BNI

To coincide with International Networking Week in February 2012 the BNI Blaze Chapter will be holding their next Open/Visitors Day on the 16^th February. The theme is “The Million Pound Drop”, due to the amount of business BNI Blaze generated for its members (£1, 068, 752.23!) in 2011.

If you would like to attend the event and learn what networking can achieve for your business, please fill in the below form. Alternately you can attend via LinkedIn.

To register for the event, simply fill in your details below.

I thought you might like to hear about an interesting meeting we had in our Chapter last week. We all turned up in Santa costumes for the meeting in aid of a local charity, The Garden House Hospice in Letchworth Herts http://www.ghhospice.co.uk/

It came about when the Corporate Fundraiser for the hospice, Tina Fletcher, came along to one of our meetings as a visitor. In her 60 seconds she told us about the ‘Wear a Santa Suit’ day the Hospice were promoting. They were asking local businesses to buy Santa suits for £10 each and then wear them for the day to raise money for the hospice. We loved the idea and decided to join in as a Chapter and buy the suits. Every member of the Chapter joined in and we raised £270 for the Hospice.

Several of our members also took part with their own businesses as well, raising additional funds. It’s a great example of how bringing a visitor along to a meeting can bring unexpected benefits. Apart from donating to a worthwhile cause it was a great team building event for us and has generated lots of goodwill and publicity for the Chapter.

BNI Blaze Breakfast Club is moving from Blakemore House, Little Wymondley to Hitchin Rugby Club from 1st December. The group, consisting of local business men and women meet every Thursday and support each other with their business development. Chapter Director Fred McBreen said, ‘We are very excited to be moving to Hitchin Rugby Club which is a great venue and developing our Chapter further. We currently have about 30 members, but our aim is to grow to 40+ in the next few months’.

All local businesses are welcome to attend Blaze and if interested people should contact Fred McBreen on info@base52.co.uk. Since April this year the Chapter has generated over £600,000 worth of business for its members which has helped them to do well in difficult trading conditions.

We at Advance Building Solutions in Letchworth pride ourselves on the service we offer and deliver to our clients. It is very important to my business and our customers that they receive a quality service, supported by trustworthy, honest and reliable tradesman.
Since joining BNI BLAZE in July 2010, I have been given a wonderful opportunity to meet and work with many quality local businesses, on a weekly basis this I could not of achieved so easy without this network. And I can honestly state that since Advance Building Solutions have joined the Bni, we have been in the position to invoice over 100k exec. Vat to date

In March (2011) I was thinking about my application for my 3rd year as the BNI Blaze member for Web Development @Phew Internet, when I got passed a referral from Rob Bryan (Human resources) @ Rob Bryan Associates

Rob says:

“I became aware that my client was looking to improve the way in which they handled event administration. They seemed to think that an online booking solution was required.

I immediate thought of Phew Internet. Phew would not only have the technically ability to write the source code but more importantly, with Matthew at the helm, Phew would set about devising a workable solution not only addressing the immediate perceived need but a workflow that would be integrated seamlessly into their CRM database.”

As Rob mention when I first met the client, they “sort of knew” what they wanted, but they were certain knew that they had a problem.

They had a 3rd party events system, an out of date internal database and no time.

What they wanted was a simple system to allow clients to book courses and events online. The system to tell them who had booked, what pudding they wanted, and to print the badges for them without having to use word templates, and finally to report lots of different things every month.

That’s just what they got.

The value of BNI membership comes from the power of BNI referrals.

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Article Submitted by Matthew Burgess, Founder and MD at Phew Internet

February 2011 has been a fantastic month for the members at Blaze. Each week we record the actual business that has been invoiced between the group and record our findings to ensure that we are generating enough business for all of our members. Vanessa Kaye Chapter Director was please to announce at this weeks meeting that during the month of February the group had excelled and had generated just over £109,000.00 of actual invoiced business.

“What a fantastic result in a time when all we seem to hear is doom and gloom for SME’s, this really proves that local businesses supporting each other and helping to generate work for others really shows outstanding results.

BNI Blaze’s previous best month was in July 2010 when £78,000.00 worth of invoiced business was recorded followed by October 2010 which resulted in £68,000.00. It’s no wonder that BNI Blaze is going from strength to strength and becoming one of the most popular networking groups within the local area.

To read the January 2011 edition of SuccessNet Online, sponsored by White Digital Media, visit here.

In this edition, you’ll find:
1. “Three Trends in Business Networking” by Dr. Ivan Misner.
Times are changing, and so is networking.
2. “10 Things You Need to Know to Deliver a Power Presentation” by Scott Gerber.

An excerpt from Never Get a “Real” Job.
3. “I Have a Problem” by Duane Christensen.

Why your 60-Second Commercial should point to a solution.
4. Words of Wisdom.

“The Winning Edge.” from Brian Tracy.

*NEW* Productivity Tip: “How to boost your productivity with business cards.”
5. Breaking News about the 2011 International Networking Week and The BNI-Misner Foundation Campaign for Schools in India.
Plus, coverage of BNI happenings held across the globe, mentions in the news, recommended reading, and testimonials from members like you.

Be sure to take a moment to submit a comment to my article or to post your own BNI story.

I’ve been a member of the Blaze Chapter for 18 months now and this is the third opportunity I have had to give a 10 minute presentation to my fellow members and visitors.

When thinking of what I could talk about I remembered something I was told when I first joined the Chapter. ‘Its like having up to 40 sales people working for you’. I thought that this was a really powerful message so I have decided to focus on this today.

So if you are all in my sales team, I thought it would be good to give you some feedback on how we are doing and maybe share some thoughts on how we can be even better.

So how are we doing? Well I can sum that up easily. We are doing a fantastic job! Just to put some numbers on that, in recent months we have grown our sales by over 30%…and much of that growth is a direct result of referrals from this Chapter.

This is a great opportunity for me to thank all of you for your support. It is greatly appreciated and I will do my best to work hard as a member of each of your sales teams!

So we are doing great, but how can we do a little bit better?

Well I think I can help here by being a bit more specific about the kind of clients we are looking for and the work we do. I can also put forward some ideas on when people may want to talk to an accountant.

So starting with the clients we are looking for, there are 3 broad categories – existing businesses with annual sales of up to £5m, start up businesses and individuals who need help with their tax returns. What we do is provide accounting and tax solutions for each of these groups. We will tailor what we do to suit their requirements. So that’s pretty simple!

For two of these groups, the business start ups and people who need help with their tax returns it is relatively straightforward to refer them to us. Both will benefit from speaking to an accountant and may already be looking around.

For existing business owners/managers who already have an accountant, it is more difficult to refer them to Base52. There usually needs to be some reason for them to think of changing accountants – maybe they have relocated, maybe there have been other changes in their business. A dialogue can sometimes establish if there is a desire to change and we are always happy to have a discussion with no obligation.

So that covers what I wanted to say. We’ve talked about how we are doing as a sales team – well above expectations is one way of putting it! Thinking about the three groups of potential customers – existing small businesses, start ups and individuals (for tax) might help you to find referrals. People who already have an accountant will generally only change if there is a problem. If you can find out what that is, they may be willing to chat to Base52.

Thank you for listening…