This is the second post in the series related to my experiences in business networking groups
July 2008 and a vacancy appeared in local BNI chapter for an IT company, those of you familiar with the BNI concept will know that they only allow 1 company from each sector into a chapter. Given the competitive nature of the IT business, it was for me at the time an opportunity that I could not really afford to miss, or so I thought.
I attended my first BNI meeting with similar trepidation to my first 4Networking meeting, my experiences of 4networking is posted here, although I initially found the format somewhat more formal. I must confess that I had heard a lot of good things and to be honest a lot of bad things about BNI, but I felt that I at least needed to make my own mind up.
I got off to a good start and was received some good referrals and similarly was able to pass a number of referrals and most importantly I was enjoying myself. However several months in, I started to uncover what were in my opinion flaws in the format. The IT business has some very unclear boundaries and it is in many ways difficult to segment in the way that BNI would like. I started to find that the solutions that I was offering were in actual fact encroaching on other members businesses sectors. I struggled with the same people in the room concept, I understood that you are effectively selling through the room, but I still felt that the concept was narrowed. The pressure of referrals is very high, again something that I understood but what concerned me more was the relative lack of referral training. Granted BNI do provide training for success etc etc but I felt that it was not sufficient to assist members in building a robust referral system, this incidentally will be the subject of a future blog post.
On the positive front, yes I did get some good business and yes I did meet some fantastic people.
Am I glad I joined? of course it was a valuable networking exercise and again helped me with my networking confidence.
Am I still attending? No, I recently decided that it was becoming a very expensive form of networking and most importantly the lock out rules was not allowing my business to move in the directions that I wanted to take it.
So in summary, I am pleased that I have experienced the BNI concept and I have some very fond memories of the time spent but in the end it was not for me or my business. That is of course not to say that it will not work for your business but like everything you have to find a happy medium.
I would be keen to hear your comments or thoughts……..
I started a business with a collegue who subsequently stole it from me. She rebranded, emptied the bank accounts and stole everything. I was susequently surprised to see she had become a member of BNI. She has testimonials from the old company on her website, she has now become treasurer/secretary of her local chapter. They also subscribe to the best of, locally, but all the testimonials are from one bni member to another. The whole thing is cult like and fake. They pay through the nose and are signing up to local expo’s and sub divisions of other networking. I would never trust a BNI member knowing what I do. The whole thing is going to court soon over the business, the local papers will be involved, doing a story on the business con, wonder if the BNI will stand by her.
Hi Roger,
Thanks for the comment and sorry to hear about your experiences with BNI. I guess some individuals behave in a manner which drags the organisation down. Having said that my experiences were less than satisfactory but on the flip side I know that some people have very positive results with BNI.
I hope that your situation gets resolved.
Thanks again for your comments
First off, you have to be pretty stupid for someone to take your business from you. Second, you cannot bundle everyone who’s a BNI member into the same bracket i.e. thieves. I’m sure loads of people will want to do business after they read about you being involved in a scandal.
Simon – the fact that you struggled to get anything out of BNI is entirely your fault. If you don’t define your business, the boundaries will always be unclear.
Rich, Thanks for leaving your comment.
Personally I have nothing against BNI and gave my view as I saw it. Yes, I accept some blame for not defining my business at the outset however I wanted to move into areas that I was simply not allowed to. This incidentally was a result of the way my business was evolving. In the end I moved on. I would not say that I struggled to get anything out of BNI in fact I did get some good business and met some great people who to this day remain friends and business associates and whom I continue to do business with.
If you would like to present your experiences of BNI on this blog I would be happy to publish your article?
Thanks again for taking the time to read and comment on this post.
Simon