07/06/2017
How many referrals do you receive?
I copied this extract from an article by Ivan Misner who founded BNI. The below concept of a group relates to a BNI chapter but can easily be applied to a group of account managed clients or people you network with frequently like Apex, Rotary etc.
2. Grow Your Team
Years ago I learned that there is a dramatic correlation between the size of a quality group and the number of referrals that are generated by that group. Groups under 20 do not generate as many referrals (proportionately) as do groups over 20. The math proves it. If you have a group of 16 people, that group has 256 connections (16x16). However, a group of 32 people has 1,024 connections (32x32)! In BNI, critical mass for a group begins in the 20s (the average chapter size worldwide is roughly 24)
This multiple of connections gets even more interesting as it gets larger. For example, if you double a group of 24 members to 48 members, that group goes from 576 connections to 2,304 connections (double the size – quadruple the connections)! In a network, the number of relationships (or members) leads to a number of connections that is a squared multiple of the actual membership. I call this ratio of people in a group compared to the total connections that are created the “Squared Connection Effect.” Hence, the quantity of members truly makes a difference in the total number of connections and inevitably the amount of referrals that can be generated in a group.
Sometimes this begs the question: When is a chapter too large? That’s difficult to answer; however, I can tell you that less than a fraction of 1% of our chapters have ever gone over 80 members (by the way, a group of 80 members has 6,400 connections!).
(There is evidence that a group starts to collapse when it reaches 125 members because that is as many as the human memory can hold before mixing up names with faces - see Outliers by Goleman - Peter Bender comment)
The bottom line is that the more connections you have (based on quality relationships of course), the more referrals you generate. For decades, I have seen groups that are twice the size of other groups in an area generate several times more referrals than their smaller counterparts. The math is pretty significant and consistent.
To see the full article you can go to https://www.bni.com/the-latest/blog-news/the-formula-for-success-in-bni and to check out the local BNI Hinkler Bundaberg .
How to Transform Your Membership and Your Chapter
