Talk:Business Network International
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BNI and small business: I was recently invited to a BNI meeting, although I found it very informative I found out that my business reallly did'nt fit in, although they wanted me to sign the dotted line and hand over $450.00 for the one year fee. I felt there were too many obligations for the average small business owner: you must be at every meeting every week (you are allowed to miss 2 in a 60 day period), If you cannot make the meetings, you must send someone in your place, you are obligated to bring guest, you are obligated to bring referrals every week, the meetings are 90 mins. long and you are obligated to stay the 90 mins. When you own a Restaurant like myself, this is like working a second job, worse part is: you're paying for it. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Wheatonview (talk • contribs) 10:29, 27 March 2008 (UTC)
[edit] BNI is a MLM ?
There's been some edits and reverting of edits over whether BNI is a multi level marketing company. Anyone have any information on this, which we can reference in the article to substantiate / dispute this? --Oscarthecat 20:58, 24 October 2007 (UTC)
- Not yet. User:Zscout370 (Return Fire) 21:30, 24 October 2007 (UTC)
- BNI is not a direct marketing organisation and therefore can't be an MLM Brookie :) - he's in the building somewhere! (Whisper...) 04:44, 25 October 2007 (UTC)
- Directors of local chapters are franchise owners, and thus earn money based on the number of memberships in their area. Members who invite others do not get paid any type of commission - the reward, in theory, is the increase in the number of referrals. Misner has written several books on BNI, but I hurt my back and won't be looking for any of them today. --otherlleft 02:36, 5 November 2007 (UTC)
- BNI is not a direct marketing organisation and therefore can't be an MLM Brookie :) - he's in the building somewhere! (Whisper...) 04:44, 25 October 2007 (UTC)
If you look at their websites you can see the structure, plus if you can get hold of their text books or marketing manuals.
It is not explicitly cited online but you can see e.g. from the UK website that there are several levels of "Director". It's an open secret among the membership how it works:
US owned (by Ivan Misner) he franchises licenses to countries. They recruit "executive Directors" who work solely on comission and start a club in a sub-region. They then recruit "assistant directors" who set up more clubs, the exec director takes a cut on each of these.
So the structure is from bottom up:
"members" - they pay a fee which varies by country to be members
"assitant directors" - they're paid a fee out of this membership money
"executive directors" - they take a fee on all the members that join in their down line
"franchisee" takes a fee on everything in their downline
"BNI" - takes a cut on every member
It doesn't propogate extra levels like a lot of pyrmaid or MLM companies, thats pretty much that, but what people need to realise is that other than that it is run very much like Amway. In fact so much so though that Ivan Misner himself tells a story about people thinking he was selling Amway to them when he first tried to get people to run Chapters for him. this is in the book "Givers Gain, The BNI Story." which was written by Misner and given to all members a few years ago.
The similarity to MLM extends to things like training, and they really do instill a recruitment culture into people which is at the core of the organisation. I was a member for a very long time. I liked it. I got business from it. It worked. But people should be able to read that it is based on these MLM principles and it is very much run for the benefit of people in the upline.
There is a dual nature to it - a good club will generate the members business, but that is essentially the benefit that BNI is selling to you, the members are it's product, and they are in the business of getting more of them.
Disappointing that I found references to all this and someone trampled my edits regardless due to a "conflict of interest" whereas I suspect the real conflict is that BNI doesn't want to be thought of as MLM. I don't know why when their system works they shouldn't actually be affraid of it. I even went to great pains to indicate that it works as long as you buy into it and that is true. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.36.137.19 (talk) 19:42, 15 March 2008 (UTC)
