Episode 671: Inviting Visitors is (Even) Easier / 第671集：邀請訪客更容易

 第671集：邀請訪客更容易

September 2, 2020 by Ivan Misner 1 Comment

傑里米·沃爾什（Jeremy Walsh）與Misner博士一起在本週的播客中討論BNI Connect的新功能，這些新功能使邀請訪問者參加BNI會議變得更加容易。

目前，BNI Connect和BNI Connect手機應用有四種不同的邀請方式。

現有的方法

1. 通過BNI Connect網站發送電子郵件。BNI Connect創建一個電子郵件邀請，其中包括註冊鏈接，RSVP以及您的訪客需要出席的所有信息。
2. 通過BNI Connect手機應用發送電子郵件。就像網站上的電子郵件一樣。

問題是，每個人都已經被電子郵件淹沒了，你不希望一個可能的訪客忽略你的邀請。確保你的電子郵件邀請函的個性化。

新方法

1. 通過您的BNI Connect手機應用發送短信。點擊 "訪客 "按鈕，選擇短信選項，打開手機短信應用，選擇聯繫人。 BNI Connect將在您的短信中添加註冊鏈接。
2. 通過BNI Connect移動應用程序中的其他消息傳遞應用程序。選擇“訪問者”下的“共享”選項以啟動諸如WhatsApp或微信之類的Messenger應用。 與SMS消息一樣，BNI Connect將自動創建帶有註冊鏈接的邀請。

也一定要將你的文字邀請函個性化。無論你怎麼做，都要考慮到你邀請的對象和方式。不要一下子選擇聯繫人名單上的所有人。選擇你真正認為適合分會的人。如果你最近見過他們，提醒他們你們在哪裡見面。

本集由Ivan's Inner Circle贊助。今天就成為創始會員吧

第671集完整版

Priscilla:

大家好，歡迎回到BNI官方播客。我是普里西拉·賴斯（Priscilla Rice），現在從加州伯克利的Live Oak錄音室為您播報。我今天在電話裡和大家見面的是BNI的創始人兼首席願景官，Dr. Ivan Misner 。嗨，Ivan，你今天好嗎？

Ivan:

是的，謝謝Priscilla，我很感激。 我做得很好，實際上我在加爾維斯頓（Galveston）的公寓裡待了幾個星期，以擺脫狂熱的奧斯汀（Austin）的高溫。

Priscilla:

好吧，跟我們說說我們今天有什麼打算。

Ivan:

所以今天我請到了一個上過節目的人，上過多次播客的人，Jeremy Walsh。我認為Jeremy是一個好朋友。他是BNI連接先生。他為BNI Connect做了很多了不起的事情。

他是BNI Connect和BNI大學的支持總監。他自2002年起成為BNI會員。 2004年起擔任董事 自2011年2月BNI Connect上線以來，他就一直和它在一起。哦，天哪，Jeremy，我還記得那些日子

Jeremy:

近十年了。

Ivan:

他管理著BNI Connect的支持團隊，他的團隊遍布世界各地。而支持團隊正在接近回答BNI Connect的第20萬張票據，團隊的平均響應時間仍在1小時以內。Jeremy，歡迎回到BNI播客。

Jeremy:

Dr. Misner, Ivan，在這裡總是很高興；喜歡與您和所有的聽眾分享，尤其是新的信息，喜歡這種形式，喜歡與您在這裡。所以謝謝你。

Ivan:

謝謝你。你還記得那些早期的日子嗎？

Jeremy:

現在是一個完全不同的球賽。我的意思是，我仍然讚揚你對BNI連接的願景，你知道，我們的事實，在過去的幾年裡，已經拉在一起，我們有什麼？現在有多少會員？ 200人...

Ivan:

全球約有270,000名成員。

Jeremy:

多合一系統。 您甚至可以想像十年前嗎？

Ivan:

是的，我很感激。 你知道，我確實對此抱有很大的期望。 但是我也有很多董事願意放棄他們自己的筒倉，他們自己的數據庫系統。我認為，BNI Connect是一個典型的例子，說明了合作可以發生什麼。雖然在2011年的時候很艱難，但如果沒有它，我無法想像今天這個組織的運作。而你，我的朋友，是其中很大很大的一部分，今天你有一些關於邀請的分享，我已經迫不及待想听了。

Jeremy:

太好了 是的，我們可以邀請訪客。 我的意思是，今天的故事與我第一次成為會員時的故事完全不同。 當我在2002年首次成為會員時，如果我沒記錯的話，我認為我們仍會在某些時候回傳傳真。 實際上我們只有一個電話。

Ivan:

是的，那是真的

Jeremy:

但是現在，我的意思是，毫無疑問，訪問者是分會的絕對命脈。 我們絕對需要新的人來參加，現在邀請您認識的人，您附近的人，甚至可能已經直接在您的通訊錄中的人來參加分會，現在變得更加容易。

Ivan:

所以告訴我們的會員，具體該怎麼做。

Jeremy:

實際上現在有四種方式，所以四種不同的方式，你可以在BNI Connect和BNI Connect手機應用中做到這一點。現在，多年來，我們一直使用一種方法，只需登錄BNI Connect，轉到操作菜單，就可以直接從網站發送電子郵件邀請，這看起來真的很酷。它的所有設置都是為了會議，有所有的註冊鏈接，和RSVP，以及所有你需要知道的信息。而且它是一個很好的格式，能夠從電子郵件發送。而且我們在移動應用中也已經有幾年了。

但是我不想這麼說，您知道，如今電子郵件幾乎已經不再適用。 我的意思是，我們收到的電子郵件如此之多，有時候，我們可能看不到其中的某些郵件，並說，哦，這只是垃圾郵件，最終您刪除了該郵件卻沒有去閱讀它。

因此，世界上許多人已經轉向通過電子郵件進行通信的其他方法。 我是說，Ivan，在您旅行中，世界各地，世界各地的其他人都在使用不同的方法，對嗎？

Ivan:

是啊，微信、WhatsApp，很多不同的連接方式。

Jeremy:

好了，現在我們可以邀請 從這一點。所以，這真的是一個問題，它只是像點擊兩個按鈕。所以，如果你打開你的BNI連接移動應用程序， 並在底部的角落， 你會看到一個 "遊客 "按鈕，你只需要點擊遊客按鈕。整個界面已經重新設計，以使其易於使用，一些漂亮的圖標以及所有內容。 那裡有兩個新按鈕。

一個說是短信。那麼，這意味著，你可以直接向聯繫人列表中的任何人發送短信。

因此，從字面上來看，您不必導航系統並將所有有關電子郵件的信息放入其中，而是打開了文本消息收發程序，無論您使用什麼設備（無論是Apple還是Android或其他設備）。

你點擊下去，選擇這些人，它就會給他們每個人發一條單獨的短信，說："嘿，你為什麼不來參加我的會議？"裡面有一個超鏈接，他們就可以點擊並註冊參加這個會議。

這是一種新方法。 但是還有另一種新方法。 如果您單擊“共享”按鈕，則現在有SMS和共享按鈕。 現在，您幾乎可以使用系統上可能具有的任何消息傳遞程序。

顯然，那裡最受歡迎的軟件，就像您說的那樣，微信，我們有類似WhatsApp的東西，但是即使是其他Messenger程序，它所要做的就是它們將接收相同的SMS樣式消息， 將其包裝到該程序中，並允許您將其發送出去。

所以這樣一來，不管你現在在什麼平台上交流，都可以讓你很容易地把這個邀請函傳遞出去。

Ivan:

哇。 這是相當新的。

Jeremy:

哦，就在一個多月前，也就是2020年7月底。

Ivan:

 好吧，聽著，這很棒。 現在，我想與他人接觸時要補充的一件事是，始終至關重要的是個人風格。 因此，讓它變得如此容易的缺點之一就是向人們發送垃圾郵件。 你不同意嗎？

Jeremy:

百分之百。

Ivan:

是的 因此，請有效地使用此工具，因為它是一個很棒的工具，但是您必須有效地使用它，這意味著不要覆蓋列表中的每個人，你知道，挑選和選擇， 使個人的邀請。還是要講究個人風格。

而且，您知道，我們不僅要邀請人們，還希望人們受到歡迎。 受到歡迎的最好方法是不要覺得自己只是在和其他許多人一起被當垃圾郵件。 話雖如此，我喜歡這種能力。 我認為這太棒了。 傑里米（Jeremy）和這樣做的人有沒有成功的故事？

Jeremy:

是的 因此，與此相關的另一個很棒的事情是，只要快速接觸一下，您就可以個性化這些消息。

因此，它將以一個小的模板開始，只是一點點內容，嘿，您是否想通過鏈接參加我的會議，但是，您知道，其中一部分，就您而言，是使該主題成為個人信息。

所以，您知道一些關於他們的事，或者，嘿，我真的認為您會從我在分會中遇到約翰中受益。 這是註冊的鏈接，它的作用是使註冊不只是某些包裝成現成的模板。

Ivan:

我非常同意，並說出原因。我認為這是一個很好的方法。你知道，與分會中的John會面會讓您受益，可能是有人將能夠介紹業務給你，或者你可以創建一個引薦關係。

你知道，你越是能讓他們想來的原因建立聯繫，讓他們覺得自己被邀請了，這個工具對人們來說就越強大。這將不僅僅是另一種方式的垃圾郵件的人，這將是另一種方式，有效地與人溝通。

Jeremy:

成功的故事已經開始傳來。我的意思是，我們聽到來自世界各地的人，特別是在其他國家，因為正如我之前所說，像中國和印度這樣的地方，我的意思是，他們幾乎連電子郵件都不用了。

所以他們一直在尋找這種邀請的方法，不僅僅是讓它更容易，而且幾乎讓他們能夠發出這些邀請。所以人們絕對喜歡這個新功能。

Ivan:

是的，我絕對肯定。所以我問你一個問題 你覺得你一天能收到多少封郵件，Jeremy？

Jeremy:

我個人而言在這之間，在好的一天，我可能只得到200左右。糟糕的日子，我可能會得到300或400。

Ivan:

那麼，對於看起來像批量電子郵件的事情，您要做的第一件事是什麼？

Jeremy:

我可以在手機上滑動它，將其發送到回收站。

Ivan:

您如何處理短信？

Jeremy:

我告訴你，我幾乎每次都會讀到這些內容。

Ivan:

所以我覺得短信是一個很好的方法，只要你個性化，而不是隨便給一堆人發短信，我覺得短信是一個很好的方法。當然，你說的所有的應用，都是很好的技術。Jeremy，你還有什麼想和BNI成員分享的嗎？

Jeremy:

我只是說，關於它發送方式的一件事情，它確實一次發送一條消息。因此，它確實防止了群發消息之類的陷阱。 因此，希望這將有助於人們一次將其保持個性化。

Ivan:

是的，這是一個個性化的，它是當我說垃圾郵件，你只是基本上發送通用的文本。這幾乎就像LinkedIn請求， 通用LinkedIn請求。我知道什麼時候有人把信息個性化了，要和我聯繫。所以個性化這些，我認為這是關鍵。Jeremy，在我結束之前，還有最後一件事嗎？

Jeremy:

我要講的最後一句話就是說這僅僅是邀請，在那之後還有很多事情要做。 後續行動，實際上是歡迎他們參加會議，在會議結束後感謝他們，但這至少是朝著使他們參加會議的正確方向邁出的一步。

Ivan:

我同意 聽著，我知道你在BNI大學有一個深入的系列節目。很快就會出現在那裡。你想讓我們花10秒鐘來談談你的深潛系列嗎？

Jeremy:

當然可以。如果你想了解更多關於BNI Connect的信息，我們將在8月、9月、到2020年10月進行為期10週的課程，如果你想看直播的話，否則將在BNI大學上進行，我們將在移動應用上觸及BNI Connect的會員部分的每一個小環節。

Ivan:

太棒了 因此，要直接與Jeremy或他的團隊聯繫，請訪問 support.bniconnect.com.。 那是support.bniconnect.com。 當然，傑里米（Jeremy）的公司自2002年以來就是會員，它是The Right Click，實際上就是www.therightclick.net， 傑里米（Jeremy）一直很榮幸加入您，非常感謝您今天在這裡。

Jeremy:

謝謝你邀請我。

Ivan:

交還給你, Priscilla.

Priscilla:

好的，那是了不起的。謝謝你，Jeremy和Ivan。

本播客的讚助商是Ivan的內心世界。去看看www.Ivansinnercircle.com，那裡有很多精彩的內容，Ivan在那裡收集了各種有趣的話題，供你學習和參與。

非常感謝您的收聽，我是Priscilla Rice。我們期待您下週再次加入我們的節目，參加另一集精彩的BNI官方播客。

Episode 671: Inviting Visitors is (Even) Easier

Jeremy Walsh joins Dr. Misner on the podcast this week to discuss new features in BNI Connect that make inviting visitors to your BNI meeting even easier.

There are now four distinct ways to invite visitors using BNI Connect and the BNI Connect Mobile App.

The Existing Ways

1. By email from the BNI Connect website. BNI Connect creates an email invitation that includes the registration links, the RSVP, and all the information your visitor needs to attend.
2. By email from the BNI Connect mobile app. This works just like the email from the website.

The problem is, everyone is already overwhelmed by emails, and you don’t want a possible visitor to ignore your invitation. Make sure you personalize your email invitations.

The New Ways

1. By SMS from your BNI Connect mobile app. Click the “Visitors” button and choose the SMS option to open your phone’s text messaging app and select contacts. BNI Connect will add a registration link to your text messgage.
2. By other messaging apps from the BNI Connect mobile app. Choose the “Share” option under “Visitors” to launch a messenger app like WhatsApp or WeChat. As with the SMS message, BNI Connect will automatically create an invitation with a registration link.

Be sure to personalize your text invitations, too. However you do it, be thoughtful about who you invite and how. Don’t select everyone on your contact list at once. Choose people that you really think would be a good fit for the chapter. If you met them recently, remind them where you met.

This episode is sponsored by Ivan’s Inner Circle. Become a founding member today!

Complete Transcript of Episode 671

Priscilla
Hello, everybody, and welcome back to The Official BNI Podcast. I’m Priscilla Rice and I’m coming to you from Live Oak Recording Studio in Berkeley, California. And I’m joined on the phone today by the Founder and the Chief Visionary Officer of BNI, Dr. Ivan Misner. Hello, Ivan, how are you today?

Ivan
Yeah, thanks Priscilla, I appreciate it. I’m doing great and I’m actually at my Galveston condo for a couple of weeks to get out of the heat, the crazy heat in Austin.

Priscilla
Great. Well, tell us about what we have going for today.

Ivan
So today I have somebody who’s been on the show, on the podcast, many times, Jeremy Walsh. I consider Jeremy a good friend. He is Mr. BNI Connect. He has done amazing things with BNI Connect. He’s the Director of Support for BNI Connect and BNI University. He’s been a BNI member since 2002. And a Director since 2004. He’s been with BNI Connect since it went live in February of 2011. Oh gosh Jeremy, I remember those days.

Jeremy
Almost a decade.

Ivan
He manages the Support Team for BNI Connect with team members all over the world, his team is all over the world. And the Support Team is closing in on answering their 200,000th ticket for BNI Connect, which the team still has an average response time of under one hour. Jeremy, welcome to,  welcome back to the BNI Podcast.

Jeremy
Dr. Misner, Ivan, it’s always a pleasure being here; love sharing, especially new information, with you and all of your listeners out there, and love this format and being here with you. So thank you.

Ivan
Well, thank you. And do you remember those early days?

Jeremy
It is a whole different ball game now. I mean, I still applaud you on the vision of BNI Connect and, you know, the fact that we, over the past several years, have pulled together, what do we have? How many members now? 200 and…

Ivan
About 270,000 members worldwide.

Jeremy
All in one system. Could you even imagine that 10 years ago?

Ivan
Yeah, I appreciate that. It was, you know, I did have a big vision for this. But I also had a lot of directors who were willing to let go of their own silo, their own database system. And BNI Connect is, I think, a classic example of what can happen with collaboration. And although it was a struggle back in 2011, I cannot imagine running this organization today without it. And you my friend, are a big, big part of that, and you have something to share today about inviting and I can’t wait to hear. So the floor is yours.

Jeremy
Oh, awesome. Yeah, I mean, we can invite visitors. I mean, it’s a whole different story nowadays than it was, you know, when I first became a member. I mean, when I first became a member in 2002, I think we were still sending faxes back then for certain things, if I’m not mistaken. And yeah, really all we had was a phone call.

Ivan
Yeah, that’s true.

Jeremy
But now, I mean, there’s no arguing that visitors are the absolute lifeblood of the chapter. And we absolutely need new people to be coming through and it’s even easier now to invite people that you know, people that are close to you, people that might even already be in your address book directly, to come to your chapter meeting.

Ivan
So tell our members, specifically how they can do that.

Jeremy
There’s actually four ways now, so four distinct ways that you can do that in BNI Connect and the BNI Connect mobile app. Now, one way we’ve had for a number of years, you just log into BNI Connect, you go to the operations menu, you can send an email invitation right from the website, it looks really cool. It’s all set up for the meeting, has all of the registration links, and the RSVP, and all the information you need to know about it. And it’s a great format to be able to send it from email. And we’ve also had that for a couple of years now in the mobile app.

And that’s good, but I hate to say it, but you know, emails almost becoming old school nowadays. I mean, we just, we get so many emails that, you know, sometimes we may not look at some of these emails that are coming through, and say, Oh, it’s just spam, it’s junk, and you end up deleting it without even reading it. So a lot of the world has moved on to other methods of communication over email. I mean, Ivan in your travels, I know, all over the world, other people around the world use different methods, right?

Ivan
Yeah, WeChat, WhatsApp, many different ways of connecting.

Jeremy
Well, now we can invite from that as well. So it’s really, it’s a matter of just like clicking two buttons. So if you open up your BNI Connect mobile app, and down in the bottom corner, you’ll see a “Visitors” button and you’ve just got to click that Visitors button. And this whole interface has been completely redesigned to make it so much easier to use, some nice icons and everything. And there’s two new buttons there.

One says SMS. So, what that means is that you can just send a text message to anybody in your contact list. So rather than having to navigate the system and put all the information in about the email, you literally go in, it opens up your text messaging program, whatever you use, whether your Apple or Android or whatever. You click down, select the people and it just sends them each an individual text and says, “Hey, why don’t you come to my meeting?” and has a hyperlink in there that they can then click and register for that meeting.

So that’s one new way. But there’s another new way as well. If you click the Share buttons, now there’s the SMS, and there’s also a Share button. And now you can use just about any messaging program that you might have on your system. Obviously, the most popular ones out there, just like you said, WeChat, we’ve got things like, you know, WhatsApp, but even other messenger programs, what it’ll do is they’ll take that same SMS style message, wrap it up into that program, and allow you to send it out. So that way you can, whatever platform it is that you’re communicating on nowadays, makes it really easy to get that invitation out there.

Ivan
Wow. And this is reasonably new.

Jeremy
Oh, as of just about a month or so ago, in late July, 2020.

Ivan
Yeah. Wow. Well, listen, this is great. Now, one thing I want to add on in terms of reaching out to people is that it’s always the personal touch that is critical. And so one of the downsides of having it be so easy is spamming people. Would you not agree?

Jeremy
One hundred percent.

Ivan
Yeah. So use this tool, effectively, because it’s a fantastic tool, but you’ve got to use it effectively, which means don’t carpet blanket everybody in your list, you know, pick and choose, make personal invites. It’s still about that personal touch. And, you know, we don’t just want, you know, people invited, we want people to feel welcome. And the best way to feel welcomed is to not feel like they’re just being spammed along with a lot of other people. Now, having said that, I love this ability. I think it’s fantastic. Have you had some success stories yet, Jeremy, and people doing this?

Jeremy
Yeah. So the other great thing about this, just to touch upon real quick, you can personalize these messages, by the way. So it’s gonna start you off with a little template, just a little blurb, hey, do you want to come to my meeting with the link, but, you know, part of this, right to your point, is to make that a personal message. So you know, put something about them that you know about them, or Hey, I really think that you’d benefit from meeting John in my chapter. Here’s a link to register, something to make it so that it isn’t just some canned out-of-the-box template.

Ivan
I couldn’t agree more and say why. I think that’s a great way to do it. You know, you’d benefit meeting John in the chapter who does this, which you know, might be somebody that would be able to refer business to you, or that you could create a referral relationship with. You know, the more you can make that connection as to why they want to come, and make them feel personally invited, the more powerful this tool  will be for people. It won’t be just another way to spam people, it’ll be another way to effectively communicate with people.

Jeremy
Success stories have already started coming in. I mean, we’re hearing people from around the world, especially in other countries, because as I was saying before, places like China and India, I mean, they almost don’t even use email anymore. So they’ve been looking for this method of inviting to not only just make it easier, but to almost make it possible for them to be able to send out these invitations. So people are absolutely loving this new functionality.

Ivan
Yeah, I’m absolutely certain of it. So let me ask you a question. How many emails do you think you get in a day, Jeremy?

Jeremy
Myself personally, probably between, on a good day, I might only get about 200. Rough days, I might get 300 or 400.

Ivan
Crazy. So what’s the first thing you do with something that appears to be like a bulk email?

Jeremy
I may swipe on it on my phone to send it to the recycling bin.

Ivan
What do you do with text messages?

Jeremy
I’ll tell you I read every single one of those pretty much every time.

Ivan
And so I think text messaging is a great way, as long as you personalize it, not just spam a bunch of people, I think text messaging is a great way to do it. And of course, all of the apps that you’ve talked about, are great techniques. Jeremy, anything else you want to share with the BNI members?

Jeremy
I would just say that the one thing about the way that it sends it out, it does send out the messages one at a time. So it does prevent the pitfall of, you know, that group messaging or anything like that. So hopefully that will help people to keep it personalized on a one at a time basis.

Ivan
Yeah, it’s a personalized, it’s when I’m saying spam it where you just basically send out the generic text. It’s almost like the LinkedIn request, the generic LinkedIn request.  I know when someone’s sending me the generic LinkedIn request. I know when somebody has personalized the message to connect with me. So personalize these, I think that’s key. Any last thing before I wrap up, Jeremy?

Jeremy
The only thing I would say to wrap up with my section is to say that this is just the invitation, there’s so much more that has to happen after this. The follow up, the actually welcoming them to the meeting, thanking them after the meeting, but this is at least a step in the right direction to get them towards the meeting.

Ivan
Agreed. Listen, I know you have a deep dive series coming up on BNI University. It’ll be up there soon. Do you want us to spend 10 seconds talking about your deep dive series?

Jeremy
Absolutely. If you want to know more about BNI Connect, we’re going to be doing a 10 week long course session over August, September, and into October 2020 if you want to catch it live, otherwise it’ll be up on BNI University, and we’re going to touch every last little bit of the member portion of BNI Connect on the mobile app.

Ivan
Fantastic. So for you to connect with Jeremy directly or his team, go to support.bniconnect.com. That’s support.bniconnect.com. And of course Jeremy’s company has been a member since 2002, it is The Right Click, that’s therightclick.net actually, I think I said .com. www.therightclick.net. Jeremy it’s always a pleasure having you on, thank you so much for being here today.

Jeremy
Thank you for having me.

Ivan
Over to you, Priscilla.

Priscilla
Okay, well that was terrific. Thank you, Jeremy and Ivan.

The sponsor for this podcast is Ivan’s Inner Circle. Go check out the great content available at www.Ivansinnercircle.com, where Ivan has assembled a variety of interesting topics for you to learn about and participate in.

Thank you so much for listening. This is Priscilla Rice, and we look forward to having you join us again next week for another exciting episode of The Official BNI Podcast.

https://www.bnipodcast.com/2020/09/02/episode-671-inviting-visitors-is-even-easier/