BNI Endeavour Chapter

it was great to see so many people in the room last week, everyone was so busy networking that they didn’t want to sit down for the meeting.

and as a result of that, we’ve seen five new applications with a few more waiting to come back

as anyone who does any business networking knows,  having a one off meeting is great, but you get the most mutual benefit from having regular meetings…

how regular you ask? well as regular as you need for both your businesses and that can be different from one company and one person to the next

if you’d like to find out more about business networking in preston, please contact us and come and meet the team

Andy certainly loves lightbulbs, well he has to, his company specialises in supplying GU10 LED downlighters to businesses and the public (those are low voltage lights to the rest of us) and he only sells two sorts at the moment, Daylight and Warm White ones

Andy has spent a long time finding the perfect product to sell and offers both a 30 day no quibble return guarantee as well as a full one year product guarantee, which is fantastic

add to that the fact that you’re going to use about 1/10th of the electricity used in a halogen and you can see why Andy’s so busy

for more information see www.lovelightbulbs.com or, if you’re a local business, come to a meeting and have a chat

Whoever said business networking doesn’t work obviously hasn’t been to one of our meetings

£61,000 of invoiced business being passed between 20 local business people in one month, isn’t bad going, lets see if we can beat it next month

Introducing our newest member, Chris Astley of Astley Electrical Systems. Chris is a top electrician who specialises in domestic work and offers 24hr emergency callout.

Why AES?

We’re Part P approved, which means we’re authorised by NICEIC to carry out domestic electrical work in line with government law passed on the 1st January 2005.

Homeowners

Homeowners… safe electrical circuits are essential both to protect you and your family, but also to prevent damage to expensive computers, TVs and other complex electrical appliances found in today’s modern homes

Landlords

To be able to demonstrate due diligence, you must ensure the electrical safety of your property. To be truly diligent, you should be certifying the property on every tenant change.

A photo to mark the group’s 7,000th referral, when Martin Newton of City Investment introduced some new business to Norman Gibson of Legacy Estate Planning.

A referral isn’t just a lead, its a warmed up introduction – someone expecting your call and interested in doing business. We all know word-of-mouth is the best sort of business to get – BNI takes that a step further with a system refined over 25 years to ensure you get repeatable, regular new business.

Come and meet us on 19 October if you’re interested in seeing what its all about.

We just had another successful Visitors Day event at Shaw Hill Golf Club this week for companies and owners interested in developing more word-of-mouth business.

One presentation we’ve done to demonstrate how its not about selling to the people in the room but reaching out to who they know – and they know thousands of people – is a Mind Map (don’t worry no Vulcans involved)

We took a closer look at someone’s business and who they’re dealing with, in this case it was a Health & Safety company working with clients such as Balfour Beatty, Carillion, DOC Electrics, Emcor, Manchester University and Wellacre.

We then match those industry sectors of Construction, Engineering and Education with our own clients to demonstrate how we can help each other develop business through contact spheres. The companies mentioned, that we work with, were Redrow, Pochin, United Utilities, Enterprise, Capita, Heyrod, Bloodhound, Bullen, Millington, Burnley College, Wigan & Leigh.

Come along and see us if you’d be interested in an introduction to that sort of new business.

One of the group’s busiest members is Michael Sewell who is a leading Lancashire wedding photographer.

He will photograph all aspects of your day in an unobtrusive style, capturing the spontaneity, emotion and excitement of your wedding. The aim is to create the perfect story of the day; a mixture of photojournalism, magazine style (posed) images of bride and groom and detail shots are necessary.

In particular he specialises in low light photography, which enables him to capture the colour and emotion during the evening reception. Make sure you look at the low light pictures on his website, www.weddingsbymichael.co.uk to really appreciate what he can achieve when the lights go down.

All albums are bespoke and contain over 200 surface mounted images, narrating the story of your day from start to finish, available in a choice of albums including Coffee Table Books and hand crafted Italian albums.

Michael even runs courses for other photographers – he’s that good!

Time for an update on the white cards we first mentioned last year under Thank You for the Business

We’ve just had a couple of good weeks with new business invoiced by the members of the group. Last week alone there was over £10,000 of new business done from introductions by the group. This week we hit an average of around £500 per attendee – worth getting up early for.

We’ve currently got vacancies for a printer, solicitor, mortgage broker, signwriter and several other professions. Feel free to get in touch and come and see what its all about – you may even walk away with a new dream client.

Introducing our newest member, Sam Mcloughlin from Creative Republic – a top design company based in Accrington.

Creative Republic produces design work for a wide range of companies from Ted Baker to Ted the baker.

No matter what size your company is we can all benefit from good quality design.

None of this “I designed this myself” or “I got my logo and cards free off the internet” it’s not good enough! I’m ranting now but the simple fact to remember is “a little goes a long way” in reality all design is free that’s right free, every penny you spend with CR, you will get back with interest with your new customers!

If your design requirement is hard to categorize please get in touch, we are always looking for new challenges.

We’ve received a number of testimonials about how well BNI has worked for people that have attended the meeting. Here are a few quotes to give you an idea of the sort of feedback we receive …

“having followed the BNI philosophy it has become the single most productive use of my sales time, more than any of the other marketing tools I have ever used. It has lead to many excellent referrals and new clients” – Norman Gibson, Legacy Estate Planning

“most people feel that if they didn’t do BNI, what else would they do that potentially could provide them with the same sort of opportunities for new business as BNI” – Roger Bessent, Gleeson Bessent chartered accountants

“the referrals I have received have generated in excess of £150,000 worth of business. In a lot of cases those are for ongoing business which will continue generating revenue in the future” – Mike Gelder, Redleg IT Support