We have recently found a useful source of business contacts from which you may benefit. It was suggested to us by the telephone engineer who put in our new telephones and intercom.
It is called Business Network International (BNI). It is a group of business owners who meet every week to support one another and to share business ideas and leads. It also offers training in marketing, business presentations and the like. It is completely secular and not tied to any religious, political or charitable institution.
This is how it works. BNI is divided into Chapters, and in each chapter there is only one of whatever kind of business you may be in. Thus, if you are an electrician, you find a chapter of BNI in which there are no other electricians. You will meet people there in various other trades, and hopefully you may find someone else in another branch of the building industry who you would like to work with.
The chapter that we go to meets each Tuesday morning at 6.45 a.m. for breakfast. Since you know that you will see the other members in your chapter face to face each week, if you are doing a job for any of them, you have all the more incentive to do your job properly. It is peer pressure turned to a positive end.
We have only going to BNI a few weeks and have already found a handyman to do office repairs, and a heating engineer to inspect the boiler. We also believe that over time it may be a good source of new business for ourselves.
We suggest you may care to take a look at it as it could be helpful to you in your business.
– Stephen Handley