A big welcome to:

• Babs Badhwal from Fifosys (IT Managed Services and Business mobiles – www.fifosys.com)
• Michelle Lowe from Arrow Promotional Ltd (promotional products – arrowpromotional.com)
• Ugo Arinzeh from Onyx (Real Estate Management – onyxrem.com)

We are currently looking for more people to join our friendly, energetic, and vibrant chapter.

If you would like to come along to visit one of our meetings, you would be more than welcome. Please get in touch to book your place!

A big welcome to:

• Ashleigh Bell from Fifosys (IT Managed Services – www.fifosys.com)
• Stephen McLaren from McLaren Architecture & Design (Architect – www.marc-ad.com)
• Ritesh Sood from Soul mortgages Ltd (Property Finance specialist – www.soulmortgages.co.uk)

We are currently looking for more people to join our friendly, energetic, and vibrant chapter.

If you would like to come along to visit one of our meetings, you would be more than welcome. Please get in touch to book your place!

As men much more suave than myself often tell me, if you are lucky enough to be on a date, you should focus conversation on your lady friend rather than talking about yourself too much. That way, they leave thinking you were incredibly interesting without you having to say much about yourself at all. The same goes for networking pitches.

Using these first-person pronouns in your pitch has the effect of ‘pushing’ your message onto your audience rather than ‘pulling’ them in. Your pitch will end up sounding more like an egocentric rant than a clear and convincing business presentation.

So what language can you use instead?

There is a magic word I see a lot in our business copy, and that word is ‘you’. It is magic because it has the effect of speaking directly to each individual and pulling them into the dialogue, even if there is a whole room full of people.

It may feel counter-intuitive to swap ‘me’, ‘myself’ and ‘I’ for ‘you’, but most of the time you will find a simple rephrasing that works nicely.

Take, for example, the commonly used phrase ‘I am looking for referrals from lawyers.’ On the surface an innocuous and innocent enough phrase, but it creates a sense of expectation and demand from your audience – feelings that often make people act defensively and not ideal for forming a strong business relationship. However, change the phrase around a little and you could instead say ‘Your contacts in law firms could really benefit from your referrals because…’

If you cannot immediately see the huge difference this change would make in the mind of the audience, try getting someone else to say each phrase to you and notice the difference yourself.

What are your top presentation tips and tricks? Have you found certain phrases more successful than others?

Join in the discussion with us on our new Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn pages or feel free to comment below. Keep checking back for advice about Networking in the London area.

This week we would like to introduce another member of the BNI Capital family. Robin has been with the Chapter for over 8 years now, making him one of our longest standing members. Robin holds the litigation seat at Magrath LLP Solicitors (http://www.magrath.co.uk/) and through Capital BNI promotes many of the various services his firm offers.

First Success

When we asked Robin to describe his first success with BNI Capital, he did admit that he received a rather amazing lead surprisingly early on.

“It was within 3 weeks of joining BNI Capital that I got my first referral – a loan dispute case worth £90k which I won for the client. Speaking to other BNI members, I realised I had been very lucky getting this kind of quality lead almost immediately.“

Usually it takes longer for members to develop relationships with other members, which normally involves undertaking a number of one-to-ones and building a level of trust within the group. However, Robin’s success shows that it is sometimes just a case of being in the right place at the right time – in this case at the BNI Capital Chapter.

Why did you join?

“I originally joined BNI to learn vital networking skills, and now I believe I can consider myself a very competent networker. Anyone who joins BNI Capital will leave each week’s meetings a better networking professional. If I’m being honest, the additional business I have picked up has been a bonus.”

At BNI Capital, all members are encouraged and expected to build up their networking and presentation skills. Whatever industry sector you represent and whatever your job role at BNI, all come as equals. You are expected to develop your skills through 10-minute presentations, one-to-one sessions and through conversations both in and out of the meeting.

This focus on personal development helps to increase your confidence in a supportive environment, making you a better networker and help you to gain more referrals whether through BNI or externally.

How do you make BNI work for you?

“The more that I network BNI members in with other members of my firm, the more I can increase the power of the collective whole. For example David Little who sits on our employment law seat has been meeting some of the other BNI members. We have a freelance HR lady, who has met members of the group and Adele Martins has had a number of discussions about restrictive covenants.

“In fact, Adele has also been the recipient of my latest referral. An events company was passed onto us after raising concerns over their freelancer relationships. It looks as though Adele will be helping the company by protecting their client relationships after putting the appropriate restrictions in place.”

If you would like to harness the power of the BNI Capital networking group why not come along to our next meeting this coming Wednesday? You can register quickly and easily here.

You can also now join our social networks on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn for more information and updates on BNI Capital Chapter.

Subscribe to our RSS feed here.

Some may argue that digital networking, through websites like LinkedIn, has revolutionised the way professionals network. With over 9 million members from the UK on the professional network we no longer have to be in the right place at the right time to discover a useful connection, we can search for the right people and connect immediately over the internet.

While we agree that LinkedIn can be a very useful tool we disagree with the sometimes stated view that it will do away with traditional networking methods. But then we would say that wouldn’t we.

Why won’t digital networking make face-to-face networking redundant?

As early users of LinkedIn many of us here at Capital BNI have seen the professional networking site evolve over the years. At first most users expected the site to facilitate direct connections with people with whom they could immediately do business. In essence they thought sales-ready leads would be delivered to their inbox through some mystical digital intervention.

What people quickly found is that while it is a good place to meet other professionals, LinkedIn still lacked a certain quality they looked for. What was this quality? Trust.

The whole premise of business networking is that it forges a sense of trust between individuals. In a face-to-face environment you are able to judge the strengths and weaknesses of another person, get to know them a little and get a sense for the type of person they are. This is the unmistakable qualitative difference you receive with good face-time.

So why are so many still using the online professional network?

As useful at finding the right people LinkedIn may be, it still only provides carefully contrived information about the other person. A large part of the productive benefits that comes through using LinkedIn is the ability to find networking events and schedule face time with your new contacts.

Unfortunately, some are under the illusion that LinkedIn provides an inexhaustible mine of potential clients just waiting for you to connect with them. These people will end up wasting far more precious time trying to foster a business relationship digitally than they will ever receive in business profit.

Conclusion: It may be free, but you only get the quality you pay for.

How is BNI different? We think our members say it best:

“Within the first 12 weeks I had recovered the subscription costs by a multiple of five and now looking at over £10k worth of referrals in the first 6 months. An effective investment for a small business!

Running a consultancy business I rely on my network of contacts to deliver end to end client solutions. I am a subscriber to the usual online tools such as LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter but have found the one to one relationships I have developed through BNI to be the most effective in generating revenue”

Charles Shiplee, Brand GP

Want to find out more about BNI Capital Chapter? Then why not visit us on Facebook or Twitter for more information.

As such we thought it would be nice for you to be able to meet some members of our chapter. We will be steadily introducing our members over the next few months, but today we would like to start with Ola Kupoluyi, our Property Solicitor.

Ola is Managing Partner at her firm OlaLeslie Solicitors based in Covent Garden. She joined us at the BNI Capital Chapter 18 months ago and has been regularly attending our Wednesday morning meetings ever since.

Ola’s Success Story

Ola’s main aim in joining BNI was to find a referral to a mortgage broker. Several months went by before she gained a referral from John Dennington, from SW1 Print, to a mortgage broker based out of New York. Initially nothing came of this referral, but in August last year she reintroduced herself to the firm and soon after began receiving some work from them.

She is now receiving more and more from the firm and expects it to become a regular stream of quality work.

We asked Ola why she thought it took a while for this quality lead to come her way:

“ I think it takes a little while for people to get to know you and to trust you – as you would expect in any relationship. But when you do become trusted you start to find referrals increasing until you have a regular stream of work.

“ I’ve now done work for several people around the table and have gained a great deal of referrals, so it shows that the group we have work very well together ”

The key to success with BNI, Ola believes, is going in with an aim.

“ If you have an aim and/or a strategy to achieve that aim then you will get a lot more out of BNI. Start by understanding the process and how that can help you in business, then go in and pursue that aim. It may take a little while to get going, but the important thing is it’s an enjoyable process and I have met lots of great and very knowledgeable people along the way “

Ola would very much like to see more property people around the table – mortgage brokers, surveyors, architects, estate agents etc.

If you fit the bill, or even if you don’t but have felt inspired by Ola’s story, then why not come along to our next meeting this coming Wednesday? You can register quickly and easily here.