 Re: Thoughts on BNI
I am a member of BNI (for 3 months) and enjoying my time there, It has already paid for itself from a pure $ perspective but my feeling is that real face to face networking is being replaced quite quickly by online networking and social media.
I guess it depends on the pace of your business and pace of new clients your business plan calls for, we get many times the enquiries through Linked in, FB, blogs and media/PR than we do through direct face to face networking, for me networking is much more about meeting people, learning and generally interacting with other business owners. (i am new to FS but i think it will also be a valuable networking / business tool)
It is sad you have had such trouble forming BNI groups and sad business owners are generally so closed to openly networking, prior to joining BNI i made attempts to form some sort of networking group myself of local businesses (my client database is several hundred small businesses) with no sucsess at all and yet my clients will sit there and say they desperately need new clients and referals!
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