Welcome to Boostly Podcast Episode 368. This is a recap of my Facebook live where I talked about the power of networking with your local BNI organisation.
Here's the audio for this episode:
Here's the video for this episode:
Timestamp
00:00 Start
00:40 Your guest avatar
01:15 Start your networking
02:00 Start a WhatsApp group
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Visual – YouTube
Audio – Boostly Podcast
Transcript from the Episode
When you get slower, the slow season kicks in. And this is great for those of you So put your phones up if you said that your customer avatar in the winter is contractors or corporate or business. You've got to have a lot more time on your hands, because it's just going to go a bit slower.
This is a great time to start putting in the networking for next year. So for example, every town has these and they're starting to reopen a bit more but local bns, so go and join and register your local BNI, Business Network Institute. It's a worldwide thing. So you may already be dubious, or you may have stopped, you may want to refresh and go again. But every Friday morning, normally, it's like breakfast or resume or whatever they do, go and register and start to go into these ones and you know, pitch your business, go and start to make more local contacts, especially with the contractors and the corporate people are in there. Again, the people in that room may not be your next customer may not be your next guest or client. But the power of Do you know anyone is huge. And the cool thing about these BNIs is that everybody has a chance to stand up and speak there's no competition. And again, there may be over the last six months or a year, new people come into the area that you can just get to know.
Start a WhatsApp group
The second thing that you can do is you can start to build up a little local WhatsApp group. I've recommended this to so many people this year, if you haven't done so already. And if you've got a local group of hospitality owners that you're friendly with, you know, you're getting to know what whether it's for a Facebook group or whatever it may be, start up a little Facebook group, add people in, and you can start to then keep in touch with each other. So if you want to share any availability, if somebody calls up, for example, this is something that I love to do is somebody calls up and all the emails and they say, hey, so I'm looking at availability for Christmas, let's just say Christmas. Do you have availability, instead of saying no, to say, give me 10 minutes, and I'll call you back, you can jump into your WhatsApp chat. You say listen, somebody wants accommodation for Christmas, who has availability. And again, what you can do is you can go call back the person and say, Okay, I do know localhost in the area. Fantastic. We know and well, they'll be able to take your accommodation, here are their details, give them a call, we'll be able to get you booked in.
So when you're keeping the booking direct, you're keeping it in house. And what I would also encourage everybody to do is to work out a little referral program as well, whether that's 5% 2% 3%, whatever it may be. So that way, you can still bring in revenue, and the host can get the booking. So again, try a start-up like networking with other hosts. But you've got to really start to become the go-to. It is something that I talk about a lot. The reason being is when you become the go-to life just becomes so much easier. So when somebody jumps into a Facebook group and says, Do you know anybody that has accommodation, and instantly recommend you if they're talking to another business owner and they say, Listen, I'm coming to the area where it's a business or wherever it's leisure, or whatever it may be. And they say I'm struggling to find accommodation, they instantly recommend you when you become that go to life just becomes easier. And the best way to do that is to be outgoing, and start to network and make relationships with with other people. It's not what you know, it's who you know, at the end of the day, and in a quieter times and in the slower seasons, this is a great way to do it. If you're struggling, yeah, you're not competent to do it. If you want the easiest, simplest way of doing it. I've actually got a podcast episode coming out very soon. It's about creating blogs and featuring local businesses. It's one of the easiest ways to do it to start to get a bit more confident doing it, make sure you check it out.
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