Is BNI Worth It? And Should I Join BNI?
A question we’ve heard over and over is.. “Is BNI Worth It?” and a close second is “Should I Join BNI?”. And both are very good questions with very easy answers. The fact is that there are a number of reasons to join, drawbacks when it comes to joining BNI and for every company the decision comes down to a handful of factors that will give you the framework to decide if you should join Business Network International or not.
What Is BNI?
BNI is the world’s largest business referral organization. They have over 299,000 Members within more than 10,900 chapters across the globe. So what is BNI really?
BNI creates local chapters made up of different types of businesses with the goal for each of the members to support all other members by generating referrals for each other. This actually works pretty well when the goal of each member is to effectively generate leads for every other member. Even more specific is that each member has Lead / Referral quotas to meet each month.
The good thing about BNI’s model is that they don’t let in competing businesses. So if you’re a print company, you’ll be the only print service provider in BNI. Same with any other business type whether you’re a lawyer, mortgage broker or marketing agency.
Should I Join BNI?
BNI isn’t for everyone and as we mentioned previously there are factors to consider to best understand if you should join BNI.
In this section we’ll list those factors and make it easy to decide whether or not BNI is the right fit for you.
Ask yourself these questions to see if BNI is worth it:
- Would my business grow if 10 to 30 other people were sending me referrals?
- Is my target audience niche or more broad where there is a large population of potential customers in my local market?
- Do I have the time to dedicate to an offsite meeting for an hour and half plus another hour for travel?
- Do I have the bandwidth to actively source and solicit referrals for other BNI members?
- Do I have the money to invest in joining a BNI group?
Let’s breakdown each one of these below
Would my business grow if 10 to 30 other people were sending me referrals?
In most cases this is dictated by the type of business you are. Many service based businesses that have a decent customer lifetime value or large single unit / purchase value are good fits here. Why? Because it doesn’t take a high volume of leads or referrals to generate a good return on investment.
So if you’re hoping the group could generate 100+ leads a month because your close rate dictates you need volume like that to close what you need, then BNI is not a good fit. But if you only need 3 to 20 good leads per month then you could likely do very well if you joined BNI.
Is my target audience niche or more broad where there is a large population of potential customers in my local market?
This relates to the lead volume question in a way. If your target audience is very niche then it will be harder for members to refer to you. But if there are more potential customers then it makes it very easy for your BNI peers to send business your way.
Most companies who target larger businesses, have exclusive national regions or are just highly specialized usually don’t make a good fit for a BNI chapter. But if you could work with any type of business then you would likely heavily benefit from joining BNI.
For example a print company is a great fit, because everyone needs something printed. You’d get a lot of referrals.
Do I have the time to dedicate to an offsite meeting for an hour and a half plus another hour for travel?
So there is a little bit of a time commitment when joining BNI. You have at a minimum 90 minutes per week meeting where your BNI chapter will meet up to conduct its formal chapter business. Plus you’ll need to factor in travel time and possibly time to catch up informally after the meeting. It may not sound like much at first, but to commit that much time each week can actually create problems for some people.
You’ll actually end up spending much more time than this because you need to actively generate referrals for your other BNI members as well as recruit people to come to the BNI meeting as your guest with the goal of either recruiting a new business / member or simply getting interesting people to come and talk or be potential referrals for other members.
So ask yourself this question… “Do I have the time to join BNI?”.
Do I have the bandwidth to actively source and solicit referrals for other BNI members?
So we mentioned that you’ll need to spend time in the last section regarding getting referrals for other members. It goes much deeper than just spending time because you need to be strategic in sourcing these referrals. You will need to “spread the love” and make sure that you aren’t concentrating your referral efforts for the same few members and that means you’ll need to identify places where you can find referral sources that would be good for other members. This could mean that you need to go to events, workshops, or simply go places you normally don’t go. Some people love this and others hate it.
If you love it, then joining BNI makes sense.
If you hate it, then joining BNI may not be the best idea.
Do you have the strategic bandwidth to pull this off?
Do I have the money to invest in joining a BNI group?
The first question is “How much does it cost to join BNI?”.
BNI members are asked to pay a $250 application fee and then pay $649 per year.
To be honest this is a very small amount of money to join a business group, especially one that is actively trying to generate leads for you.
But the truth is not all businesses have the extra cash to spend on another membership. So you still need to decide if the business you’ll generate and the time you spend being a member of BNI will be worth the investment.
The good thing is that your BNI dues usually go towards the payment of the meeting location and food at the meeting. So you get that added benefit as well.
So Is BNI Worth It?
The answer to the question “Is BNI Worth It?” is Yes. If the investment makes sense for you.
And NO if it doesn’t. We can’t really give you that answer.
But what we can share is that most local service based small businesses or community branches of larger businesses that serve the community are good fits as members of BNI.
Typical Businesses that Join BNI Are
- Print Companies
- Attorneys
- Insurance Agencies
- Party Planners
- Caterers
- Mortgage Brokers
- Commercial Lenders
- Janitorial Companies
- Financial Advisor
- HVAC
- Plumbing
- Moving / Shipping
- Construction
- Realtor
- Photographer
There is a lot to consider here and maybe you just try it out for a year to see for yourself, but the only way to know if You Should Join BNI or If BNI is Worth It is to think through the considerations we’ve shared and do the cost benefit analysis for yourself. And since we are a company specifically focused on helping Print Service Providers market themselves and grow their business then our recommendation to those printers out there is to Join.