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BNI's origins go back to 1985 in Southern California where Dr Ivan R Misner was looking for a new way of generating business for his business consulting company.
Cold calling was not Ivan's favourite way of finding new clients, so he put together a group of business friends to work on building their businesses through networking and word of mouth marketing.
What was at that time known as "The Network" was born. Dr Misner quickly realised that the success of this group could be duplicated across many other groups of business professionals and he set about developing a structured system that he implemented in the Los Angeles area.
Networking Grows...
Over the following few years "The Network" grew steadily throughout many states in the US and Dr Misner became known as an authority on Business Networking and Word of Mouth Marketing, having published his best selling book; "The World's Best Known Marketing Secret" - Building business through Word of Mouth Marketing.
He re-named "The Network" to BNI (Business Network International) and the organisation began chapters in the Caribbean and Canada. The UK/European operation was formed and then was shortly followed by Australia in 1997 where there are now close to 180 chapters and still growing. Today, BNI operates across four continents with over 5,010 chapters and 105,000 members, a clear global leader in the business of Word of Mouth Referrals.
Unlike other networking groups, BNI provides its members with a structure and a plan to enable them to network in a deliberate and professional manner. As an organisation, BNI keeps track of the number of referrals passed by each chapter and encourages the members to record the dollar value of the business they receive. In 2007 BNI Members worldwide passed 5.5 million referrals worth an estimated AUST$2.75 billion.
Dr Misner has published many books including "Seven Second Marketing", "Business by Referral" (co-written with Robin Davis) "Truth or Delusion" , "It's in the Cards" (co-written with Don Morgan) , ","Masters of Networking" and "Masters of Success". In December 2007 one of his latest book releases "Masters of Sales" went to No. 1 in both the New York Times and Amazon Books within its first month. Recently, Dr Misner has co written a new book called "The 29% Solution" which contains 52 essential weekly networking strategies.
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