Cross Chapter Visitors PALMS Recognition for members
Where are we with allocating points to members for cross chapter visitors?
This is a huge core value moment that we are missing and members are really noticing.
I have just had another member become very disheartened after finding out that she wouldn’t be recognised for her efforts.
“I would like the points please - he will be visiting again on Wednesday and has put an application in to join - surely it doesn’t matter what chapter the person visits as long as we are inviting as a member
After all we are all one team :) and I thought we can now share people if they are locked out - but it was really pointless him visiting our chapter when I wanted him to see the other chapter?”
This is on the back of a 121 last week where a member was initially refused a renewal due to lack of participation, but appealed it and some of his evidence was based on the fact that he had invited 6 guests in 6 months to other chapters across the UK in line with his national business, luckily we retained him as a member.
Some of my very best cross chapter inviters have simply stopped because there is no recognition for it at all.
Before you mention it, the reward of the gold club just doesn’t cut it, I’m afraid.
Total sponsorship is not tracked on the Traffic Lights and PALMS and most of us as EDs have been telling members for years that it doesn’t matter if visitors join, but that they just come once, because they add so much to the room, joining is a side effect. This seems to go against all of our messaging as we are rewarding the activity that lines our pockets (joining) and not the members pockets (visiting).
In the UK, we were able to add two columns for training and BNIU hours relatively quickly, could we do the same here? VI and VO? With the Visitors Inside column being the only one that would be used to work out chapter conversion and that way not skewing the stats, but with both columns combined when working out the scores for the TLs and recognition for PALMS
This needs to be dealt with, it is that last pocket of members only thinking about their own chapter and whereas increasingly with Referrals, Tyftb and 121s they are able to look outside of the room, region and even country, as it stands, the lifeblood of our business , the cross chapter activity that will have the most impact on all of our businesses, visitor inviting, is going unrecognised.
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Official comment
@greg - thank you for your very thoughtful analysis. You are correct in that we would need to measure visitors in a different way so it did not affect things like Traffic Lights and the Power of One reports.
This is on our master list of feature requests for future discussion and consideration. We will add your request as a "vote" for prioritization. Hope this helps and have a great week!
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I agree with Greg's post. This is really important as we are missing a trick and missing out on a great resource of Global growth in membership.
Charlie RobertsonGlasgow & South Lanarkshire
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Totally agree, I’ve had 4 members comment to me in the past 2 weeks alone. It’s been vocalised on several occasions and nothing’s been done. It has to change sooner rather than later.
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agree with this ...recognition is a core value xx
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Completely agree with this. Its so important to recognise this type of cross chapter cooperation it is the life blood of BNI to get visitors to attend meetings. After all, isn't recognition a core value?
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Totally agree with this. It is something I have raised this on a number of occasions and now more than ever it is so important to be recognising our members for wider support of BNI and not just within their chapter.
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I’m totally in agreement with recognition for members who invite to chapters other than their own. Whilst I understand givers gain, this activity would increase if members are being recognised by traffic light points for cross inviting, it would be lovely to see a member from another chapter accompanying their visitor to a neighbouring chapter. This is professional & ensures the visitor feels special also giving the member credibility & visability.
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Valuable to have.
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I get asked for this every month, surely this is a no brainer for our members that want to help other chapters grow. If we believe in Givers Gain? where's the Gain.
Recognition would be great for cross chapter relations. Is there anything else we can do Jeremy? Like, will it make a difference if I get 300+ sign-up on this page?
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Possibly one of the most common requests from my members!
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Recognition is a core value, and this is the right move!
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This and other ways of being able to understand the granularity of those that visit BNI chapters is very important.
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Totally agree, if we want good behaviours and actions we should reward it in every way possible. Cross chapter builds businesses and chapters. Recognise and reward I say. All the way!
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100% agree with this. Recognition of such a fundamental contribution is important. Please implement this urgently. 👍🏾
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Great idea!
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Couldn’t agree more, unless BNI just wants to work as Silos, cross chapter visitors are as important, if not more than cross chapter referrals. Good point well made Greg 😊
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Fantastic Idea 👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼
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This would be great. I’ve introduced many a clashing visitor to another chapter with absolutely no recognition.
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This is my 2nd biggest rant - I completely agree.
(My biggest rant is members sending a TYFTB and not knowing the recipient doesn’t get told! We don’t need to know the value, just that we’ve received one)1 -
Absolutely a missed trick by BNI. I don't really see any downsides, always best to give people recognition for their effort.
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This would be a great addition to have and help members be recognised for this contribution too.
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All,
Happy Thursday to you!In response to a question by @duncan as to "How many comments do we need to move it up the priority list?" I thought I would share this with you all.
Kindly note, that while we rely heavily on user feedback and interaction in the forum which we review regularly, there isn't any kind of strict metric for moving an item up or down the priority list. The amount of voting\commentary is only one part of the equation that Stephen Schwartz, our CTO, and other members of the Global Support and management teams use when final decisions are being made for what will be put into each programming sprint.
In the case of this suggestion, this is a very popular one and it is even high on my own wish list that I campaign for regularly. There is also a high perceived value for this. However, there are also other things to consider when discussing a potential implementation of this particular feature:
1) Cross chapter visitors may have to be categorized differently all together as you mentioned, such as VI and VO. Amending the PALMS report in any way is a global change to one of the primary structures in the organization and will require extensive global buy in as well as planning and rollout from a culture standpoint as well as a programming one.
2) The PALMS report is the primary source of data for literally hundreds of internal and external reports and systems. From the Power of One to the Traffic Lights to Reporting2You systems it is used for so many things. Just adding a column would require revisiting every single report and every single screen where that field lives in the system. That will take a tremendous amount of programming and testing effort. Although, for example, you have added a custom column for tracking testimonials in the UK, note that it does not appear anywhere else in the system.
What this means really is that there is a very high cost to implementation of this supposedly simple change. Does that make it any less worthy or possible? Not at all! However, there is a limited amount of resources - monetary, human and time - and tough decisions are made every single release to make the most use of all of those things and get the biggest impact for our members and directors.
With all that said, I encourage you to continue to participate in this process, we LOVE to hear all of the ideas and excitement surrounding them.Hope this helps explain a little better!
HAPPY CONNECTING :- )
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Very valuable
Very valuable totally for this
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Hi there, this was posted by Greg over 4 years ago, is there an update on this as it's the most voted request from what I can see ?
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