Business Person in Training
How not to get new subscribers for your newsletter

I was a substitute at my local BNI (Business Networking International) Chapter yesterday morning. It's one of my favorite places to be on a cold, Friday morning. The coffee and the bagels are warm and so are the people. One of my favorite members, told me about a bad experience with a visitor and a newsletter.

They were actively wooing a personal trainer to be part of the group. So when a fitness person finally visited and they filled out a membership application, they thought it was pretty much a done deal. The person was friendly, they seemed to have a good network and they gave lots of healthy advice.

The leadership team started the membership process. They were optimistic until (cue the ominous music), dun dun dunnnh, the perky BNI visitor turned into The Visitor from Hell.

Soon after the personal trainer's first visit, the BNI members all started getting E-Newsletters on fitness. In fact, they got a new E-Newsletter every single week. Since they hadn't signed up for this, a few members asked around. Questions like, "Hey, did you start getting newsletters from personal trainer x?" and "what's the deal? They send me a newsletter every week?" and "Do I look fat?!" It turned into the chapter's BIG joke. Everybody was talking about the personal trainer, but not the way that was intended. It's not exactly how you want thirty well-networked business owners talking about your business.

As soon as people started talking, they figured out exactly what happened. The visitor took the business cards of all the people that they met and added everybody to their database. Not cool. In fact, this is NOT permission based marketing.

The conclusion was that the chapter not only denied their application, but they totally black listed this prospective member. So, if you want a sure fire way not to win friends and influence people, go ahead take the business cards of all the people you meet and add them to your list without asking them first. I'm sure it will pump up your list. But that's not the kind of exercise you need to do. Take advice from this business trainer - use this method to grow your list and you just might get asked not to come back.

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