Measure and manage your networking group

Time and effort are the real cost of belonging to a business networking group.  Serious members want to see how their relationships are building capital.  How do you measure your personal value in the group?  What, exactly, is every other member contributing? 

ChapterTracker.com^TM is a handy online program that tracks the profitability of business networking groups.  Individual members see exactly what they get in return for the time and money invested in their chapter-insight that is crucial for small business owners and salespeople who depend on word-of-mouth marketing. 

“ChapterTracker^TM captures important information in a reasonably easy manner,” explains Emile Paradis, Owner of the Referral Institute in Atlanta, Georgia.  “Other methods require a lot more effort and don’t provide the reports and insights.  This tool will help members be much more effective with their relationship marketing.”

“For small organizations and individual chapters, this is a no-brainer.  They have full access to a system they could never afford to build on their own,” says Jay Rowland, CEO of the Referral Marketing Association (Refma).  “The program is very affordable…a 20-member chapter will pay only $20 per month…and its features will keep growing with time.” 

Chapters may try ChapterTracker.com FREE for two months.  Refma encourages interested chapters to begin before January 1 in order to have full data for 2009.

“Larger networking organizations will want to participate for similar reasons,” adds Rowland.  “Competitors are coming together to sponsor a robust, standardized program that will benefit the entire industry.  (The user interface can be designed to look like their existing website.) This is the best place to prove that your way of doing business really works.”  

People who manage networking groups for a living tend to focus on recruiting members, and to a lesser degree training.  This focus leads them to track only membership (rosters, dues, etc.) and scheduling (calendars, email, basic info, etc.).  Individual chapters are left to develop their own performance-tracking system.  ChapterTracker.com fills the void with a relational database that tracks a wide array of statistics.

Profitability (revenue) is the first thing a visitor to a networking group wants to see.  Visibility into a chapter’s results will quickly boost that chapter’s credibility, and that of the entire organization.  Demonstrate your profitability, such as your average revenue per referral, and those key visitors just might join…or simply feel more comfortable doing business with you.

If you are a true networker, of course, you will tell every networker you know about ChapterTracker.com.  As a networker, that’s what you do, right?

For more information, visit www.ChapterTracker.com.

Refma invites networking websites to join

Free membership will link and promote independent networking websites   

 

In every major city, a handful of business networking enthusiasts work tirelessly to maintain websites and blogs full of information relevant to local readers, independent of any specific networking organization.  The Referral Marketing Association (www.Refma.org) invites those “webmasters” to submit their sites as a resource for association members. 

           

With the recent launch of ChapterTracker.com^TM, Refma has made a commitment to help users track and grow their relationship capital.  Efforts to date have focused on the program itself.  Future efforts will tie the program into the broader networking world…including local networkers who are “in-the-know.”

           

During 2009, Refma plans to give these websites the recognition they deserve by linking to and promoting their efforts.  We will also seek to elevate the best of the best to national prominence.  Hopefully some financial benefit will follow, though we make no guarantees…and our investment will be proportional to the number of chapters that subscribe to the ChapterTracker^TM program.  

           

To join Refma, webmasters must simply email the association (jrowland@Refma.org) and include their web address, blog address, contact information, and a brief statement about the geography/market they intend to serve.   For more information, contact Jay Rowland, CEO of the Referral Marketing Association.