Looking forward to International Networking week and visitors day at BNI Casterbridge in Dorchester

It’s International Networking week next week and in addition to our ‘Big Breakfast’ which is taking place in Bournemouth we are having a Visitors Day at BNI Casterbridge Chapter in Dorchester on the 9th February.  As a result our education slot presented by Linda Parkinson-Hardman of Internet Mentor, this week focused on some hints and tips that can help members to ask visitors to come along. Continue reading

Sex Sells at BNI in Dorchester Casterbridge at the beginning of January 2012

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. Continue reading

5 top tips to improve your BNI 60 second presentation

The second meeting of December at the Dorchester Casterbridge Chapter of BNI saw many of the members sharing their 60 second presentations in poetry and song.  I am including those I have been given within poetry corner and I can also announce that the winner of the challenge was Martin Goodall from Printing.com who gave us his 60 second presentation to the tune of ‘My favourite things’ – a firm Julie Andrews favourite from The Sound of Music. Continue reading

First of December at Casterbridge Dorchester Chapter of BNI

It was the first of December yesterday and we were rocking, not to the sound of Christmas tunes as you might have expected but to the numbers in the room.  As  brand new Chapter we set ourselves the goal of reaching 25 members by the end of 2011 and we achieved that last month (November), today we had no less than eight extra people in the room, two of whom, we are pleased to announce are becoming members very shortly. Continue reading

Understanding BNI – beyond the room and weekly meeting

The Dorchester Casterbridge chapter of BNI were treated to yet another useful education session from Lee Bishop at Newburgh Networks who reminded us that BNI is not just something that happens for us on a Thursday lunchtime in Dorchester, but is part of a much larger network which connects all the members to other chapters in our local area. Lee has been visiting other chapters in Dorset and as a result has forged some excellent working relationships with other IT specialists as a result of having complimentary skills, expertise and experience.  Continue reading

Putting the ‘fun’ into the fundamentals at BNI Casterbridge

I have to thank Charlie Lawson for the title of this week’s blog post – he used it in a reply to me on Twitter when I was sending out last week’s update and I have to say it hit the nail on the head.  This week’s meeting was just as good as last, we had four visitors (one of whom was a second time returnee), three of them put in application forms and everyone of them passed at least one referral to a member of the Chapter – that’s not bad, especially as three had never been to a BNI meeting before … clearly we are doing something right. Continue reading

Fun at the Casterbridge Dorchester Chapter Meeting on 3rd November 2011

Well, what an interesting lunchtime meeting we had yesterday at the BNI Casterbridge Chapter in Dorchester. Fun was had at our Chapter Director, Linda’s expense because she kept forgetting that we had our Assistant Director, Lawrence Dagnell, in the room.  He was missed off the agenda no less than three times and by the end of the meeting, it had become a bit of an in-joke.  Continue reading