The power of networking with your local BNI organisation

Welcome back everybody. So I've got a little treat for you today. Recently I did a little bit of training all about 10 different ways how you can get ready for the slow season. And I thought, well, what better to do than to chop these tips up and share it into the daily podcast because they are so actionable and things that you can be doing right now in today's episode is a little segment of that. Now, depending on what you're listening to.

You can go back or go forward.

To find out the episode that suits you best. But this is all me helping you about bookings in the slow season.

So make sure you've got a pen.

And paper to hand and get ready to take action.

When it gets slower, the slow season kicks in. And this is great for those of you. So put your thumbs up if you said that your customer avatar in the winter is contractors or corporate or business. Yes, Charlotte, that's fantastic that you're fully booked. Okay, brilliant. So this is where number nine really does kick in. You've got, you're going to have a lot more time on your hands because obviously it's going to get a bit slower. So this is a great time to start putting in the networking for next year. So for example, every town has these and they're starting to reopen a bit more, but local BNIs. So go and join and register at your local BNI. British Business Network Institute. It's a worldwide thing, so you may already be do this or you may have stopped, you may want to refresh and go again. But every Friday morning, normally it's like breakfast or zoom or whatever they do, go and register and start to go into these ones and you know, pitch your business, go and start to make more local contacts, especially with the contractors and the corporate people are in there. Again, the people in that room may not be your next customer, may not be your next guest or client, but. But the power of do you know anyone is huge. And the cool thing about these BNI's is that everybody gets a chance to stand up and speak. There's no competition. And again, there may be over the last six months or a year new people come into the area that you can just get to know. Second thing that you can do is you can start to build up a little local WhatsApp group. I've recommended this to so many people this year, if you haven't done so already. And if you've got a local group of hospitality owners that you're Pali or friendly with or you know, you're getting to know whether it's through a Facebook group or whatever it may be. Start up a little Facebook group, add people in, and you can start to then keep in touch with each other. So if you want to share any availability, if somebody calls up, for example, this is something that I love to do. If somebody calls up and all the emails and they say, hey, so I'm looking, availability for Christmas. Just say, christmas, do you have availability? Instead of saying no, just say, hold fire. Give me 10 minutes and I'll call you back. You can jump into your WhatsApp chat, you say, listen, somebody's wanting accommodation for Christmas. Who has availability? And again, what you can do is you can go call back the person and say, okay, I don't. But local hosts in the area, fantastic. We know them well, they'll be able to take your accommodation. Here's their details. Give them a call, we'll be able to get you booked in. So then you're keeping the booking direct, you're keeping it in house. And what I would also encourage everybody to do is to work out a little referral program as well, whether that's 5%, 2%, 3%, whatever it may be. So that way you can still bring in a revenue and the host can get the booking. So, again, try and start up like networking with other hosts with bni, but you've got to really start to become the Go to. The Go to is something that I talk about a lot. And I think the best way to describe it is remember Cheers. In Cheers, everybody knows his name. That's basically the tagline around everybody knows his name. And the reason being is when you become the Go to, life just becomes so much easier. So when somebody jumps into a Facebook group and says, do you know anybody that has accommodation? And they instantly recommend you, or if they're talking to another business owner and they say, listen, I'm coming to the area, whether it's a business or whether it's leisure or whatever it may be. And they say, I'm struggling to find accommodation. They instantly recommend you. When you become that go to, life just becomes easier. And the best way to do that is to be outgoing and start to network and make relationships with other people. It's not what you know, it's who you know. At the end of the day and in the quieter times and in the slower seasons, this is a great way to do it. If you're struggling, you're not confident to do it. If you want the easiest, simplest way of doing it, I've actually got a podcast episode coming out very soon. It's about creating blogs and focusing and featuring local businesses. It's one of the easiest ways to do it. To start to get a bit more confident doing it, make sure you check it out. If you're not already subscribed to the podcast, just type in Boostly in any podcast or YouTube or anywhere and it will come up. So let's start to do that.