12. Inviting Visitors to a BNI Chapter

Podcast Summary: “Inviting Visitors the Right Way – Strategic Networking with Wendy Lloyd Curley”

In this insightful episode, Wendy Lloyd Curley, keynote speaker, BNI Executive Director, and the author of Stop Wasting Your Time Networking, dives deep into one of the most important (yet often misunderstood) parts of growing a strong BNI chapter: inviting visitors.

But this isn’t your typical “bring a friend” talk.

Instead, Wendy brings the BNI Passport out of the glove box and uses it as a map to guide members back to the basics of strategic networking. With her signature clarity and energy, she walks listeners through a practical and mindset-focused approach to inviting visitors that aligns with BNI values and avoids sounding like recruitment.

Key Takeaways from the Episode:

1. Understand the Strength of Your Network
   Before you invite anyone, pause and reflect. Wendy encourages members to take stock of their existing network... clients, suppliers, referral partners, and professional acquaintances. Who do you already know? Who trusts you? Who could benefit from meeting your chapter?

2. Categorize Your Network with Intention
   Using the BNI Passport framework, Wendy explains how to segment your network into meaningful categories. This allows you to pinpoint potential visitors who align with your chapter’s open seats or who could benefit from strategic introductions.

3. Extend Invitations, Not Recruitment Pitches
   Wendy is clear: “Don’t recruit. Invite.”
   The goal is not to “sign people up”... it’s to offer genuine value. By positioning your invitation as a gift of opportunity rather than an obligation, you’ll get better responses and create a more welcoming visitor experience.

4. Understand the Values of Your Prospective Visitors
   A key ingredient in strategic networking is alignment. Wendy shares tips for identifying people in your network who value long-term relationships, trust, and giving before receiving. These are the people who will resonate with the BNI philosophy—and who will elevate your chapter if they choose to join.

5. Add Value (to Them AND to the Chapter)
   Every visitor should feel like their time at your meeting was well spent—even if they’re not yet ready to join. Wendy explains how to be intentional about who you invite and how to ensure they leave the meeting with introductions, insights, or inspiration.

6. Spot What’s Missing in Your Network
   Growth isn’t just about more people; it’s about the right people. Wendy encourages chapters to be proactive and strategic in identifying which professions, industries, or types of referral relationships are underrepresented. Use this awareness to guide your invitations each week.

7. Every Week is Visitor Week
   This is not a seasonal activity. Every single BNI meeting is an opportunity to bring someone new into your network, showcase your chapter’s culture, and spark fresh referral energy. Wendy urges members to make inviting a consistent and joyful habit.

💡 Final Thought:
Inviting visitors isn’t about filling chairs. It’s about creating meaningful, mutually beneficial relationships. Wendy’s approach is grounded in authenticity, clarity, and strategy. Whether you’re a new member or a seasoned leader, this episode will leave you inspired to invite with purpose, not pressure.

Action Step: Pull out your BNI Passport. Reflect on your network. And this week, extend an invitation that feels genuine, generous, and aligned with the power of Strategic Networking.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:12

Hello, ladies and gentlemen. It is so exciting to be back with you for another episode of the Imperfect Podcast. I am really excited about this one. I gave a presentation today to one of the chapters in my region, and it was on inviting visitors. And they asked me to do this because more than half of their chapter members actually bring fewer than one visitor every six months. Fewer than one equals zero, by the way. And so they did ask me to come out and do a workshop for the group, and I was happy to oblige. And I thought about all of the different things I could prepare and present and all of the different ways I could approach it. And really what I decided was I was going to go as I always do, back to basics. And so I did that. I pulled out my Passport to Success. It's the little booklet that we give to all of the members of BI when they begin their journey of BI. And on page 16 of the current version of that, number six is about inviting. And so the topics that are covered in this mentoring session include understand your network and the difference between guests and visitors and how to invite. And so that's what we're going to do. I'm going to go through that with you guys right now, and hopefully it'll help you to invite more visitors. Now, the first thing is mindset though. So I want you to understand something about BI. When you were interviewed to become a BI member, you actually were asked if you were going to be able to bring visitors from your network to visit the chapter. And your membership committee should have let you know that there are five things that we are responsible for giving to our chapter. We're responsible for giving them our attendance, giving to the rest of the chapter our bodies, our minds, and our voices and our ears by being present in the meeting. So that's the first thing we give every week. We give our ability to get to know like and trust people by giving our time into one-to-one meetings, right? We also give our time into sharpening our skills by doing chapter education units and improving our abilities. We also give referrals to our fellow members when we find good, qualified people who need the services of somebody in our chapter. And finally, we give our chapter access to our networks. How? By bringing people into the room as visitors. These are five ways we give to our fellow members, and it is the requirement of being a member. And so it's an important skill that you learn how to do all five of those things. So, mindset-wise, what I want you to get across in your heads, and this is it, it really is a breakthrough in thinking. What you're doing when you invite a visitor who's not been to a BI before is you are giving your network exposure to your chapter. And this is tremendously important. So I just want you to think about the fact that it is not about ticking a box, it is about creating a skill set to share your network with your network. And it's really an important skill to develop because it will help you to invite people to events that you might run as a company, to information sessions that you might do, to other events that you want them to come to in order to learn more about the services that you offer. It will help you in inviting people to a sales call. All of these skills are going to help you grow your business and it feels really good. In fact, I have a little story to tell. Today, at a meeting that I went to, a gentleman stood up and mentioned that he normally does about three hours of cold calling every single week. And he gets fair results from that. Otherwise, he wouldn't keep doing it. And cold calling does work. He spends three hours doing that, and it's usually about his business. And what he shared with the group this morning is that he changed his tune a little bit this last week, and he found that it was more enjoyable and that it was more effective. Instead of inviting people to a sales call with him and his company, he invited them to come to experience the networking that they could do at his chapter. And it felt better to him to be able to do that because he was helping them expand their network. And then the benefit is he would be developing a better relationship with them by introducing them to the group. He would be getting visibility when they do come to the chapter, credibility as they see how well he performs in the chapter, and that will result in profitability when you keep up that as a practice. So I loved that story today, and I'm so happy that I heard it. All right, let's go back to our passport. The activity is number one, unpack your network. Believe it or not, you have a very, very robust network. If you've been in business for a period of time, or even if you have been in someone else's business for a period of time, you certainly have a phone, don't you? And in your phone, you've got contacts. And those contacts are the people who you could invite to come and visit your BI chapter. And those people could probably be categorized in different categories. Some of them are your friends and you will want to invite them differently. Some of them are your clients and you will want to invite them differently. Some of them are suppliers that actually help you do your business, and you'd want to invite them differently. Some of them are referral partners that aren't involved in DI and you'd want to invite them. But the main thing you need to do is know who they are. So a great first step to your inviting strategy is to get a pen and a piece of paper and start with your phone and go through the people in your phone and put them into those categories, the ones I just mentioned, and I hope I can remember what they were. Your friends, your clients, your suppliers, your referral partners that you already have. Those would be four really good categories to start with. And then there could be another category, and that could be people you've met through networking. We want to encourage you. I want to encourage you to continue networking away from BI. Go to chamber meetings, go to industry lunches, go to charity functions, go to different events that you might have in your community, in your local area, because these are all places where you will meet people who might want to go networking with you at your business meeting that you have once a week. What I like to say to these people who are out networking anyway is, have you ever been to a BI? And if they say no, say, I'd love to invite you. I regularly go to one that meets on Thursday mornings, and it'd be great for you to join me one time. There you go. They already want to network. And if they say, is it worth it? Is it worth going? You say, Absolutely, it's worth going. I've become a member, but we encourage you to come and see what it's about. That's the kind of experience that will get you practice in inviting people. And the more people you invite, the more yeses you're going to find. Okay, so the first step is to unpack your network, and the second step is to understand how you invite them. And you invite them by not recruiting them. These people are people that may or may not ever have any interest in becoming a BI member. In fact, some of them might not be business owners, they might be the CEO of some other company or the big sales director at a manufacturing plant or friends that you have that run pubs in different areas or run sporting sporting teams. Maybe BI is not going to be something they're interested in becoming a member of, but that's not why you're inviting them. So if you had to ask how to invite people, it would be by saying, would you like to meet my team, my network, the people that I meet with very regularly and that I really know, like, and trust. I'd love for you to come sometime with me so that I can introduce you to them. What a great way to invite people. What we do find is that people who are in BI tend to oversell it. They tell people too much information. Really, all people need to know is that it's a networking opportunity, that it starts at whatever time it starts, that it runs for two hours, and that if they bring a lot of business cards, all of the members are going to want to have a copy. And that is what we tell them. And then we say, listen, I'd love to send you an invite or to register you right now. And if I register you, then you'll be sent a link to make a payment and we'll go together. We'll go together. That's another great way to invite people. Number three, understand the value of guests versus prospective referral partners. Well, the difference is that you can invite a lot of guests to your chapter, and these are people who couldn't become members, either because they're already a member of another chapter or because they are in a category that is already filled in the chapter that you are in. Okay? So those people are classified as guests. Now, guests are very welcome to come to the chapters in my region, and I believe they should be very welcome in every chapter. But some chapters have different ideas about that, and you should check with yours if you're part of BI. But I do think it's really important that you consider that if the category is already filled, then the person who is the member has a great opportunity to meet your visitor and to be an ambassador for how good their BI experience has been and why they recommend BI to the visitor. Yeah? The visitor, let's just use a real estate agent as an example. If you already have a real estate agent in your chapter and you meet a real estate agent who you invite as a visitor, then what you want to do is tell the visitor, I'm really excited about introducing you to the real estate agent in our group because they love BI and they get so many good results out of it. You're going to enjoy talking to them and learning more. Yeah? See how that works? It makes the visitor already aware that there's a real estate agent in the group. And then you tell the real estate agent in the group you've invited a real estate agent because they have never visited a BI chapter, and you wanted them to meet the team. And let the real estate agent who's a member know that one of the things you want to do right away is introduce your visitor to them so that they can give a testimonial about BI. Wow. Very powerful for both the visitor who gets exposure to an incredible marketing system, and to the member who gets to be lifted up and made to have credibility that is beyond what they would have without that sort of an introduction. Now, the value of prospective referral partners is that you have the opportunity to grow your chapter and indeed to grow your business and everybody else's too. So I do think it's important that you realize that guests are valuable because they will meet all of the members and they probably are going to circle names on the trade sheet or the member list and say to themselves, wow, I might need their services or their services or their services. Guests do provide value. And visitors who are in categories that are not filled in your chapter could provide even more value. Because every member that you add to your chapter means that you are adding referral opportunities for everybody in the group. Yeah? So that's why we grow chapters. We grow chapters so that we grow your referral opportunities. And it is not linear, it is actually on a scale that is much better than that. And your your your scale is is when you when you have more people in a chapter, and we we do have stats on this. A chapter of 25 members versus a chapter of 75, sorry, of 50 members, the twin the 50 member chapter, each person has at 76% more closed business than the chapter that is only 25. And that's because of a lot of reasons. Most importantly, is that every single person that gets added to a chapter knows about 100 to 150 people who are potential referral opportunities. It's amazing. Number four, use your referral community as influencers to engage and add value. Believe it or not, when you invite someone to a BI, you're actually giving them a gift. When you invite someone to come and meet your network, you're giving them a gift. They get to meet all of the people who are in your chapter as possible suppliers, they get to share their story with those people during the open networking part of the meeting, and they get the opportunity to consider BI as a marketing tool or at least be aware of it so that they can become a good connector themselves. It's amazing. And finally, number five, understand who is missing from your referral network. And this is something that I have said very frequently in our chapters throughout my region, and I want you to think about this seriously. Your job as a member is to make sure that the right people are in the chapter for you. It's one of the few areas where I actually say you should be selfish, selfish in inviting the quality and the caliber of person that you want to be in the chapter to complete your contact sphere or to form or grow or strengthen your power team. It's so important that you don't grow your chapter by accident. You grow it through intention. And so I want to share with you that when you look at the contact sphere worksheet and you see that there are gaping holes of five or six or seven or eight categories that you know you could give referrals to, and you're positive that they have clients who would be able to want your services, this will strengthen your results in BI. And so taking control of this means filling the open categories in your chapter proactively. So I go back to the story at the very beginning of this podcast where I mentioned that one of the members in this group today decided he would do some cold calling in order to bring people in open categories into his chapter. I think that's a really powerful thing that you could do. And I know you joined BI so that you wouldn't have to do cold calling for prospects. You would rather receive referrals that are warm, qualified, and ready to buy. Of course you would. And in order to do that, strategically growing your team, the ones that will meet with you on a weekly and sometimes even a daily basis. This is going to be a powerful part of your marketing strategy. So it does make sense to invest in growing your contact sphere and strengthening your power team. That, my friends, is what I talked about today when I did my 30-minute workshop in a chapter in my region. And it was helpful for a few people in there to hear my perspective on the mindset, which I think is important, and on the simplicity with which we invite people. We don't invite them to join a chapter, we invite them to experience a networking event. Just one, not one every week, not for any other reason, but to grow their business and to grow their network. And if they get sold by the experience, if if they buy into the experience, they hear about the results that the chapter gets and they see the camaraderie and the and the community and how well it works together, and they are interested in finding out more about membership, that's on them. All you have to do is open the door and let them come in once. I also want to leave you with this. Every week is visitor week. If your chapter is working hard on a specific visitor day, I don't think that's really powerful. I do think it's powerful to invite specific categories of people to come on one day. For example, if you don't have a massage therapist in your group and you want to get a massage therapist, have a massage day and invite all the massage therapists that you have in that community. Everybody in the chapter invites massage therapists. And you have five or six of them there, you can then let all of them know all at once that your chapter has referrals for them and you are looking for one person to take that category and become the person who receives all of those referrals. Those of them that are not ready to commit to a BI chapter won't apply. And those that want those referrals will apply. And if they get qualified through the membership committee process, you will have grown your chapter. But I don't believe in visitor days generically. Every week is visitor week. There is always a reason to be at a B and I meeting, whether it's the featured speaker, or whether it is the open categories, or whether it is the fact that your person who you wanted to bring is available that day, bring them. Make it happen. And have them come to the meeting with you. That's always fun. Thank you so much for listening. I'm about to play the music on the outro, and I want to let you know something. I'm playing the guitar, the rhythm guitar, not the lead guitar. But my friend Ben Little wrote this song, and I love to share it with you. Have a great day. Thanks for listening. This has been the Imperfect Podcast.