Givers Do Not Gain – The End of the BNI Road
I finally pulled the plug on our 8 month BNI horror show. To sum up; it was a complete waste of time. If you are thinking of joining this group please reconsider unless you sell something very generic that nearly everyone can use (retail banking, retail insurance, cable tv, maybe financial planning) if you sell into the higher cost B2B market forget it. High level corporate decision makers don’t come to BNI meetings.
Since my second week in BNI (Business Networking International) my business partner has been telling me it’s a bullshit cult and that I’m wasting my time with it. My response; you don’t know that lets give it six months and then do the numbers and it isn’t worth the time I’ll bail. For the record she was 100% correct. BNI sucks.
I know most of you are ADHD and won’t make it to the end of this blog post. Lets get to the performance results for our chapter right off;
Here are the rough numbers for our chapter;
$60,000 Total Chapter Sales
30 Number of Members (average)
$2000.00 Per Member Earnings (average)
$ 600.00 BNI Dues Per Year
$1400.00 BNI Earnings After Expenses
192 Member Hours Spent on BNI Activities per year (average)
$ 7.92 Ave member earnings per hour
$7.92 an hour! Sign me right the fuck up. I sit in these god awful meetings week after tortuous week listening to the most nonsensical of bullshit being spewed by members; “BNI gives me multiple orgasms” “I lost 50 pounds since I joined BNI” (That is a lie there are a LOT of fat fucks in these meetings –editor) “After only 3 months of BNI my kids are no longer ugly) Just complete non-sense about how much BNI has helped them with their business, social life, whatever the hell. Then I get these very same people together in for the 1-ON-1 meetings (always at a bar so to have drink close at hand) and ask them about their BNI success and it’s always the same song; “I haven’t closed shit because of BNI. I’m not going to re-up next year.” Then why in the hell are you spouting off in the BNI meeting about how much BNI has helped you?
You go to church and they pump you full of bullshit but you can’t prove or disprove any of it. The faithful (insane -editor) claim there is a god and it’s all real. The rational (sane –editor)claim that believing in bronze age fairy tails is retarded and the burden of proof is on the person claiming the existence of a supernatural benevolent spaceman. Because of the unknowns neither side can prove their case. That’s the beauty of running a religion. You can make all sorts of ridiculous claims and as long as you have enough followers believing you who is to say you are wrong! But BNI for all of its cult overtones at the end of the day is a sales channel which can be quantified with simple math. My math says that it comes up short for most of its members.
Quality of Membership
“I DON’T WANT TO BELONG TO ANY CLUB THAT WILL ACCEPT PEOPLE LIKE ME AS A MEMBER”. – Groucho Marx
The business group that you should belong to doesn’t want you as a member. You’ll have to lie, cheat or bribe your way in. That’s because positions in these groups are desirable and profitable. From what I’ve seen BNI (my chapter anyway) would let anyone in that had $400 and no felonies. They go though the motions of checking your references to make it look like you are joining something special but after the initial pageantry they pretty much let anyone in. If BNI were a woman her personal ad would read;
“BBW, (Big Beautiful Woman – code for hard up fat chick –editor) 40, no kids. I like long walks on the beach and all you can eat buffets. I’m looking for a man ready to start an family. Must have operational car and a full set of teeth.
Low fucking standards. Thats the problem. My chapter would literally take anyone. $400, pulse, no recent felonies (was it violent?) you’re in buddy. When you are willing to accept anyone you get everyone you don’t want in the group. Sure there are a few professionals, a few members that own real businesses. But by and large the group was made up of down on their luck sales people, one man work from home deals, startups based on horribly flawed ideas, part time businesses, housewives selling Avon, Mona Via, Avocare, etc and one completely insane woman who as near as I could tell would do any household chore for money but claimed to be a gardener. She showed up to the meetings more than not with potted plants. She’d stand up for her sales manager minute and show her plants. And the membership committee gave me shit for not bringing enough visitors. I’m really going to bring in the CEO of one of these firms we deal with and this bitch is going to stand up looking like she combed her hair with a pillow and pop out a rhododendron? No friggin’ way.
Here is what you won’t see a lot of in most BNI meetings; Corporate decision makers and multi million dollar business owners. Exactly the people we need to survive.
I Have (a fake referral for you) Time
“It’s morally wrong to allow a sucker to keep his money.” - W.C. Fields
The I have time! This is where every member of the BNI group has to stand up and tell the other members in the group what they brought to the table. There are three things that you are allowed to have;
- A Business Referral / Lead for a fellow member – (usually fictional)
- A visitor introduction (join up sucker!)
- A touching story about how BNI touched your otherwise banal life.
From the member’s perspective the referral system couldn’t be worse. BNI has created an incentive system that is guaranteed to generate a large quantity of very low quality sales leads. Members are put on the spot by having to stand in front of the group to tell everyone what they’ve brought. This creates an implied quota. But you aren’t judged on the on the amount of revenue that you generate for your fellow members but on the quantity of leads that you bring in.
So why would you create an incentive system that will generate the highest number of low quality leads possible? Because all that churn shows well to visitors. If stripped away all the crap referrals and members just passed the solid, legit good quality leads there would be maybe one or two referrals per meeting. No one is going to apply for membership if they see reality! 30 people here and one person closed business? Fuck that! I’m out of here! But when the visitor sees 20 to 30 leads passed it looks impressive. They want in on some of that gravy. Of course they have no way of knowing that the amount of actual business transacted was actually minuscule and really most of the BNI referrals generated aren’t even worth the follow up call.
The End of the Line
If you are considering joining this group I would recommend that you reconsider. While BNI was profitable to a very small number of members in our group for the majority it was not. If you sell something at the retail level that virtually everyone needs to buy; banking, insurance, cable tv, you might find some success. If you sell at the very low end of the B2B market you might also find some marginal success. However if you sell into the mid-range B2B market you will probably be wasting your time as very few of those caliber people attend BNI meetings.
Nice writing style. Looking forward to reading more from you.
Chris Moran
Pure genius - you should write more. Contact me and i’ll link you to my blog - we’re of similar style.
But I don’t want to put my shit up here because I’m sure some BNI nerd is out there ready to push me out of the closet.
BNI works for some and not for others. It can vary wildly based on which chapter you are a member of.
In my experience you get out what you put in. I work VERY hard for my fellow members, who I both like and trust. In return they work hard for me too.
Last year I personally made £30000 from BNI. The group that i’m a member of turned over nearly £700000.
Rich.
Rich,
You must have an exceptional chapter. I just got the year end sales numbers in for my former chapter. (I’ll post when I get a little free time) roughly it came out to $95,000 for 35ish members.
Thats about $2700 per member.
$52 a week.
$13 an hour.
This is typical for BNI chapters in our area. If our chapter was doing anywhere near $1M/yr in sales I would have stuck with it.
High ticket items in my experience were the people who made the most.
EX Real estae agent can make $10,000 with 1 client mortgage loan officer the same ,
to a medical professional a client can be worth tens of thousands of they get sick enough.
Hi there,
I have been a member for four+ years. lots of good referrals that led to a lot of good income. However, I have to say, I get tired of drinking the koolaid. I have spent lots of time scouring the internet for the disgruntled and the unsatisfied and for whatever reasons, there is relatively little out there from past and present members. I personally think there is something odd about that.
The most recent unpleasant dish to be served from BNI corporate is the insistance to sign “trade secret” and “non-compete” clauses in very strongly pushed contract. After asking the higer-ups in my BNI koolaid line what the BNI mothership categorized all its members as (I was told we are considered BNI’s Clients) I was ready to laugh at doctor Ivan Meisner as he made more koolaid. What legitimate business model requires not only its employees to sign non compete contracts, but also its CUSTOMERS??!!
Then, it dawned on me… BNI is only a business to the corporate talking heads and the franchise owners. To all the devout congregation members, we are nothing more than a private club. We are told to run BNI like a business, but have none of the legal and practical recourse because we are nothing more than a club. You know like babysitter’s club or Mickey mouse. Why do I stay on you ask… Well, as I said, I cannot deny the revenue it has made for me. I guess I will continue to hold my nose and drink from the grail of Meisner and roll my eyes as I drive to the bank. BTW, I did not sign the contract…Damn the man!!
Hey Phil.
It’s a business thats run like a cult religion and marketed and sold as a cooperative. But like most religions (and charities) it’s really a business. And if you understand that it’s a business and that you are really entering into a vendor-client relationship you’ll quickly become tired of their antics.
What vendor do you have that dictates your behaviour, requires that you sell for them, and doesn’t allow you to be critical of it’s performance?
In terms of sales performance Google’s Adwords product closed about 10,000% more business than did BNI for the same money and a fraction of the effort. And with Google I didn’t have to go to a single meeting at 7:30am.
Why isn’t there more critical talk about BNI’s actual chapter performance? Probably most business owners chalk BNI up to a failed marketing effort (like direct mail) and move on to the marketing plan. Who has time to write about it on the Internet? I know the only reason I put up this blog was to experiment with Wordpress.
Thats my take anyway.
From one disagreeable dork to another, here, here.
I’m glad that my ADD didn’t kick in and I read your article. Allow me to add to it.
My former chapter had done exceptionally well in the beginning. We generated our first $1,000,000 in chapter referrals within our first three months. However, most of that was between the real estate agent (who was the top agent in the area) and the mortgage broker (who was the top mortgage broker in the area). So our reports always looked like they were out of this universe. I now know why the executive director and BNI, Inc. were so demanding for our reports.
Another networking group in the area was home grown (not affiliated with BNI, Le Tip, Leads, etc.). They never kept track of referrals, let alone details about how much each referral was potentially worth. So our little BNI chapter appeared to kick major ass over them. To be honest, we WERE kicking ass but there was no realistic way to compare our BNI chapter against anyone else. Well, perhaps until now. Here’s some figures that I calculated from my experience which could be intriguing to some:
BNI Membership:
Annual Membership Dues: $380
Meal Dues ($10 per week): $520
Raffle Tickets ($5 per week): $260
Number of Members (peak): 23
Cost per Contact: $50.43
Home Grown Referral Group:
Annual Dues: $60
Meals ($8 per week): $416
Raffle Tickets ($5 per week): $260
Number of Members: 60
Cost per Contact: $12.26
The Local Chamber of Commerce:
Annual Membership Dues: $220
Monthly Luncheon ($20/month): $240
Raffle Tickets: $60
Number of Members: 780
Cost per Contact: $0.66
If you’re a small business owner, you want to get as much out of your marketing dollars and you can. As you can see, BNI is certainly not stacking up to the alternatives.
Despite the incredible figures we were generating, we were able to recruit only one person from the home grown group. It comes down to offering more for less and it took the closing of our chapter for me to see why. It cost a small fortune to be in our elite BNI chapter compared to the alternatives. Oh, and the other group is celebrating their 12th year while my chapter lasted only three years.
I’m so glad I read these posts because I thought I was nuts! My “little voice” is screaming–SCREAMING–at me!! Did this woman (Dir) really tell me I couldn’t sit down?!? (Should have worn flats that day while working the front table–for free.) So I could be EYE level with the incoming folks; uh, I’m five feet tall. Barely. Everytime she speaks, my BP goes up. We are treated like children. May as well be on a cult ranch in TX…oh, and our dues are $430 annual; $210 qtrly. Won’t be paying the upcoming!
so glad I found this blog. I thought the problems we currently have @ my Australian bni group were an isolated issue, but I see now the problem starts higher up the tree.
Thought of something else as well. I understand the Noah’s Ark concept of BNI. But that is not good for me since I need to have contact with a bunch of financial planners (wills and estates) real estate agents and mortgage people (closings) and accontants (corporate law). I am stuck with one of each who does not send me much. Thanks again for your blog! I probably dont have the guts, but I may use your article to be the Networking Education Moment (I am Education Person), the one assigned to read the BNI “gospel”
An old friend of 24 years invited me to a BNI recruitment luncheon yesterday. I had known he was in a business networking group, but hadn’t really known anything about it. I did think it was not such a good place for him, since he is a private music teacher and band leader, and it didn’t make sense for him to be networking with realtors and copy machine salespeople. But I had no idea until yesterday that it was a cult! As a former cult member (8 years in the Moonies - I left in ‘83), alarm bells started ringing for me as soon as I stepped in the building….the behavior-modification/coercion techniques I was so familiar with from the Moonies were in full effect here. By the end of the meeting, there was no doubt in my mind whatsoever that this was not only a MLM/pyramid scam, but an actual CULT. When I got home I emailed my friend and advised him to leave this group IMMEDIATELY - his wallet can’t take it! Wish him luck.
It obviously dosn’t work for everyone as somepeople cant be arsed to get out of bed to do anything and therefore would not be a “good prospect” for BNI. I get on average £15,000 per annum profit from going once a week out side of work hours to a meeting where I meet people who are like minded like me. If you were in our group and had the attitude you obviously have then you wouldn’t be invited to rejoin or even accepted to join in the first place.
Ian you and all of your wooden-toothed English compatriots will forever be in debt to America and it’s fine citizenry. For without America you would be subjugated by your German masters. So when you address me do so with an air of appreciation and respect.
On to business. Networking is a great thing. 85% of our business comes from networking. That is real networking which is trading leads with people we trust and respect.
BNI however is a steaming pile of … how do you dumbasses say it? Shite?
It is so not because of my attitude but rather because it is run like a cult and there is both constant pressure to pass referrals but then no quality control in those referrals. Which leads to a very high signal to noise ratio of fictional leads.
A real referral network operates with no pressure. Because you like and trust the people in your network sometimes you’ll just hang out with them for lunch or a beer. But when you pass a referral it’s a sure thing.
Which is the polar opposite of the 99% garbage that BNI referrals are.