BNI Networking

A few weeks ago we picked up a job to clean the windows in the house of a realor. She and the family were living in a show home and it was sold right under their feet.

Now her and her husband were building a house to sell, you know owner/realtor type home. Nothing special, really it wasn't. But since they needed a home, they were going to move in there for a while until either something else came along or if they sold this house.

Let me start off by saying that I am not impressed with these newer homes. It seems like there is one style and that it is. Like people say, Cookie Cutter homes. Especially in subdivisions. I prefer the older homes. The ones that were built, like our home, in the 50's. Granted things need to be updated here and there are things that are going to fall apart, but it doesn't look anything like the neighbor's home or the house that is around the corner. It is different.

Chuck spoke to the realtor and said that she needed her windows cleaned and if we do a good job, she would refer us to other people.

We did the job, cleaned the windows perfectly, her husband was very pleased with the job. She was pleased with it too. We gave her some brochures and business cards and she said she would definately refer us to people.

The next day we received a phone call from one of her fellow brokers. She is involved in BNI and asked us to come to the next meeting to see if we would like to join this networking. We got to the one meeting and talked about it, and decided that we would join.

To explain this in a nutshell, they only take one of each type company. One realtor, one insurance agent, one electrician, and so on. This will be good for us because we cover so much, carpets, gutters, basic lawn care, windows, general cleaning,and pressure washing. If they accept our application, like our references and we get in, then they cannot take anyone that does any of the stuff that we covered on the application. So, if someone in the group needs a something that we do, done. Or if they know of someone that needs it done, then we get first chance at it. We had our first 2 free breakfasts and got 2 referrals on the 2nd time out there.

Hopefully there will be more to come out of this. We are actually are hoping for work for the fall and winter months so that way we won't have to worry about finding outside work and this to keep the money coming in.

Either way, we are on the right track with this. Getting into groups that will be beneficial to us, and hopefully we can be beneficial to them too.