.

I figured okay, let me ask him some questions and find out about him and his company. It was a small company I had never heard of. He tried passing me off to somebody else, telling me call them up and get the information directly from them. About a month or so later, I see him at a chamber of commerce business card exchange and I jokingly reminded him when we first met that he didn’t have a business card. This time he did have a business card, but it had a completely different title. I said, “I thought you were a financial advisor.”

He said, “Oh no. I wasn’t telling you the truth there. You see, my brother was the financial advisor but he was too busy to network. So what he decided to do was send me to go to his events and do the networking for him.”

Big companies and small companies outsource. Outsourcing seems to be a little controversial in certain areas, but on the other hand, it can be very convenient. One of the things that these folks try to do with big companies as well as smaller companies- is there are some people out there who try to outsource their networking. They send people to do what I call the revolving door method of networking. They send one person from a company or their branch of the bank to go to a networking event, followed by someone else the following month. Then no one has a chance to establish a relationship with them.

I just thought it was bad practice because you know and hopefully our listeners know that people build relationships with other people, not necessarily with businesses.

Ivan:
That’s a great networking story or example. Any others before I wrap up here?

Tim:
Yeah, another example is the wanderer. That’s a true story also. They guy was going around to various BNI chapter meetings at the time and thought he would get a lot of business without ever joining. The twist to the story you’ll have to read in the book. It started in 2000, but the wind up happened in 2005. This is a case of a person who bounced around from group to group to group, never planting any seeds, never planting any roots, I should say. He thought that just by showing up, he would actually get business.

Ivan:
I call those nomadic networkers, who just kind of flip from one group to another. Interesting, over the years, that used to be a huge issue when I started BNI in ’85. It’s not quite as big an issue today as it was then because I think we are trying to teach people to think about establishing those roots. But there are still some people out there trying to do that.

So let me ask you, Tim, how do groups like BNI help people to become better networkers?

Tim:
Great question. One of the things I learned early on, what I love about BNI and why I am such an advocate for BNI, is because of the structure, the system, the coaching and the training and education our members get. It’s not just going to a meeting once a week and getting business and giving business. It’s a sense of community. The directors are trained in such a way to impart knowledge unto the members. Everything in the system is geared to helping our members become the best they possibly can.

You can identify it because when you go to other networking events, I can spot who the BNI members are because they get it. They get it and they know how to network. Other people go around and just basically wander or try to pass out business cards find themselves among the world’s worst networkers. We, in BNI, have helped people who were once a mess become a success when it comes to networking.

Ivan:
Yeah. That’s the last chapter of your book, From a Mess to a Success. I love that. Well, we are out of time, Tim. Any closing thoughts before we wrap up?

Tim:
No. I just want to thank you and also thank Priscilla for having me on the call today. Again, it’s The World’s Worst Networker. You can find more information on our website, worldsworstnetworker.com. The book is available on Amazon.com, BarnesandNoble.com, and independent book stores around the country. I just want to thank you for giving me the opportunity as well to learn from you as part of the director author of the mentoring program. This would not have happened without that.’

Ivan:
Well thanks, Tim. What he is referring to is the authoring program that I have been running for a few years for BNI directors to help really take this information that we have and really create a body of knowledge and information on how to do this right. Tim has taken a look at this from a really fun perspective, what not to do. Love the book, Tim. WorldsWorstNetworker.com and Amazon best seller. Congratulations on that, Tim. Thank you very much for being on my podcast today. I’ll turn it back over to you, Priscilla.

Priscilla:
Okay. Great. That’s it for this week. Thank you both very much. I would like to just 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 will join us next week for another exciting episode of The Official BNI Podcast.

Dr. Misner accepts no excuses for not following up with new contacts you meet at big networking events. To make it easier, he’s providing two templates, one for the “B” list and one for the “A” list.

Always remind the person who you are and where you met.

Follow up Template for “B list” contacts (those who may become valuable contacts in the future but not right away):

Jim–

My name is John Smith, and I’m the consultant who met you the other day over at the chamber.  I just wanted to say that I really enjoyed our conversation–and it sounds like you’re really doing well and staying busy.

Anyway, it was good talking to you, and if I can help you out in any way, please let me know.

John

Follow up Template for “A list” contacts (those who might become new clients or referral partners right now):

Jim–

My name is John Smith, and I’m the consultant who met you the other day at the chamber event.  I just wanted to say I really enjoyed our conversation and was hoping I could learn a little bit more about what you do.

I’m thinking we can get together for a quick cup of coffee.  That way, if I run into someone who could use your services, I can point him in your direction.  How does next Tuesday morning sound for something over at Starbucks?

Again, great talking to you, and if I can help your business in any way, please let me know.

John

Brought to you by Networking Now.

Complete Transcript of BNI Podcast Episode 200 -

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 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, and congratulations on Episode 200.

Ivan:
200. Woohoo! That’s just amazing.

Priscilla:
Isn’t that great?

Ivan:
I’m real excited. You know, I remember back almost four years ago, doing the first podcast. I remember  thinking, I wonder what this will be. Will there be value? Will people listen to this, you know. And do it weekly? Oh my goodness. How is that going to happen, especially as I am traveling more and more. I have to tell you, Priscilla, that I am really glad that I did this. I think it has been a great tool for BNI members all around the world to maintain their education in the program. It has been my honor to do them, and I appreciate everything that you do with it. You have doing it for the majority of the last four years.

Priscilla:
Thank you, Ivan. I love doing it. I think it’s really terrific for the members to actually hear your voice and learn a little bit about you and how you think and get educated by you personally. I think it’s great.

Ivan:
Thanks. I appreciate that. Talking about education for  me. I wanted to mention before I get into the main topic today, which is following up, which is a follow up from the last week’s podcast. I just want to mention that I have a new name for my blog. My regular blog has been at networkingentrepreneur.com for a long time, but we’ve revamped it and we’ve renamed it. Networkingentrepreneur.com still points to my blog, but it’s now called Business Networking with Dr. Ivan Misner. Business Networking. The reason we changed the name is we really wanted to dominate the phrase “business networking” within BNI. That’s really the bottom line for the name change.

All of my blogs, my hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of blogs- I think there are close to 400 blogs or more- are all still there. Nothing was lost. It was all transferred to the new name, Business Networking. So if you have a chance and are listeners to my podcast, please go check out BusinessNetworking.com, which is my regular blog.

Priscilla:
Great. How many blogs do you think you have written?

Ivan:
Close to 400, I think. And I am going to start doing video blogs up there, too. I’ve got a few, and I am going  to start doing probably at least two a month on that website. So if you’d like to check it out, please do, at BusinessNetworking.com.

Alright, so I  want to follow up with last week’s podcast. Last week’s podcast was about sorting out who’s who. When you meet people at a networking event and you kind of just do almost a business card triage, you sit down and you say, who are the critical people that I need to connect with.  That’s a good phrase. I should have used that last week, Priscilla. Business card triage.

Who do I need to meet immediately? Who are people I want to connect with immediately? Who do I want to stay in contact with? And who are the others? I do think you  need to connect with all of them, but certainly the A’s and B’s. We talked about different ways to do that. So  back if you haven’t listened to last week’s podcast and listen to the “Sorting Out [Who's Who]” function.

What I want to talk about today is your excuse for following up, and let me give you some templates to use for following up. You should put them in your own words, but this will give you some ideas. If you are listening to the podcast, you don’t have to write what I am saying down.  Remember there is a full transcript of the podcast, so you can just cut and paste the transcript and use it.

So let’s start. What’s your excuse for not following up with new contacts at  networking events. I don’t think it really matters what your answer is to that because I am here to tell you that the correct answer to that question is there is no excuse for not following up. All excuses are equal. Follow up is the key to being successful at networking. You know, if you meet them but then you don’t follow up with them, why even go to the networking meetings?

So following up is absolutely critical. We all know that networking without following up can equal a big waste of time. However, a lot of networkers still find every excuse under the sun not to follow up. Most of these reasons are either that they are not sure how to do it or they don’t have the  time to do it.

So as I promised in last week’s podcast, I am going to give you a couple of follow up templates. These will work whether using email or a handwritten note as I talked about last week. They’ll make it a no-brainer for you to follow up with new contacts so there are no more excuses. Remember, it’s okay to put these in your own words. These are just ideas.

Follow up template for your B list. These are the people that you want to make sure to have contact with but you don’t see that you can help them immediately. They are not a potential client immediately, but you do want to stay- remember, you never know where great referrals can come from. So these are people that you are interested in. You just don’t know where that connection would be. They may become valuable contacts in the future, but just not right away. So here’s how you do it:

You open it up.

Dear Jim,
My name is John Smith, and I’m the consultant who met you the other day over at the chamber. I just wanted to say that I really enjoyed our conversation and it sounds like you are really doing well and staying busy. Anyway, it was good talking to you, and if I can help you out in any way, please let me know.

John

That’s it. Short, sweet, simple. Nice to meet you. I hope our paths cross again. That’s always a nice phrase to us. I hope our paths cross again. Those are  people that you want to make the connection with but there is really no need for you at this point to set up an appointment with them. Now, if they write back and say that’s great and they want to get together, do it. But that’s my suggested template for the B list.

So here’s my follow up template for the A list. Those are people whom you think might become new clients down the road, but remember, don’t make this a sales call or a sales meeting. These are people that might be clients down the road, so you definitely want to get to know them. And they may be referral partners. Remember,  oftentimes, your best source of business is people who give you referrals, not just closing deals, not just the sales that you make. Referral partners are really important. This is your A list of contacts. Here you’d say:

Dear Jim,
My name is John Smith. I’m the consultant who met you the other day at the chamber event. (Or whatever other event it was that you attended.) I just wanted to say I really enjoyed our conversation, and I was hoping I could learn a little bit more about what you do. I’m thinking that we can get together for a quick cup of coffee. That way, if I meet someone who can use your services, I can point them in your direction. How does next Tuesday morning sound for something over at Starbucks? Again, great talking to you, and if I can help your business in any way, please let me know.

John

So there are  two templates, Priscilla, that I recommend. You use these follow up note templates and they can provide you with a great base for building relationships with  new contacts and staying in touch with people that you meet at these big networking events.

One more quick tip. Regardless of whether you choose to use these templates when writing follow up notes, always be sure to first remind the person of who you are and where you met so your note doesn’t get instantly discarded or so they don’t sit there scratching their head thinking who is this person? That’s happened to me. People have written me a note saying, “It’s great meeting you. I’d love to get together.” I’m, like, okay, where did we meet? When was it? Where was it? Put it in context. That’s  really important whether you use my template or use something yourself. Always include the context.

Priscilla:
Tell me. What would you put in the subject line?

Ivan:
The subject line is great, especially. It’s an important thing if you are talking about an email. I’d recommend that you- let’s say for example in template A, I’d put in, for example, “Nice to meet you at the chamber event on March __.” That way, when they see the email come in, they can immediately see that it’s from you and that you  met them at the chamber event. That alone might put it in context for them. Then they’ll also know it’s not just spam, but this is somebody that I actually met and they’re much more likely to read it.

Keep these emails or letters short and sweet. Don’t give them a doctoral dissertation. Usually people don’t read long emails. So give them something short and sweet, and with the A list, an opportunity to respond back with a yes or no to I’d love to meet with you. In other words, give them an action opportinity.

Priscilla:
Okay. Now what if you are so busy that you don’t have time to meet with them? Then you’re in trouble, right?

Ivan:
You, the person writing the letters or the person you’re sending them to?

Priscilla:
Well, either but the person who’s writing the letter.

Ivan:
Well then,  if you don’t have time to meet with the people you’re meeting networking (A.) Why are you networking and (B.) go hire somebody to help you do these things. I mean,  if you are out there trying to drum up business, then this is where the rubber meets the road. Meeting with people to connect with them about doing business is where the rubber meets the road in business networking.

Now let’s say somebody contacts you that you don’t really want to connect with. Let’s say it’s somebody from the C list that we talked about, the other list that we talked about in  last week’s podcast. Not the A or B. Sometimes,  you’re not real motivated to necessarily meet with them. You know what a lot of people do is they say, “You know, I’d love to meet with you. What are you doing next Tuesday morning at 7:00 a.m.? I have a networking meeting that I’m going to. I’d love to invite you to that.”

Priscilla:
Right. Exactly.  That’s a good idea.

Ivan:
It’s a great way to serve two purposes, especially if you’re short on time. This isn’t necessarily somebody that you saw a good connection with, but they seemed professional or whatever. They might be the perfect profession for somebody else in your BNI group.

Priscilla:
That’s a great idea.

Ivan:
That’s all I have for today, Priscilla.

Priscilla:
Alright. Well, thank you.

Ivan:
Our 200th episode.

Priscilla:
Very good, Dr. Misner. Well, I think that’s it for this week. I would 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. Thank you so much for listening. This is Priscilla Rice and we hope you will join us next week for another exciting episode of The Official BNI Podcast.

How often have you come home from a large networking event with a huge stack of business cards and wondered, “Now what?” Here are some tips for sorting out your potential prospects and referral partners from the rest.

1. Make a note of something you discussed on the back of the business card right after you talk to the person. If this is not appropriate in your culture, keep a small notebook handy to jot down a few words next to the person’s name.
2. Divide the most immediate prospects into one pile and the less immediate prospects into another.
3. Enter the first group into your contact database and send a quick note by either e-mail or snail mail. Try to set up a meeting for coffee or some other fairly immediate follow-up meeting to find out how you can help them.
4. Send another message to your less immediate prospects, even if you don’t set up a meeting.

Next week’s podcast will provide some specific examples of follow-up notes to these two groups of contacts.

Brought to you by Networking Now.

Complete Transcript of BNI Podcast Episode 199 -

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?

Ivan:
Hi. I am great.

Priscilla:
Before we start, I just wanted to comment about last week’s podcast with Dan Romero. I think that was 198. I really, really admire what he did when a new member joined the chapter. It seemed to me that it really paid off for him, and I can understand why. He was very generous.

Ivan:
Yeah. It really did. You bring up a great point. I think it just keeps coming back again and again to people who participate in BNI and really practice the philosophy of givers gain. It comes back to them many times over. We’ve done podcasts with a number of people and we see it consistently. I’ve certainly seen it consistently over the last five years.

Priscilla:
Well, I just want to say that as a financial consultant, which is what he is, he understood that he needed to gain credibility, so he approached it as if having a good response was in finding referrals for other people. I think that is so neat.

Ivan:
That’s exactly what he did. So if you are listening to this podcast and haven’t listened to last week’s podcast, go back and listen to it because it really is a great podcast. So this week, Priscilla, we are going to be talking about sorting out who’s who. We are going to change things up a little bit and we’re going to be talking about attending a big networking event. Not usually a BNI-;like event, although certainly in networking, you’ll meet new people and visitors. It will really be relevant when you go to a large networking event of some kind, maybe a chamber. You meet a lot of new people and now you have a pocket full of new business cards. How many times has that happened, Priscilla, right?

Priscilla:
So many times you can’t imagine.

Ivan:
A pocket full of business cards. And you are not sure what to do with it. So what is your first order of business? There are a lot of things that you can do and if you’re listening to this podcast, apply the ideas that work for you. I think the first order of business is to sort out who’s who, to take a look at the business cards.

I like writing on the back of business cards- now, you can’t always do this in all cultures. In some cultures, writing on the back of business cards is bad culture, so be aware of cultural differences. But that being said, in most environments, if you said, “Do you mind if I write a note of the back of your card?” most people would say it’s fine. It’s perfectly acceptable in most cultures.

I like to do that just to remind me of something that was said when I talk to somebody. Now you need to separate out people who you think might become new clients or referral partners. Remember, networking is more about farming than hunting. You are not out there trying to bag the big one and get clients from it. But these are prospective people who you want to build a relationship with who might become clients down the road- or referral partners. You want to do that right now from the stack that you have. You want to separate the ones who might be valuable contacts from the ones who are maybe a little more long term, a little farther away.

So let’s call the one term, the people who want to be clients or referral partners now, let’s call that List A and the rest, List B, people who might be something in the future. You’ve got a contact database, which you should have, what you want to do is take a look at your B list, the people that are going to be down the road a little bit. You want these folks to know you enjoyed meeting with then. So in other words you want to follow up with them. You want to keep the door open to doing business with them later.

You do this with a quick note, either by snail mail or email. If you do this by snail mail, you know, postal service, if you find that you need to reconnect with one of these people at a late time, at least you will have some traction in starting a relationship simply because you have followed up with a quick note thanking them for connecting with them.

I just went to an event last week. It was a smaller group, but very impressed with how the people at that event followed up effectively and dropped me an email and talked about our meeting. That’s a very good connection to make when meeting somebody.

Now what do you do with the A list? These are people who have immediate potential as a referral partner or potential client, maybe, down the road. You need to follow up with them quickly, I recommend within a few days, before you drop off their radar. What you want to do is, I think, initiate a coffee connection of some kind. I don’t drink coffee but you get what I mean. You sit down with someone and have a cup of coffee or tea, whatever, soda, with these contacts. So you want to do a follow up meeting where you get to know him or how and follow up with a meeting on how they can help you and how you can help them. That’s really the important thing. How you can help them. Anything short of you finding ways to help them will generally be treated as a sales call instead of a relationship building contact.

So as for this first contact- a handwritten note, or even an email is acceptable, but the focus should be that you would like to know more about them. Then you have to play it that way. Otherwise, it’s going to feel just like a sales call.

At this point, you may be asking what about those people I meet that aren’t potential clients and aren’t in a field that can refer business to me? Should I follow up with them anyway? They are not really in an A or B list, but the bottom line is that you never know who other people know. Even a quick little “nice to meet you” email is enough to get these people to remember you later, when you discover you may need something or have a referral for them.

So I do recommend following up with something, if possible, real simple as a response to most of the people that I meet.

Now you know how to sort out the who’s who, the A list, the B List and the follow up.

You want to make sure that you do this each and every time that you get business cards from your daily networking activities. I can guarantee you that you will start to see greater results from your networking efforts if you start to do this.

Now, next week’s podcast, what you are going to hear on next week’s podcast are some specific examples of what you follow up notes should be to group A and B contacts, what you should say and how you should say it. I am going to give you a script that you can use in next weeks podcast that you can play with, put in your own words, that you apply when you follow up with people that you meet in large networking events. That’s my material for today, Priscilla.

Priscilla:
I have something to talk about. I know Brian Bouffant who is a big real estate coach that we’ve had on the program really believes in the personal hand written notes because that makes you stand out as email is so commonly used. But one thing is that when people hand you cards now, often they don’t have a street address. When you send them an email, you have kind of a record of what you said.

In a way, even though it’s not as emotionally effective, I think it’s easier to keep track of an email correspondence. What do you think?

Ivan:
I think that a handwritten note is almost always better if you want to really stand out from the crowd. I am horrible at handwritten notes. I am much better than email for a number of reasons. I self edit myself. My handwriting’s not that good. So when I am writing, I really don’t want to say that; I want to say that. When you’re writing, you really can’t scratch it. You start over. I just find handwritten notes a little frustrating. I like programs like Send Out Cards, where you can send out an actual card to somebody.

I kind of think that the mail, Hallmark-like card or Send Out Cards are probably better, but the problem is if you don’t do it, it’s not better. So if you are not going to do that, email is fine and it certainly is the way I use most. I agree with Brian that, theoretically, a handwritten note is better if you can actually do it.

Priscilla:
Yeah, he’s big on that.

Ivan:
Yeah, So you want them to remember who you are. You want to invite them to something. Those are the people who you probably want to do that with.

Priscilla:
Yeah, that is a good idea. Okay, well, I think we have come to the end of this podcast.

Ivan:
That’s everything for this week. Next week we are going to talk about what is your excuse for not following up? I am going to give you some scripts that will make it easy for you in BNI and as a networked to be able to follow up more effectively. Thanks, Priscilla.

Priscilla:
Okay great. Thank you, Dr. Misner. Well, I would 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. Thank you so much for listening. This is Priscilla Rice, and we hope you will join us again next week for another exciting episode of The Official BNI Podcast.

This week Dr. Misner wants to discuss three trends for business networking in the next 10 years:

1. Integration of face-to-face and online networking opportunities, including niche social networks like BNI Connect.
2. Education. More private companies will offer training in business networking, because universities won’t. Consumers need to be informed: make sure the training company is qualified.
3. Association. So far attempts to create associations of professional networking groups have failed. They sometimes create conflicts of interest, which may be why.

Read Dr. Misner’s article on this topic on Entrepreneur.com.

Brought to you by Networking Now.

Complete Transcript of BNI Podcast Episode 196 -

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?

Ivan:
I’m doing great Priscilla. I have an interesting topic today. I did an article for entrepreneur.com at the beginning of the year on the three networking trends to watch for the future. That is what I want to talk about today on this podcast. I think there are a lot of changes on the horizon for the field of business networking for 2011-2012. Technology will continue, I think, to evolve, but really the biggest change will be the recognition of the field itself. That is, business networking will be continued to be realized more and more as a field of study. With this are three trends to watch.

The three that I am going to talk about today are integration, education and association. Those are the three trends that I want to talk about. We’ll start with integration. By integration, I mean we are going to see the integration of face to face networking and online networking opportunities. Many business people have said to me, “I have thousands of connections on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and other social media sites. Now what?”

What they really want to know is how they turn those social media contacts into real business. I believe the answer lies in really forward-thinking networks, integrating technology and social media directly into their face to face operations. As you may recall, a few weeks ago, we talked about the BNI Connect vision. I think that is really where the organization is headed, integrating technology, as I talked about in the podcast, with face to face networking.

I think we are going to see more wall garden communities accessible only to members of that group. These communities will not only be subgroups of existing social media networks, they’ll be independent networks with tightly controlled access based on a membership database, just like I talked about on BNI Connect.

In fact, there will be media sites with a niche. That is exactly what BNI Connect is, a media site for a niche, with the niche being BNI. So the integration of online communities that are accessible to limited individuals linked with the establishment of face to face interactions will be, I think, increasingly popular over the next decade. The attraction to groups like this will be the niche orientation as well as the shared values of the organization.

The technology will allow a greater number of connections than the face to face aspect does, and the face to face aspect deepens those connections. I think you might even see the reverse come true, which is online networks doing more face to face events. So the integration of this face to face with technology and technology with face to face, I think, you are going to see in both directions. That is one of the important trends to see in really substantial networking organizations that are successful.

The second trend that I see is more private companies offering training in the field of business networking. Currently only one or two universities in the world have a core curriculum course on networking and social capital. I don’t think that will change anytime soon. I don’t think universities are going to start teaching this. Some univerisity professors prefer to view networking as a soft science. We have talked about that on my podcast before.

They feel that it is no something that can be taught. In my opinion, they are dead wrong. Networking, will in fact, be taught just outside the university environment. Much the same way that sales and selling is taught- just not at most universities. It’s taught by people like Brian Tracy, who does specialized seminars on training.

I think we are going to see the emergence of private professional training organizations in much the same way that the private industry has controlled the educational market in sales techniques as I mentioned.

The downside to this is that the comsumer needs to be well informed about a training company’s knowledge in the area that it claims to have expertise in. Fo for a course in business networking, look over the qualififcations of the company that is the trainer.

An increasing number of these programs are being offered by independent organizations. In the future , it will be really important to weed out the hacks from the experts. I remember seeing one trainer who claimed to be certified at networking, when in fact, they had just gone through one training program by a professional referral marketing organization. One training program and now they are, in fact, experts. One. I’m sorry. They’re not experts.

You are going to see a proliferation of education and private organizations teaching business networking, but you want to make sure that these are true experts who have a strong skill set before you hire them. The average person is not necessarily a good trainer at referral marketing. Make sure you do a little background on the organization before you do any advanced trainings for referral marketing or business networking.

The third trend that I see is the attempt- and this is sort of a long one because I see it pop up from time to time. But there are attempts from time to time to creat associations of networking groups. During my tenure in this industry over the last 26 years, there have been many efforts made to create networking groups. The most recent was the RNIA,which was the Relationship Networking Industry Association. It failed, as I think most groups of this type will.

There are many networking associations that exist for specific purposes or industries, like the National Association of Women Business Owners, the Transformational Leadership Council, or the National Association of Professional Organizers. An association of various networking groups then really may present conflicts and substantial overlap. For these reasons alone, an association like that will really struggle to get off the ground.

I’m afraid it’s one of those good ideas that are really difficult to sustain, and I’ve never seen anybody successfully do it. So while an association is not likely to work, the integration of technology and face to face networking as well as the developments on the educational front really point towards, I think, a positive future for business networking.

Twenty years ago, Priscilla, there were no books or articles on the topic of business networking. When I wrote my first book that was distributed nationally, The World’s Best Known Marketing Secret, there was nothing out there. There was one book on word of mouth marketing and one book that had a small section on it that talked about the future really being about business networking. That was it. There were virtually no articles on the topic.

Today, 20 years later, there is a proliferation of information. Business networking is evolving, and I think it will continue to grow for years to come. There’s more and more material available, such as this podcast. There are many more books and articles. More people can educate themselves to network more effectively and the more successful they are going to be. Those are what I see as the trends for the future in business networking.

Priscilla:
I’d like you to comment a little bit about Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. There is a huge push towards using those services, and it seems to me that I find kind of a surge of experts in network marketing and social networks.

Ivan:
Let’s make sure that we get the right term here. Network marketing is often used in terms of multi-level marketing. That is not what you mean, is it?

Priscilla:
No, I mean social networking.

Ivan:
Network marketing has been a term that has been taken over by the multi level marketing organizations, which we have many in BNI. I want to make sure that we are talking about the right phrases. So you are talking about social networking or social media.

Priscilla:
Yeah. It seems like there are people who come to our meetings that claim to be experts in that. I am always hopeful that I will learn something from them. I think that there is kind of a new profession evolving.

Ivan:
There is, kind of the social media coaches. Hey listen, they can be very good. I have used two, both BNI members, and they are outstanding. But you have to do a little research in the same way that I said you have to research people to teach you about business networking, face to face business networking and referral marketing. You want to do some research before you hire a social media coach.

Some of the research you can do would be: Do they have a website? How are they using social media? What exactly are they- have they done any presentations? Take a look at their history in terms of their expertise. One of the people that I used taught at a state university on social media. Okay, that is a pretty good qualification. Another one had a long history working in the social media field and was able to show me what she had done for other clients. Those two things are things that I think are very important before you retain somebody to assist you with your social media, which by the way, I think is a great idea. I see more and more people joining BNI from that field. It’s exciting.

Priscilla:
Yeah because it’s a little daunting knowing how to do exactly what you were talking about, making it work for you.

Ivan:
It is daunting. I think bringing somebody in will help with your learning curve. It certianly did for me. I wish that I had brought somebody in earlier because there are some things that I wouldn’t do quite the same if I had to start all over again. The earlier you bring somebody in to help you with it, the better.

Priscilla:
Well great. Thank you Dr. Misner. Do you think there is anything else that you would like to add?

Ivan:
No, I think that’s it. If you have a chance, particularly the education part of this is important. Listeners should take a look at my blog. My blog is now at a new site, businessnetworking.com. At businessnetworking.com, you get a lot of educational content on business networking. Check it out and be looking for BNI Connect because that is coming out as we speak globally. That will do the integration element. Then the blog is a great education element as well as this podcast. Thanks Priscilla.

Priscilla:
You’re so welcome. Well, I would 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. Thank you so much for listening. This is Priscilla Rice, and we hope you will join us again next week for another exciting episode of The Official BNI Podcast.

Someone recently asked Dr. Misner about the importance of eye contact to networking, and what came to mind was his experience meeting Sir Richard Branson, who has absolute laser focus on anyone he meets. The only person in the room is the person he’s talking to, even when that person is a fifteen-year-old boy. (Listen to Episode 25 to hear about how Dr. Misner met Sir Richard Branson.)

How many times have you been at a networking meeting and noticed the person you’re talking to looking over your shoulder to see whether there’s someone more interesting to talk to? Make an effort to maintain eye contact and give people your undivided attention. It’s one of the skills of a master networker.

You can see the photograph of Sir Richard Branson talking to Dr. Misner’s son Trey on the Networking Entrepreneur blog.

Brought to you by Networking Now.

Complete Transcription of BNI Podcast Episode 192 -

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.

Hi Ivan. How are you and where are you today?

Ivan:
Well, this week, Priscilla, I am in India of all places. We have dozens of chapters in India. This is my first visit to the country and I will be doing presentations in Mumbai and Bangalor.

Priscilla:
Wow. That is great. Will you do some podcasting about what you learn in India?

Ivan:
Absolutely. That is a great idea. I will do that in upcoming podcasts.

Priscilla:
Okay. Good. So what are you here to share with us today?

Ivan:
Today I want to talk about what I think Richard Branson can teach us all about networking. I recently had a phone conversation with someone who was writing a book on eye contact and he asked me about eye contact and how important it is to networking. I said it is very important. He said, “Can you give me an example?”

I thought and it struck me that I had a photograph of this very thing that I was talking about. I looked it up and sure enough, there it was. I had an opportunity. I met Branson on his island, Necar Island a few years back. In my book, Networking Like a Pro, I talk about the butterfly effect in networking and how one thing led to another thing which led to another thing where I met Branson. As a matter of fact, it’s one of the podcasts here. If you, the listener, do a podcast search of “butterfly effect”, you’ll see the original podcast where I talk about that.

Well, about six months later, I had a chance to see Richard again. One of the things that I was amazed with was sort of his laser-focused eye contact. When he is talking to you, he is not looking to his left, not looking to his right. He is not looking anywhere else but right at you. I remember talking to him on Necar about children, raising kids and about my son, Trey, who at the time was about 15. He was sharp as a tack but about as committed to school as some teenagers are- not as much as they could be.

A few months later, I saw Richard. It was about six months after I was on Necar. It was at a party that I had been invited to to roll out Virgin Galactic’s space plan. We were at the party and I introduced Richard to my son. Branson remembered who Trey was, which was really amazing as he meets so many people, and my previous conversation. I have this photograph of him where he has this laser eye contact with my son and kept that eye contact with Trey for three or four minutes straight while he was talking to him.

There were people all around, and they were all vying for his attention, of course. But he was completely focused on a conversation that he was having with a 15-year old boy. You know, he wasn’t intense in terms of his speaking. He was actually pretty calm and pretty relaxed. But in terms of his focus and listening to what Trey was saying. The only person in that room during that three or four minute time span for Branson was my son.

Here is a guy who didn’t go to college, and he’s telling my son, interestingly enough, “Go to college. I spoke with your dad. We have faith in you. You can do this. You can really go places.” His message was great, and to this day, I appreciate what he had to say. But what I really learned from him was this ability to maintain that laser eye contact.

You have to keep in mind. My son is a teenager. He isn’t impressed by anybody. At least, like the typical teenager, he doesn’t make a habit of showing he is particularly impressed by anybody. Usually, I’ll ask him what his impression of somebody was and I’ll get sort of a bored, “Yeah, he’s okay.” But he was really impressed with Richard. I asked him what he thought of the conversation, and he had a very uncharacteristic response.

He said, “ That was really amazing. It was a really interesting conversation and he really seemed to pay attention to what I said.” He felt that way because here is this billionaire who gives this kid his undivided attention for a few minutes.

I think we can all learn from that. How many times have we been at networking meetings, talking to somebody and we can see them looking over your shoulder to somebody else. They look to the left and to the right. They are obviously scanning the room for somebody else that they want to talk to, and they are not giving you their undivided attention.

Let me tell you something. There were people at that event who were much more important in Richard Branson’s life than my 15-year old son, but you wouldn’t have known it. The photograph is a great photograph because he has his complete attention with Trey.

That is the kind of attention that we need to give people when we are talking to people and when we are networking with them. Eye contact is meaningful. I think giving people your undivided attention is on of things you can do to become a master networker. Making a concentrated effort to maintain eye contact while engaging in conversation is imperative in order to demonstrate to somebody that they are really getting your undivided attention.

So next time you are at a BNI meeting or networking at other events with someone and there are distractions all around you, tempting you to have your eye stray to other people who might be important, think of this story. Think of how Branson was so good at maintaining that laser focus on a person. Keep that in mind if you would like to be a true master at networking. It is an important technique that you can utilize to help achieve that.

That is my story for today, Priscilla.

Priscilla:
That is a great story. I just want to add that in the blog, which I read, even when he went to the next person, he did the same thing. So it wasn’t just that he had a kind of a passion for talking to your son, Trey because of what he knew about him, he applied that to everybody that he came in contact with.

Ivan:
Yeah. That is a really good point that I left out. He did. That is his MO. He really does his best to give you his undivided attention. That is kind of unusual with anyone, but somebody as successful as Richard- I think it’s really not the norm. Here is somebody who is very good at social capital. His emotional intelligence is as strong as anybody I have ever met, and I have met a fair number of people in the networking business.

If someone wants to see the photograph that I am talking about, they can go to NetworkingEntrepreneur.com. It is my blog. Go to December 20, 2010. Go take a look at the photograph, and you’ll see exactly what I am talking about. Thanks Priscilla.

Priscilla:
Okay. You are so welcome. Well, listeners, I would like to just remind the you 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 will join us next week for another exciting episode of The Official BNI Podcast.

BNI’s fifth annual International Networking Week starts on February 7th. The purpose of International Networking week is to recognize the role that networking plays in the success of businesses around the world. BNI works in partnership with interested organizations to celebrate this program globally.

Watch this YouTube video to learn about the “networking disconnect.” People don’t go to networking events to buy. If you’re going to networking events hoping to sell something, you’re dreaming. It happens about as often as a solar eclipse.

Master networkers know that networking events are about moving through the VCP process, not about closing deals. Use International Networking Week to improve your connections with your referral partners.

To find out more, go to www.internationalnetworkingweek.com.

Sponsored by Networking Now.

Complete Transcription of BNI Podcast Episode 190 -

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 what do you have to share with us today?

Ivan:
I am doing great, and next week is International Networking Week. I thought this would be a great opportunity to give a little preview to all of the BNI members as to a YouTube video that is now available and what we will be talking about with International Networking Week. Actually, this is our 5th Annual International Networking Week. This year, it runs from February 7th through the 11th, every year, it begins with the first Monday in February. This year, the first Monday is February 7th.

It’s a week that is centered around helping businesses in every part of the world achieve growth and success through relationship networking. Although International Networking Week is an initiave of BNI. It was started by BNI, networking groups and individuals are invited to participate in International Networking week, particularly to participate with BNI. It’s BNI’s desire to work in partnership with interested organizations to celebrate and recognize this program globally.

Since our first ever International Networking week, which I think was in 2007, we have had many, many organizations and even governmental agencies recognize the program. International Networking Week is really about celebrating the important role that networking plays in the development and the success of businesses around the world. That is really important in the kind of economy that we have.

Next week I have a guest who is going to be talking about how much business he has generated in this tough economy. He is in the real estate business, so I think listeners will find that interesting.

International Networking Week is really about creating an awareness relating to the process of networking and how to do it. I think most people who are listeners to this podcast would agree that networking is really powerful. But there is a disconnect relating to the process and I talk about that in the YouTube video. In this podcast there will be a link to the YouTube video that I did on International Networking Week for 2011.

I invite the listeners of this podcast to take a few minutes after they listen to this to go watch the video. It’s less than 10 minutes long, and I talk about what I call the networking disconnect. I was at a big networking event last year. There were more than 500 people. The person who spoke before me asked the audience, “ How many of you came here today hoping to do some business? Maybe make a sale to someone?”

The majority of audience raised their hands. He then asked, “So how many of you are here today hoping to buy something?” Not a single person raised their hand. Not one.

This is the networking disconnect. If you are going to networking events hoping to sell something, you are dreaming. You are dreaming. Don’t confuse direct selling with networking. Effective networking is about developing relationships. Now, I know, I know, there is always somebody out there that says, “But Ivan, I made a sale by attending a networking event.”

Okay. I am not saying it doesn’t ever happen. It does. I am saying it happens about as often as a solar eclispe. I mean, face it, even a blind squirrel can find a nut. Any business person can stumble on some business at an event, a networking event. But when you have most of the people at an event trying to sell and virtually no one there to buy, you are crazy if you think the odds are in your favor to sell at a networking event.

So why go? You go because networking is more about farming than it is about hunting. It’s about developing relationships with other business professionals. It’s about the VCP process. Visibility leads to credibility, and credibility ultimately leads to profitability. Sometimes you go to a networking event in increase your visibility. Sometimes you go to establish further credibility with people that you know, and sometimes you may go to meet a long time referral partner and do some business with somebody that you know.

In any case, the true master networkers know that networking events are about moving through the VCP process and not just about closing deals. So, how can you as a BNI member start efficiently using the VCP process in your relationships and begin achieving lasting results in your networking efforts?

I think a perfect way to being is to make it your goal to use International Networking Week to improve your connections with your referral partners. Call them. Writer them. Do what works for you, but whatever you do, use next week, International Networking Week to establish or improve the relationships that you have with key people in your professional life. If you can, invite people to your BNI meeting next week.

As a matter of fact, Priscilla, we sent out a letter to directors, and hopefully it got out to the rest of the members. We have a recommendation of what they should do next week. One of the things that we recommend is bring a family member or close friend to your BNI meeting next week, International Networking Week. The reason we suggest this is it is a great way to bring people you may never have thought of to a BNI meeting.

You are not bringing them there, necessarily, as a prospective member, although they might potentially be that. You are bringing them to show other people in your personal network what it is that you do every week at o’dark thirty when you go to these BNI meetings and what is BNI. Is is a great way to share your experiences with other people. I think International Networking Week is a great opportunity to do just that.

Priscilla:
That sounds great, Ivan. We’ve been doing that, actually, bringing a lot of guests to our meetings and it definitely expands the energy of the meeting and leads to wonderful connections.

Ivan:
We have thousands of BNI groups all around the world recognizing International Networking Week next week. We have hundreds of really big events that are being done all around the world. If you are a BNI member and you want to see some of the things that are going on, go to internationalnetworkingweek.com. There is a lot of information up there about what is going on for International Networking Week 2011. That is all I have for today, Priscilla. Thank you.

Priscilla:
Okay. That is great. Thank you, Ivan. I would like to just 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 will join us next week for another exciting episode of The Official BNI Podcast.

In order to evaluate your sphere of influence, you need to take inventory of the people you know. When was the last time you really went through your complete contact list? Check your e-mail address book, your mobile phone directory, your stacks of business cards. Who do you know? Who have you forgotten that you know? Where are these people in the VCP process? Are some of them still at the pre-visibility stage? Do you want to move the relationship along? Invite them to a BNI meeting. Invite them to a chamber of commerce meeting.

Don’t be afraid to include your friends and family in this. While you should never be pushy, think how you would feel if they bought services you provide from someone else, just because they didn’t know you offered that service.

Brought to you by Networking Now.

Complete Transcription of BNI Podcast Episode 189 -

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 where are you?

Ivan:
I am doing great, Priscilla. Thank you. I am in southern California, back home, this week. At BNI, we are doing directors’ training. Every couple of months we bring in directors from all around the world, certainly all over North America, and do three days of training. We are in the midst of that right now.

Priscilla:
Wow. That sounds like a lot of work.

Ivan:
It is a lot of work. I’ll tell you one thing. I try to make BNI feel like a family-run company, a small company. We are no longer a small company, but I try to make it feel that way. Whenever we do the training, we invite all of the directors to my house for dinner on night. So everybody is headed to my house tonight for dinner.

Priscilla:
Wow. That’s great.

Ivan:
Today I want to talk about expanding your overall sphere of influence. I am going to start by telling you a little story about a BNI member who took me to school one day on this concept. I can even tell you the year. It was the year I started BNI, 1985. We had been operating for less than six months. I was a member of a chapter and I remember talking to a BNI member and saying, “I am done. I invited everybody I could think of to the meeting, and there is nobody else left that I can think of whom I can invite.”

And she said to me, “Really? You have invited everybody?”

I was like “Yeah, absolutely.”

She said to me, “Have you literally gone through your contact database?”

At that time in 1985, there was very little online and very little in terms of technology, so it really mostly my Rolodex, my printed address book. She said, “Have you gone through it line by line?”

I said, “Well, no, but I know who’s in there.”

She said, “Really? Just give it a try. I did it recently and it made a world of difference. I saw all kinds of people that I didn’t think of.”

So I did it reluctantly. I had nothing else to lose. I went through my Rolodex and address books. I was amazed. I was amazed at all the people who jumped out at me that I never thought of, as either doing business with or inviting them into BNI- in either case, really expanding the sphere of influence in what I was doing.

That’s really the topic of my discussion today, the fact that the foundation of any relationship networking effort is all about people and your sphere of influence represents the overall number of people with whom you network. This includes people you know very well or casually. In order to evaluate your sphere of influence, you really need to take inventory of the people you know.

Surprisingly, a lot of people haven’t done that. I didn’t until this BNI member suggested to me that I really didn’t have a handle on everybody that I knew- which kind of seems obvious, but I didn’t think it was, and it was true.

Preparing your inventory is as simple as asking yourself who do I know and who knows me? This includes anyone you interact or might interact with personally or professionally- clients, your business associates, vendors (that was one I didn’t think of), creditors, employees, friends, family members. You want to go through your software database, your email contacts, your electronic Rolodex, and for those of you who are still last century, your actual, physical Rolodex. There are a few people around still. Your mobile phone contacts. Your business card collection.

You want to go through that. You want to discard the names of people who you have moved on with or lost touch. You want to analyze those relationships with the ones you feel you are still current with or could be current again with. Ask yourself, how do I know them? Determine where of each of these individuals are in the VCP process.

I know I have talked about this concept in a couple of other podcasts. Take your database and say where am I with this person? Am I at visibility? Am I at credibility? Or profitibility? Do they know who I am? Do they know what I do? Do they know that I am good at it? Have they ever given me referrals before? You want to break down your database into those three categories. In some cases, you might be previsibilty. You may actually have a fourth level, with previsibility, where if you contact them, they may or may not remember you.

You want to communicate with these people differently, based on the kind of relationship that you have. So my recommendation this week is that BNI members go through their database, wherever it may be, may be in multiple locations, and determine where they are in that relationship. If it is somebody that you would like to move along into the relationship, bring them along, get them to know you better, invite them to a BNI meeting. Even if they may not necessarily be the perfect member, but you want to build that relationship more. Invite them to BNI. Invite them to a chamber meeting. Invite them to a service club that you might belong to.

Connect with them and maybe do a one to one. Bring yourself up to date with where you are at in the relationship. But before you can expand your sphere of influence, you have to analyze your sphere of influence. That is my advice to BNI members this week.

Priscilla:
Well great. I think I may have a question for you. I know that one of the ways that you can expand your sphere of influence is to increase the number of friends and family that you might be sending information to or calling on a regular basis. Sometimes it gets a little awkward, and I hesistate to market to somebody that I consider a personal friend because I don’t want them to feel that I am using them in any kind of way. And yet, I think it’s really valuable connection because it’s not really them that you are marketing to. You just kind of want them to know about your business. So how do you advise us on that?

Ivan:
And family members, right?

Priscilla:
Family members especially.

Ivan:
People say that and then they find out that one of their family members, a neighbor or a close friend ends up buying a product or service from somebody else when you provide that product or service. You are very frustrated, like why didn’t you get that from me? A lot of people say they didn’t know you did that. So you have that fine line to address.

I never recommend to be pushy with people- friends, family, anybody. So you don’t want to do that, but you do want to let people know what you are doing. Your friends have a personal interest in you, and your family- at least the ones you like- have an interest in you. You may not like all of your family members. You know, the ones that you have a relationship with.

I remember this happened about a year ago. A BNI member came up to me and she said, “I got a phone call from another BNI member who said he had a great referral. A client of his was at his office right now. It was a woman and he wanted to bring her by because his office was just a few blocks away. I said, ‘Yeah, bring her on by.’ It was a referral, and I’d love to meet her.”

So it was a financial planner and the person who had the referral was an attorney. The attorney brought the referral over to the financial planner’s office. When she walked in the office, the two women looked at each other and they were like, oh my goodness! It’s you! They were cousins. The attorney’s referral was the financial planner’s cousin.

The financial planner was like, you didn’t know what I did? The cousin was like, I had no idea you were a financial planner. She said to me when we spoke, “Ivan, you have to tell people that you can’t miss the idea of talking to family, especially family that you have a good relationship with. They have to know what you do.”

What if he would have taken her to another financial planner and she would have done business with somebody else? She said, “I would have been devastated if my cousin had gone to someone else, knowing that I could provide this service.”

I think it is important that you do that, and there are tactful was to do that. What I was just suggesting is that you invite these people to business organizations that you belong to, whether it be BNI, a chamber of commerce, maybe it’s a professional association that you belong to. It’s a great way for them to see you in another context.

I remember my cousins. I was the youngest in the family, really- one of the youngest. Most of my cousins were older than me. You know, I was a kid. When I became a business consultant and I started running BNI, my cousins were older than me. I was still a kid even though I was in my late 20′s. It took a little time before they started to take me seriously as a business professional. The way that I got them to take me seriously was by inviting them to organizations that I belonged to and eventually to BNI. It was great for them to see me in a different context. I wasn’t that kid in shorts and flip flops running around the yard.

Priscilla:
Okay. That sounds like a good idea.

Ivan:
I think it is. Remember, the more people you network with, the greater your sphere of influence will be. So sit down, really evaluate your database and figure out where you are in the VCP process, as an important element of that. That is my message for this week.

Priscilla:
That’s a great message. Thank you very much.

Ivan:
Thank you, Priscilla.

Priscilla:
Alright. I would 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. Thank youso much for listening. This is Priscilla Rice and we hope you will join us next week for another exciting episode of The Official BNI Podcast.

Today Dr. Misner presents us with ten networking questions from his good friend Bob Burg, author of Endless Referrals. You won’t need to ask all ten questions in any one conversation.

1. How did you get started in your business?
2. What do you enjoy most about your profession?
3. What separates you and your company from your competition?
4. What advice would you give someone just starting out in your business?
5. What one thing would you do with your business if you knew you could not fail?
6. What significant changes have you seen take place in your profession through the years?
7. What do you see as the coming trends in your business?
8. What’s the strangest/funniest incident you’ve experienced in your business?
9. What ways have you found to be most effective in promoting your business?
10. What one sentence would you like people to use in describing the way you do your business?

The next time you’re at a networking event, try using some of these questions. Then come back and leave a comment to let us know how it worked.

Brought to you by Networking Now.

Complete Transcription of BNI Podcast Episode 183 -

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?

Ivan:
Hi Priscilla. I am doing great today, and I am going to be talking about some material from a really good friend of mine, and a good friend of BNI’s as well, Bob Burg. Bob has written a number of great books including Endless Referrals, which I recommend to BNI members all over the world. Bob, who is a networking expert, has ten questions that he personally uses when networking that he believes every networker should try to remember when they are meeting someone for the first time.

This is particularly great when you are at a BNI meeting during open networking and you meet a visitor. It’s also good for fellow members who you may not know well. It’s also good at a business event, such as a chamber function and you are meeting people. These are great questions to ask to sort of break the ice. So I’d like to give you all of Bob’s top ten questions that you can use here in BNI and outside of BNI as well.

Priscilla:
Okay great. Let’s hear it.

Ivan:
Well, first of all, he explains that these questions are really not designed to be probing or sales-oriented in any way. They are really friendly and fun to answer. They’ll really tell you something about who is answering and how they think. You’ll never really need to ask all ten questions during any one conversation. So you should kind of internalize most of them and work them in depending on the way the conversation goes.

Here’s his top ten questions that he recommends- and that I recommend- by Bob Burg:

How did you get started in your business? Whatever your business is. How did you get started?

Second, what do you enjoy most about your profession? I love this question. I have often said that a good networker has two ears and one mouth and uses them both proportionately. These kinds of questions really give you the opportunity to get somebody to open up. You know, it’s funny. You can ask somebody what they do, but if you ask them what they enjoy most about their profession, you really get to see them light up about what they like about their business. I really like that question. It is one of my favorites.

Three is what separates you and your company from your competition? That is a really good question, and it’s also really good to see how people answer because if they can’t answer that, they may not be, really, the best person in that field. It will pull out people who have really given thought to how they compare to other people in that profession.

Number four is what advice would you give someone just starting out in your business?

Priscilla:
That’s a good question.

Ivan:
It is a good question because, you know, I’d often get people, especially when I was teaching at the university, asking me questions about specific businesses. So the more I could learn about what does it take so I can get started in this business, or any business, it was valuable to me. What advice would you give someone just starting out in your business?

Five is what one thing would you do with your business if you knew you could not fail? I love that question. It gets people really thinking in a way that they hadn’t thought before. That’s not the kind of question- see, if you can stand out with your questions, you stand out with the person.

Priscilla:
Give me an idea what that question might lead to.

Ivan:
Well sometimes, there may be issues with capitalization of their business, and they don’t have enough capital funds to do something in particular. So they may answer that question by, “I would do this really substantial project” or “ I would take this on” or “I would do that.” “I would incorporate multimedia into my my product.” “I would incorporate some internet service with what I do.” There is any direction it could go in.

One of the things that I was saying years ago with BNI was that I wanted to incorporate technology more effectively in BNI. And we are there now. We are at the point where we are starting to incorporate technologies with a system that we will be introducing by the end of 2010, called BNI Connect, which I will definitely be talking about in future podcasts. But that’s the kind of thing I would have talked about a few years ago if somebody said what one thing would you do with your business if you knew you couldn’t fail? I would have talked about BNI Connect, which I am doing now.

Priscilla:
Okay. Now I understand it better.

Ivan:
Number six, what significant changes have you seen take place in your profession through the years? Now, I love that question, and it may not be a question you’d ask, obviously, to someone who is new in the question. But for someone who has been a while in that business, it’s a great question.

Number seven is what do you see as the coming trends in the business? That’s another one to really get a sense of how much somebody knows about what they do.

Here’s a light one that I enjoy: Tell me the strangest or the funniest incident that you have experienced in your business. Certainly anybody who has been in business for any length of time probably has a good story or two about their business.

Priscilla:
Right, right, right. That’s good.

Ivan:
Number nine is what have you found to be the most effective in promoting your business? How do you promote your business? Oftentimes people will say through referrals or word of mouth, so having a conversation about that extends the value of that discussion because you are finding out about how people build their business through referrals.

Number ten, the tenth question, is what one sentence would you like people to use in describing how you do business? What one sentence would you like people to use in describing how you do business?

Priscilla:
Those are great questions. The more you can memorize some of these- don’t go walking in with a list of questions, and you know- I’ve seen people because I have given people a list of questions to ask. There are some on here that I had never used until I read Bob’s list of questions. I have some questions of my own in my books, and I have seen people pull out the paper and say, “So tell me, what one sentence would you like people to say-” and they’ll start reading. Don’t do that. Try to remember some of this stuff and try to integrate it into your conversations as easily as you can, as smoothly as you can. Don’t make it feel cumbersome.

So just to wrap up, Bob says you are not going to get to ask more than a few of these questions during an initial conversation. Don’t worry about sounding like you are conducting an interrogation. You certainly don’t want this to sound like an interrogation.

These are really what he calls feel-good questions. People enjoy answering these kinds of questions, and they are used to establish an initial rapport. So next time you are at a networking event, try using a few of these questions and come back and leave a comment on this podcast. I would love to know how it has worked for BNI member who try some of these questions at a BNI meeting or at other events. Come back and tell us how it goes here.

Priscilla:
Okay. That is great. I think you can actually learn a lot about your own business if you think about those questions and have prepared answers.

Ivan:
Yeah, I think so. It would be good to have some prepared answers, but I think maybe people we meet aren’t going to ask these good of questions. You know, they are much more superficial. I love it when people ask me a question that I have never heard before. I got one just recently and that’s the reason that I am doing this podcast. I love this question that a woman asked me recently.

I thought it was so creative. It was a BNI member, and I was at a big BNI event. She said, “So tell me, what is the coolest thing that has happened to you today?” I thought, what a great question! Nobody has ever asked me that question. What is the coolest thing that has happened to you today? It made me think. I had to really sit for a second or two and really think about what had happened that day that was the best part of my day. I shared it with her, and she was appreciative.

I’ll tell you what I like about it is that you stand out when you ask a question like that. I remember her. I remember where I was. I remember the situation. And so you are much more likely to be remembered when you ask a question that really stands out to people.

Priscilla:
That is a very personal question in a good way. Not overly personal, but you know-

Ivan:
Very true. Thank you for sharing these questions with me and allowing me to share them with BNI members. We love Bob Burg. He is a great guy. He is one of the networking guys out there who truly walks the talk. He really does the things that he talks about, so I really love promoting him and his material. Thanks Priscilla.

Priscilla:
Great. Well, I would 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. Thank you for listening. This is Priscilla Rice and we hope you’ll join us again next week for another exciting episode of The Official BNI Podcast.