This post was contributed by a community member. The views expressed here are the author's own.

Health & Fitness

Interesting business notes from the Shoreline East BNI meeting at the Madison Beach Hotel on April 02, 2013:

While typical weekly meetings include segments such as: education, members’ “30-second commercials”, referrals and testimonials, and other club business, this week’s agenda was altered to focus on a wonderful presentation by member Paul Halagan of Halagan Design Group, and visitor Jerry Kenney of Alphagraphics.  The title was: “How to Supercharge your Referrals in SEBN Using Social Networking”, and focused on LinkedIn as the primary social networking vehicle.

While many of us were aware of LinkedIn, few in the room were using the tool to its full potential, and fewer still were aware of the tremendous potential synergy between it and BNI.

There were two major “ah ha!” moments in the presentation:
    •    Scope and scale.  Of the current LinkedIn members - a subset of our 46 SEBN members - there are already over 4,000 direct connections, and 400,000 second-tier connections.
    •    Search function.  LinkedIn has a very powerful advanced search capability, which enables a user to search for specific connections by industry, distance, type of connection, and more.  Examples were given by the presenters for actual group members, which turned up tens, hundreds, or even thousands of targeted businesses for several individual members.  And, for each of these, there is a clear pathway to gaining the coveted introduction.
BNI is all about referring business to others in the group.  Now, there is a tool to proactively ask other members for introductions to people we know they are connected with.  This can be accomplished at 1-to-1 meetings, during 30-second commercials, or outside of BNI.  The point is that members no longer have to be reactive and wait for another to propose an introduction for us, we can now proactively ask a specific member for an introduction to another person we know they are acquainted with.  Very powerful!
Mr. Halagan and Mr. Kenney recommend a 3-step approach to getting started, called the 3 C’s.  Those C’s are Construct, Connect, and Communicate.
    •    Construct – build a great profile with keywords, and gradually add endorsements and recommendations
    •    Connect – proactively add links to businesspeople you want to get to know better, or whom you think may be connected to others you want to meet
    •    Communicate – log on to LinkedIn regularly and be active.  It is not enough to have a great profile and link with others.  You should also introduce your colleagues when you can, recommend them, form/join discussion groups, share interesting articles, link to your blog or another relevant blog, etc.
BNI and LinkedIn are both powerful business development tools, if used the right way.  The presenters have shown us that, in addition to their individual benefits, used together, they offer tremendous synergy for each of us.

About BNI

BNI is the world’s largest referral network.  In 2010, Business Network Int'l passed over 6.5 million referrals in 5500+ chapters with over 135,000 members in 45 countries resulting in more than $2.8 billion in business! BNI membership in CT now stands at 2,027 and growing.

Visitors are welcome!  If you’d like to visit the Shoreline East BNI, just fill out the contact form under “Join Shoreline East” on our website (shorelineeastbni.com) and a representative from our membership team will contact you.

We’ve removed the ability to reply as we work to make improvements. Learn more here

The views expressed in this post are the author's own. Want to post on Patch?