To continue my social networking for business experiment, I was invited to the Fenton Business Network last Tuesday. The Network consists of small businesses in the area that meet weekly to help each other generate referral business. As some of you may know, the best type of customer is someone that does come as a referral. These referrals purchase more and stay a customer longer than customers that come from traditional leads. I felt really good because I was able to give one referral and perhaps another! It is great when you can add value as a visitor.
This type of network is a “win” for any small business. The local chapter here can be found at – http://www.fentonbni.com/. If you are out of the area – please go to http://www.bni.com/ to find a local chapter. I am so interested in hearing if anyone else has been helped by a group like this.
I may actually become a member so I will fill you in on how it goes.
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March 31, 2008 at 10:39 pm
bethany
I feel a little like a celebrity, since I’m the one who invited you to the group
To put in my two cents – I highly recommend this type of networking. It is a pretty high return on time/money investment, my company receives a lot of business from the group … as a web design company in the great state of michigan, I should really be leaving the state desperate for business, but in fact I almost have more than I can handle and need to think very seriously about hiring someone on to help out in the near future. It’s the same way for other members of my group as well (i.e. the builder in the group needs to hire, he’s swamped).
I’ve tried networking through the chamber before – and I’m not putting down the chamber at all, but the thing with that is it seems you have to put in quite a lot of time in order to see any return, plus when you attend events you’ll find yourself sitting in a room with all of your local competition. I myself didn’t have the time to put into attending all the chamber events in the area, and I didn’t want to spend the money in advertising that many businesses do, so the BNI is perfect for me. The only difficulty is getting there at 7AM
Everybody in the group knows that i am NOT a morning person, haha.
ttyl!
April 2, 2008 at 4:44 pm
John Besso
Raquel would be such a great asset to the BNI group in Fenton. She “gets it” that business grows through personal referrals and personal referrals get generated once a degree of trust is developed.
I look forward to working with her.