Okay, so the more visitors we get in the room at BNI, the more money we all make. Do you agree?

Well, I can prove it – at any BNI meeting, everybody in the room will be either a visitor on that day, or will have been a visitor at one point. If that person hadn’t been brought, you would not have any of the referrals you’ve had from that person

So, why aren’t we all inviting visitors every week?

That’s a rhetorical question to an extent, but there are many reasons why we don’t. It can be difficult to have that conversation where you go up to somebody and say, “fancy coming along to BNI?” and then you get that awful rejection, like when you ask somebody out in school and they say no.

Of course, some people don’t have the time to do it. They haven’t got time to be asking visitors, maybe they deal with people who don’t have businesses, so they’re ineligible to be invited to BNI.

So, there are lots of reasons why you might not be inviting visitors, but what if I showed you a way where you can invite visitors that takes you five minutes, can get you 10 visitors and you haven’t even got to put your pants on?

Are you on Facebook? Pretty much everybody is (and if you’re not, it is free to join, so what are you waiting for), and most people that are on Facebook are in some sort of Facebook group. In these groups, you’ve probably seen someone talking about their business and what they do.

Those are all potential visitors, because they want more clients, more business and more sales. They want exactly what BNI gives them – they just don’t know about it. But, how do you invite them?

You could comment on their post and say “You fancy coming along to BNI next week? It’s a weekly meeting where we all meet up and pass referrals. I think you might get some business out of it.”

I wouldn’t do that, though, because then you’re probably going to get people who have or have note been to BNI commenting on it saying “that doesn’t work”. A much better way is to click on their profile, go through their profile page and send them a message.

Now, a word of warning – if you’re not connected with them, it’ll be a message request, so they’re not likely to see it for a couple of days because Facebook filters this sort of stuff, but they will get it. So you might do that and send a standard message saying “Would you like to come along to a BNI meeting? It’s a weekly meeting where we go along every Thursday morning where we meet lots of business owners, and in the last six months we’ve passed however much business. It’s really great and I get lots of my business from there.”

Again, that’s probably not going to work, because all you’ve done there is talk about yourself and what BNI does for you. Have you ever been to a networking event where somebody just talks about themselves, or been on a date where somebody just talks about themselves? It’s boring, isn’t it?

People don’t want to hear about you, they want to hear about themselves, you need to use the word “you”. You could say “I saw you posting in a Facebook group looking for more business. Would you like to come along to a business meeting where you can talk to a load of other business owners about what you do, who you do it for, why you do it, what you’re looking for, and how they can help you get more business. If I can get you an invite, would you like to come along to the next meeting to talk about your business?”

If everybody in BNI can commit to doing something like that for five minutes a week, they’ll have loads of visitors next week and, in time, loads more money.

And if you’re one of those people thinking “I haven’t got five minutes to do this, I’m far too busy,” then why not use a virtual assistant company? There might even be one at your BNI group!