Life gets a lot easier when we accept responsibility for everything that happens to us.

By accepting responsibility for our life and everything that happens in it, we remove blame. Blame is a cancer of the human spirit. By blaming ‘others’ for our misfortunes, we make ourselves helpless to whatever ‘others’ do to us.

By accepting responsibility for the situation, I am empowering myself to make the next decision as to what I am going to do, because I am the only person I can control.

The other people who influence my life are just being who they are, I can either accept that and accept them – warts and all – or move on.

Don’t get me wrong, by accepting responsibility, I am not accepting blame. I am just accepting that at some stage I made a decision that put me in this situation and now I am responsible for making the decision that will move me on.

So, I ask again…

Are you responsible?
Are you a responsible person?

However BNI has a lot of similarity to a team sport.

Confused?

Well look at it this way, your BNI meeting is your team ‘training’, that Wednesday night you used to work away with your rugby or netball team to be better for Saturday. You learn about your team members, see how you all work together and members who don’t perform for the team soon get ‘dropped’. You are coached to learn the strengths and weaknesses of your fellow team members and how to use them in the game.

And like team sport, if you don’t turn up for training or just laze around and don’t make an effort, you don’t make the team.

Then occasionally you would ‘do a dance’ with a team member… “whoa” I hear you say, no dancing in my rugby team… but translate dance for a kick around with a team member, or a bit of one on one for a basketballer. Again, like team sport, those that make the effort to do extra ‘one to one’ training during the week, tend to get to the top faster.

Ok, so what about the game… well here’s the scary and yet exciting bit… the game is the rest of the week. Every minute we are ‘out there’ doing what we do. At work during the week, at play in the weekends. At a PTA meeting or Lions Club Meeting. Anytime we are around other people we are playing the game of BNI… because that’s where we need to use the training from our ‘team practice’ to identify opportunities for referrals and convert them.

It’s no coincidence that the more experienced BNI members tend to be better at getting external referrals… as famous South African golfer Gary Player once said “the harder I practice, the luckier I get.” Experience comes with time to hear and spot opportunity, where in the past we might only have seen the things that concern ourselves.

So don’t make the mistake of thinking BNI is about a meeting you have once a week to eat breakfast…

Commit yourself to be the best you can be at your new ‘Team Sport’….BNI!

For weeks I have been trying to hammer in that having a prop or something to grab the attention makes a difference. I even ran a test one morning. It was a small chapter – 18 there if you exclude me – and I made notes on the key point/s of each speaker.

At the end of the meeting we still had time and so I passed around sheets and got everyone to write down what they thought were the keys points of the other speakers.

The recall was just over 42%! And that was boosted by 3 speakers who had been very effective with props and had nearly 100% of the listeners recalling correctly.

The message is simple…. BE VISUAL!

But there is more….

Last week I was at one of my larger Chapters (over 30 present) and this time I was watching the members as the 60” spots were done. Over half of the listeners were not even watching the speaker. Now because I was not watching the speaker (I was watching the members), it became obvious to me that unless you are ‘actively listening’ – watching and listening, you cannot take in the information to its best effect… Especially with lots of speakers.

The exceptions again… speakers who broke the mould, they had props, one sang her 60” (and very well too), another hopped on a kiddies trike and motored around the centre of the group while doing his 60”. They grabbed the listeners’ attention and kept it.

Props don’t even have to be complicated, at one chapter recently the Real Estate agent took her shoes off (not recommended for male agents) and used them to demonstrate the difference between buyers and sellers and bringing them together.

To summarize… you can troop along to BNI each week and read out a boring 60”, or worse still, do it off the cuff and get heard by probably a third of the chapter.. or you can undertake to stand out, be bold, be visual and as a result… be successful!

 Imagine a chapter where every speaker grabs your attentions with fun, interesting and visual infomercials… wouldn’t that be fantastic!

Why… because they make the listeners imagination open to people they know outside of their chapter… because the words ‘anyone’ and ‘everyone’ turn the listeners’ minds off – we don’t know anyone and everyone… we know someone! “Who do you know who…” makes us think exactly that.. who do I know?

Imagine my shock then, when listening to what should have been a perfect 60”, when the speaker uttered those fabulous words “Who do you know who…” and I realized they were not the right words!

She was with a Computer Company and she asked;

“Who do you know who is not backing up their computer or network”

And I thought, I bet no-one in this room knows a single person outside their own business or family who is not backing up their computer. So I thought about it for a while and it dawned on me.

A lot of BNI businesses need to train their BNI Sales Teams to ask the right questions!

So what she should be saying next time she is doing her 60” is;

“The next time you see someone you know on a computer, ask them, are you backing up your data? If they say no, then give them my card”

If you have ever worked in a Sales position either internal or as a Rep… you are taught the questions to ask the customer that will lead to a sale… even McDonalds Staff are taught ‘do ya want fries with that!’ BNI should no different, you need to teach your ‘reps’ what to ask!

There is an EFTPOS company in one of my chapters who tells his members “the next time you are in a business and you are paying by EFTPOS, ask them if they are happy with their supplier and service. If they are not them give them my card.”

So…

Think about what questions you want your Sales Team asking your potential customers.
Teach them the questions!
Teach them again and again, week after week until they would not dream of passing an opportunity to ask on your behalf.
So now I ask you…

Who do YOU know, who is not teaching their Sales Team the right questions… refer them to this article!