There are opportunities everywhere, and as business people, we all assess and consider opportunities as they present themselves. Many people create opportunities for their business. These people are known as Entrepreneurs. It’s also important to recognise which opportunities to decline, not just which ones to run with.
Sir Richard Branson once famously said, “If somebody offers you an amazing opportunity but you are not sure you can do it, say yes – then learn how to do it later!” Many an entrepreneur has benefited well from adopting this philosophy, and I’m sure just as many have fallen flat on their face with it.
But what about the opportunities available to us that we can’t see? Or worse, we can see them, but we don’t. We all have our talents and expertise, and not everyone is adept at seeing an incredible opportunity every time. Sometimes they’re hiding or camouflaged. Perhaps they just need a bit of teasing or coaxing out. Regardless, if your radar isn’t picking up every potential opportunity, how do you then pick and choose the best ones for you from an incomplete field?
BNI Opportunities
Opportunities are a big part of what BNI is all about. We have the weekly opportunity of asking our marketing team (fellow members) for exactly the referral we want, as well as having the opportunity to be referred to people we never thought of asking for.
Are you taking advantage of every opportunity BNI opens up though? Recently our Director Consultants presented to Chapters on this exact topic. This presentation included an exercise where we were all informed on exactly who our fellow members considered their best customer to be. This gave us the opportunity to write down the names of these customers if we thought they could also be good introductions for us. The idea being that these names we write down can be used as our specific referral requests in coming weeks, in the full knowledge that someone in the room has an established relationship with this potential introduction already.
Each of us should have come away from the presentation with a list of names that could be incredibly valuable introductions, perhaps even game changers, for our business. Plus, in knowing that one of our fellow Chapter members knows these potentially great introductions, we can be reasonably confident that the chances of connecting are greatly increased (so long as our relationships within our Chapter are in good condition).
But that’s only half the job. We’ve been generously gifted this information, and it’s now up to us to utilise it.