Now is that a challenging headline for today’s meeting of BNI Casterbridge in Dorchester? It comes from the fantastic education slot provided by Jon Parvin of Essential Home & Gardens who told us quite clearly that our customers buy benefits and not features.  He started out asking ‘Do we know what our customers buy from us?’ and went on to explain the differences between buying features and buying benefits.One very clear suggestion was that to find out more about what our customers buy (and also why they don’t) is to simply ask them ‘what did we do that encouraged you to buy your  ….. from us today’ or a we’d love to know why you decided not to buy our product or services.

He also went to suggest that this has very clear implications for member 60 seconds as well encouraging us to be more careful with our precious education slots by using the formula that we say ‘who we are, what we do and what value we add to our customers’.

As a direct result of Jon’s education slot a few members actively changed their one minute presentations to take advantage of his suggestions and encouragement – that’s the mark of a great piece of education, so thanks Jon.

We were also delighted to welcome a brand new member to the Chapter too – Richard Lock.  Hopefully we’ll be seeing the profile for his business – D2 Integrated – on the website very soon.

Our ten minute member education slot was filled by Ben Howells of Sands and Associates. Ben is the Chapter mortgage advisor and was very clear about the clients he would like to work with as well as making it clear that he had no fee to the client; the fact that he can source across the entire mortgage market because he is independent and that his goal is to help people get into their dream home.

Finally, with 5 visitors, 40 referrals passed and thank you for the business this week totalling £13,820 it was a fantastic meeting and I’m very much looking forward to next week too.