BNI and Local Chamber of commerce

Shoe in

Hi All. I've been trading in a shopping centre in Dublin for one year. Business is good,but there is still a broader lack of knowledge that we are in the centre. I have done local advertising/various pieces within the centre to increase awareness-which have been moderately successful.
I'm considering joining local BNI chapter and local chamber of commerce. I know years ago the local chamber of commerce was a valuable source of business, but don't have much knowledge of BNI.
Has anyone recent experience of being a member in local chamber of commerce or BNI that they could share? Are they worthwhile joining?
Any feedback appreciated.
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nadol

BNI is a fine way of building business via referrals and recommendations.
This works by attending the same meeting every week with fellow bni memebers, there's are many advantages to it - such as developing long term relationships and professionalization of your business approach as bni have in house training etc.
It can be a pain having to keep to the scheduled of weekly meetings...it is.
Seemingly you can go along as a guest and see what you think, there is a fee for joining as well.
It all really sepends on what your business is ? Retail will not benefit as much compared to cleaner, auctioneer. etc

Shoe in

nadol wrote: »

BNI is a fine way of building business via referrals and recommendations.
This works by attending the same meeting every week with fellow bni memebers, there's are many advantages to it - such as developing long term relationships and professionalization of your business approach as bni have in house training etc.
It can be a pain having to keep to the scheduled of weekly meetings...it is.
Seemingly you can go along as a guest and see what you think, there is a fee for joining as well.
It all really sepends on what your business is ? Retail will not benefit as much compared to cleaner, auctioneer. etc

Thanks Nadol.

I am focussing on developing the business sales side of the business, and have a resource allocated to do so. Developing local contacts and relationships is what I'm aiming for. I will contact and attend as a guest.

nadol

best of luck, re chamber good idea too, but can be a bit of a talking shop.
I suppose anywhere you can get out and network is good,

Sonnenblumen

Some of these networking organisations are a bit of a con, the main money changing hands is high annual member subscriptions. From what I've seen there is plenty of interest initially but after some initial in-house cross-selling, attending compulsory weekly meetings at 7.00am or earlier begins to take it's toll. If someone was lame when it came to selling or shy well I can see what the appeal might be. Personally I think it is a joke. Networking is great but leave out the serious fee for the privilege. A fragile approach to business development which despite restricting local chapter members to 1/product or service area, still suffers high levels of churn.

Its a make me (organiser) rich scheme!

If it sounds too good, it probably is.

The local chamber would be a much more pragmatic and legitimate form of promotion and networking.

Shoe in

Sonnenblumen wrote: »

Some of these networking organisations are a bit of a con, the main money changing hands is high annual member subscriptions. From what I've seen there is plenty of interest initially but after some initial in-house cross-selling, attending compulsory weekly meetings at 7.00am or earlier begins to take it's toll. If someone was lame when it came to selling or shy well I can see what the appeal might be. Personally I think it is a joke. Networking is great but leave out the serious fee for the privilege. A fragile approach to business development which despite restricting local chapter members to 1/product or service area, still suffers high levels of churn.

Its a make me (organiser) rich scheme!

If it sounds too good, it probably is.

The local chamber would be a much more pragmatic and legitimate form of promotion and networking.

Thanks for feedback. I joined the local chamber,and will attend their 1st networking event next week.

I might attend the BNI event as a guest n make decision after that. Any idea how much the annual membership is?
Thanks,
Shoe in

Sonnenblumen

Shoe in wrote: »

Thanks for feedback. I joined the local chamber,and will attend their 1st networking event next week.

I might attend the BNI event as a guest n make decision after that. Any idea how much the annual membership is?
Thanks,
Shoe in

It may have changed and vary as times have changed and business owners are probably less flush now with spending. Not too long ago annual subs were> €750.00 + weekly breakfast charge of € 35.00!! This in stark contrast at the time to the € 500 sub for Dublin Chamber of Commerce.

Duckjob

Shoe in wrote: »

Thanks for feedback. I joined the local chamber,and will attend their 1st networking event next week.

I might attend the BNI event as a guest n make decision after that. Any idea how much the annual membership is?
Thanks,
Shoe in[/.QUOTE]

We are in BNI and local Chamber for last couple of months. Most of the referrals we've got in BNI have been utter bull****. Members are under pressure to produce referrals so I gather there's a lot of makey-uppey non-qualified-lead stuff gets passed as referrals.

Fees with BNI when we joined are €600 yearly membership plus a one-off joining fee of €126. You can also expect to pay around €40/month for hotel/room for weekly meetings.

It's easy when weighing up the value of it to just look at the membership fee, but really you've got to include the vast amounts of time (and money) you spend traveling to/from meetings, and having 1-2-1s with other members etc.

You're always told with BNI you get out of it what you put in, "givers gain", yadda, yadda, yadda. We've put a huge amount of effort into this in the last couple of months, and currently the most important metric of return - ie. converted referrals is 0.

Shoe in

Duckjob wrote: »

Shoe in wrote: »

Thanks for feedback. I joined the local chamber,and will attend their 1st networking event next week.

I might attend the BNI event as a guest n make decision after that. Any idea how much the annual membership is?
Thanks,
Shoe in[/.QUOTE]

We are in BNI and local Chamber for last couple of months. Most of the referrals we've got in BNI have been utter bull****. Members are under pressure to produce referrals so I gather there's a lot of makey-uppey non-qualified-lead stuff gets passed as referrals.

Fees with BNI when we joined are €600 yearly membership plus a one-off joining fee of €126. You can also expect to pay around €40/month for hotel/room for weekly meetings.

It's easy when weighing up the value of it to just look at the membership fee, but really you've got to include the vast amounts of time (and money) you spend traveling to/from meetings, and having 1-2-1s with other members etc.

You're always told with BNI you get out of it what you put in, "givers gain", yadda, yadda, yadda. We've put a huge amount of effort into this in the last couple of months, and currently the most important metric of return - ie. converted referrals is 0.

Thanks Duckjob.Valuable and current feedback.think ill steer clear so and invest time in local chamber. Might try host an event in the store in future...seems like an obvious way to increase awareness of our retail store.