Incremental Improvement
Incremental improvements add up. If you improve something by 1% a week, after a year that’s a whopping 52% improvement, right? Actually, that’s wrong. It would be 64% if the improvement is compound. But you get the point.
Small changes over time, especially if they are sustainable, make a big difference. We might chase big, sudden improvements but they are much harder to achieve and then sustain. For instance, if you had to lose 20kg of weight overnight, how would you do it? The only way would be to chop off a limb. But losing 500gms a week means you can lose 20kgs in 40 weeks without losing a leg.
Incremental Improvement in Business
Improving incrementally, regularly across a wide range of activities in business makes a massive difference over the medium to long term. Some call this a profit improvement program or PIP. Reviewing your business and looking for small, sustainable improvements to improve the bottom line is a proactive defense against the inflationary pressure we are facing right now. Most small/medium businesses operate on a 10% net profit margin which is easily swallowed by cost increases or failing to review pricing.
If you have been running your business flat out for a while then it’s likely inefficiencies, outdated processes, and unnecessary costs have crept in without you noticing. There is a lot of information on the internet on how to implement a PIP, but it doesn’t have to be complicated. Start with your profit and loss and make a list of items and processes to improve on and check off just one item a week. Meet with your team and listen openly to their suggestions.
Incremental Improvement in BNI
We can also incrementally improve our return from BNI by paying attention to small details. It doesn’t matter who you are, or how many referrals you receive, because getting more is always useful. Plus, if you are unlucky and don’t get the number of referrals that you would like, then this would be amazing.
Now before you think, he’s/she’s going to say, “You’ve got to do lots more work” let me stop you, because you don’t. You have to do a little, but small changes can make a large difference to the number of referrals you get. Imagine improving by just 10% on the things you already do, what effect that would have combined in total. It would be massive.
Here are a few things to think about: attendance, 60 Seconds, your Feature Presentation, referrals given, visitors, workshops, One-2-Ones, testimonials, social events, and your Power Team – for starters. Just a small improvement on all of those would have a very visible result overall – more referrals.
Just One Thing You Can Do*
One of the things that you could do is to update your BNI Chapter website listing. What’s your presentation like on it?
I looked at our BNI Chapter website, many members could do a little more. In fact, some members could even make a start! More than one member not only didn’t have a photograph of themselves but worse still, had no written copy included. This will not be helping their odds of receiving inter-chapter referral opportunities.
This one thing will take just a few minutes: add a photo and some text in BNI Connect. Talk about how you help people, not about you (try to avoid using, ‘I ….’ ). Doing this will improve your referral rate, as many people look at the BNI website for businesses to refer themselves and others to. Make a start now – it will only take a few minutes. And you will be one step toward a better referral rate.
*Check the detail in this section is relevant to your chapter and adjust as needed in advance.
