I have heard of BNI (Business Network International), “the World’s Largest Business Networking, Referrals and Word of Mouth Marketing Organization”, before but today I attended my first meeting.

BNI is the largest business networking organization in the world. We offer members the opportunity to share ideas, contacts and most importantly, business referrals.

I was invited as guest and it was really interesting to take part. It was a highly structured meeting. Each team member got one minute for an introduction and a search (such as a person they want to get in touch with). The guests also get their one minute each after all team members have done their minutes. Then there was a ten minutes presentation by one of the team members followed by everyone reporting what they had done during the week that was BNI-related. The meeting was held over breakfast and took 1.5 hour, very effective use of time.