J25 BNI Derby Business Networking

Synopsis

Dr. Misner shares three networking faux pas that he’s run into over the years.

1. Not responding quickly to referral partners. Don’t put off returning phone calls to your referral partners even if you’re not sure they have a referral for you.
2. Confusing networking with direct selling. Networking isn’t about collecting business cards and then sending them sales pitches or making cold calls.
3. Abusing the relationship. The worst example Dr. Misner is aware of is someone who disguised a sales pitch as a 50th birthday party.

Read Dr. Misner’s complete article on Entrepreneur.com.

What kind of networking faux pas have you encountered? (No names, please!)

Brought to you by Networking Now.

Complete Transcription of BNI Podcast BNI Podcast 107 -

Priscilla:
Hello everyone, and welcome back to The Official BNI Podcast brought to you by NetworkingNow.com, which is the leading site on the Net for networking downloadables.

I’m Priscilla Rice, and I’m coming to you from the beautiful Live Oak Recording Studio in Berkley, California, and I am joined on the phone today by the founder and the chairman of BNI, Dr. Ivan Misner.

Hello, Ivan, how are you, and where are you?

Ivan:
Well, I’m at BNI headquarters this week. Most directors may know this, but members may not know that we bring directors from all over world here to BNI headquarters several times a year and we do directors training. It’s three days of training, about 24 hours, and so I’m helping to conduct the directors training this week here at BNI.

Priscilla:
Well, that sounds great. So are you planning to share with us?

Ivan:
Well, I want to talk about networking faux pas. Three faux pas that I’ve come across in my years of involvement with BNI and with other networking organizations, as some of these are from other types of networking organizations, but three faux pas that jump out at me as big problems. I thought what I might do is share these, and then I’d love to have the listeners share at the end where they can post their comments some faux pas they’ve run into, but don’t name names. Don’t put people’s names up there. But share some of the faux pas that you’ve run into, either somebody doing something at a BNI meeting that probably wasn’t the best way to network or some other organizations where you’ve seen people do things that weren’t necessarily the best examples of networking.

Remember, this isn’t just to tell on somebody. What we want to show are what are good and bad examples. I talk a lot about good examples, but I want to model some things to stay away from, and that’s what I want to do here with Networking Faux Pas.

Priscilla:
Okay, great. Well, tell us the first one.

Ivan:
Well, the first one is really an ideal example of what to steer away from, particularly in BNI, and that is not responding quickly to referral partners. Now, this one really troubles me. I can’t imagine getting a call from a networking partner or a referral partner and not responding immediately. But unfortunately, this seems to happen with some regularity.

Not long ago someone I know had a referral to give a gentleman in his group, and he called the associate and left a message at his office. As soon as he knew the referral was viable, he called immediately. And a day went by without a return call, so he picked up the phone and called again and said it was really important to connect. He still didn’t hear from the guy.

He was finally able to speak to his networking associate at the next meeting. He asked him why he didn’t return his call, and the associate said, “Oh, well, if I knew you had a referral for me, I would have called you back immediately.”

Priscilla:
Yeah, right.

Ivan:
He couldn’t believe that. So he still gave him the referral at the meeting, but to no one’s surprise, the person referred ended up working with another vendor because no one got back to him in a timely manner.

Treating each of your networking partners as one of your best clients is critical. You’ve got to return phone calls from them immediately, as it speaks to your credibility and reliability as a professional. There are countless examples of people receiving referrals from networking groups and then contacting the referral a few days later and not doing it quick enough. The old phrase, if you snooze, you lose, is apropos here.

If the referral knows you have her name and number on Monday, boy, you better call them that day or the next day. And if one of your referral partners calls you and they don’t say why, you still need to call them back because these are your referral partners. Big faux pas.

Priscilla:
Right. That makes sense.

Ivan:
Here’s number two. Confusing networking with direct selling. Confusing networking with direct selling.

One of my company’s directors struck up a conversation with a woman business owner at a networking function. I may have mentioned this in a podcast in the past. When the business owner asked our director what she did, she said she helps owners build their business through networking and referrals, and the business owner smiled and said, “Well, I’m really good at networking. I’ve been doing it for a long time.”

And our director asked her, “So what’s your secret? What makes you so good?”

She stood straight; she said, “Well, a friend and I, we enter the room together.” These are like business mixers, like a Chamber mixer. “We enter the room together. We imagine drawing a line down the middle. She takes the left side; I take the right side. We agree to meet at a certain time at the end of the event and see who collected the most cards. And the loser has to buy the other one lunch.”

Well, the director said, “So what do you do with all those cards?”

And again, very proudly, she said, “Oh, I enter them into my distribution list and I begin to send them information about my services. If I have all their information, they’re all good prospects, right? They’re all good prospects.”

Well, no! They’re not good prospects. This is a classic example of an entrepreneur not understanding networking isn’t about simply gathering contact information and following up on it later. That’s nothing more than glorified cold calling. It just gives me the chills. I used to teach cold calling techniques to business people, and I did it long enough to know that I didn’t ever want to do it again. I’ve devoted my entire professional career to teaching the business community that there’s a better way to build long term business. And this is not a good example of it; this is not much better than cold calling.

Priscilla:
Right.

Ivan:
So here’s networking faux pas number three, and this is the most amazing of them all. And that is, abusing the relationship. Abusing the relationship. There are many ways I’ve seen networking partners abuse relationships, but the next story is one of the most glaring. As a matter of fact, I wrote about this story a few years ago at Entrepreneur.com, and when the editors read it, she actually wrote me back and said, “Is this a true story? This couldn’t be true.”

I told her, “I’m afraid it was.”

So here’s the story. A woman I know is invited to attend a 50th birthday party of an associate who used to belong to our networking group. So they once had a good, long term working relationship, and out of respect, she decided to attend. When she got to the birthday party, she got to the door, she looked through the window, and she noticed that people were arranged in a semi-circle listening to a presenter in front of an easel board. And when she stepped in, it was obvious that the party-goers were actually being recruited for a business opportunity.

And as resentful as the woman felt, she and the other mutual friends there found it difficult to remove themselves from the “birthday party” in spite of the fact that the only refreshment – and this is what is really amazing, the only refreshment being served was the company’s diet shake.

Priscilla:
Oh, wow!

Ivan:
So here’s the bottom line. Never mislead your networking partners. For that matter, never mislead anyone, but trust is everything when you’re talking about relationship networking. Inviting people to a birthday party that turns out to be a business opportunity pitch isn’t being honest with people with whom you want to build a trusting relationship.

All these faux pas directly relate to good people skills. So the prevailing theme of all three is to treat your referral partners and your potential referrals with professionalism and care. Use networking opportunities to meet people and begin the process of developing a genuine relationship, and treat your referral partner like you would a top client.

Most importantly, always network in a way that builds credibility and trust. Be candid in telling your referral partners what you need and what you’re asking of them. And do these things, and you’ll avoid some serious mistakes in your networking.

Now, just one last thing before we wrap up is I would love for the members listening to this story to share your networking faux pas, something that maybe has happened to you or you’ve seen happen. Again, don’t name names, and this isn’t just a place to complain. What we want is to learn from this. Here’s something you saw that you didn’t think was real strong and here’s why. And maybe even here’s what might have been better.

But this is your opportunity. I’d love to see some really positive negative. I’d like to see some strong examples of what not to do in networking environments.

Priscilla:
Well, great. I bet you you’re going to get a slew a faux pas.

Ivan:
Well, I’m looking forward to seeing them. I’d love to write some more. I’ll tell you what, if there’s some good ones, I might add to my networking faux pas article with Entrepreneur.com.

Priscilla:
Yeah, I think when you’re learning to network, you can actually make quite a few mistakes. So it’s kind of an art.

Ivan:
It is. You know what? You bring up a good point. We all go into this as newbies, as neophytes, and I’ve certainly made many mistakes in the past. I probably, in my early days of networking, didn’t respond to people as quickly as I should, and I might have confused networking with direct selling, but not for very long. I got that pretty quickly.

But we all learn as we go, and so by taking a look at what other people think are bad examples of networking, it helps teach us what not to do. Knowing what not to do is sometimes as important as knowing what to do.

Priscilla:
Right. Well, that a beautiful summary. Thank you so much for sharing this with us, and I look forward to hearing what all the new faux pas might be as they come forward.

Thanks so much, Dr. Misner.

I just want to remind the listeners that this podcast has been brought to you by NetworkingNow.com, the leading site on the Net for networking downloadables. Thanks so much for listening. This is Priscilla Rice, and we hope you’ll join us next week for another exciting BNI Podcast of The Official BNI Podcast.