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Sam. Foreign. Welcome back to BNI Power of One. Thank you for joining me again this morning. We are back with your show submissions, questions, topics submitted@bnipowerofone.com as always, if you have one, please, please go there and and we've got a list of them to keep going through. So I really appreciate everybody who continues to submit them and once we get the time, hopefully we'll, we'll be able to get through some of these even quicker and maybe do some additional podcasts instead of the the once or twice a week we're doing right now. Okay, so today's question comes in and I'm going to it doesn't ask to be left anonymous, so that's good. This is from Ross out in Melbourne, Australia. Says is this thank you for closed business? I received a referral from a member to a popular franchise outlet in town. I met with the new client, closed the business, credited the thank you for closed business to the member who passed me the referral. I then took the same product to a different outlet of the same franchise in town and sold it to them. When speaking with the second outlet, I mentioned that I was already dealing with a different franchisee in their network and I think that helped build credibility. Should I credit the second sale as thank youk for Closed Business to the member who referred me to the first franchise outlet? Even though they didn't refer me to the second outlet? I would not have had the idea in the first place or the credibility with the second franchisee if it was for a B and I connection. So great question and the answer is no, not in this specific situation. But let me explain to you how it could have been. Okay, so this is where again, it gets a little tricky. Now we've done a lot of podcasts on this, but there is a difference between what you should be tracking from your BNI membership and what the chapter should be tracking in terms of thank you for closed business and the POMS report. Like I do not believe wholeheartedly that you should be tracking thank you for closed business from previous members. As a chapter, you should be tracking that as an individual. Okay, why is that okay? As an individual, I know that I would not have made that money if I didn't make the connection in bni. So I should be tracking it as part of my ROI of my membership. As a chapter, though, we should only be tracking what the current members are doing because 1 it inflates numbers. As a group, look at all the money we're making with each other when you're not it's previous members. And two, which by the way, step back. Inflated numbers have unintended consequences, setting misguided expectations, et cetera, et cetera. It's not fair because not every member can track business from the previous members like your new members don't know them, so they'll never have that opportunity. And three is it teaches your chapter members it's okay to leave. So there are items you should track for yourself. This would be one of those. I would highly recommend you should track this and be like, as you're recognizing, like, hey, I wouldn't even have had this idea. I might not have closed this deal if it wasn't for the original B and I connection. So maybe you should track that as like, this is a value add to my B and I membership. But it's not thank you for closed business because there was no referral at all. You proactively on your own went to the second franchise unit, sold it to them wisely using the fact that you had done work with a franchisee in their network, that you did get the referral from bni, that helped absolutely build credibility and help you close that deal. That was a really smart move. But nobody referred you to the second unit, at least the way you've written this. So how could this have been? It could have been, let's say member refers you to the first franchise unit, that franchise unit refers you to the second one. Now it does go to thank you for closed business because that's a tier three referral. So that's a referral that kept referring on. That makes the original referral more valuable that you can track. Right. But the first franchise unit didn't, at least the way you wrote this, and my understanding of it didn't refer you to the second franchise. You just recognized the opportunity yourself and took advantage of it, which is awesome, but doesn't tie back. So again, importance of tracking. A lot of people get tier three referrals, tier four referrals. Those referrals keep referring on and lose sight of tracking all of that both back to a member, but even more importantly back to their ROI of their BNI membership. Which is insane because a lot of people then I'm leaving BNI because they get busy and don't realize, like where all that business came from. So you need a really good tracking system. But we also don't want to just add numbers that aren't real. Right. We don't want to inflate things because again, it has some pretty serious unattended consequences. It Messes with everything from your reviewing on what's working and what's not working. It sets again, misguided expectations. And sure, it inflates and look, look at us and maybe we'll get some recognition, but it's not real. It's the same reason why we track thank you for closed business. The way we track it. It's not just gross sales of the house, it's the commissions. If you're commission based, et cetera, is to make that number as real as possible. There's obviously gray areas, there's obviously differentiations between, you know, professions. And it's not perfectly clean in any way, but we're trying, and you should be trying to keep it as clean as possible to really understand what it means. You know, the problem with, with data is you, you put junk in, you get junk out. So really great question because again, you can see where it gets a little confusing where this, if one slightly different, if one thing changed slightly, the answer changes completely. But yeah, in this case it's not thank you for closed business to the member, but you should be going back and saying, hey, I don't think I would have gotten this without that B and I connection originally. I wouldn't have, like you said, I wouldn't even have had the idea, et cetera. You know, track that as part of your ROI of being in bni. And when you're looking at your ROI and bni, because we all have to review that annually when we come up for renewal, you should be thinking about things even beyond the closed business you got. What were the opportunities presented, even the ones that maybe didn't close? What, what are the, what value do you put to the intrinsic things like the camaraderie, the advisement you can get from your chapter, the energy and stuff that you get from your chapter, the friendships, all of those things bring value to your business. In your life, having a chapter of people you can easily refer and trust that you can refer brings value to your business. All of these things do. So when you're looking back and you're saying, you know, you got to look at everything and is this what I want to continue to invest in? Don't just look at, well, what's the bottom line number I made, yes or no? Because that number can change drastically year to year. That number, especially if you're in your first year, you know, I tell all my new members at training, your first year in BNI will be your worst year. Doesn't mean it's going to be bad. But in working theory, the longer you are with your chapter, the longer you are with your fellow members, the more they're going to produce for you. So you got to look at all of these things. This would be an example of one of those that you got to add back into that value conversation. So, Ross, really great question. Thank you so much. And again, for everybody else, go to bnipowerofone.com leave yours. I appreciate everybody who continues to do so. If you're finding value, leave a review, leave a comment. More importantly, encourage your other members in your chapter to listen. Because if you're finding value and it's helping your membership in any way, I hope it does for them, which makes them more valuable for you as well. Have a great day.