Ribchester-based vehicle leasing and fleet management firm KeyFleet has joined its sixth BNI group, having supplied £1 million worth of vehicles since first joining the referral marketing organisation.
Established over 30 years, BNI has around 240,000 members in over 70 countries worldwide. It works by organising weekly networking meetings for groups of businesses. Groups, known as chapters, use their combined network of contacts to find business opportunities and referrals for one another, to a specific brief that members outline at every meeting.
With eleven chapters in Lancashire, East Lancashire was recently named the top BNI region out of 72 across the UK.
KeyFleet now has seven members of staff with active roles in six BNI chapters in Blackburn, Lancaster, Burnley, Clitheroe, Accrington and Samlesbury, several of whom also perform cross chapter roles.
KeyFleet managing director Marc Mcloughlin said: “Referral marketing is core to our marketing strategy, with the BNI givers gain philosophy adopted at board level and throughout the company.
“As the fleet management industry has gone more and more online in recent years, we took the decision to go in the other direction and refocus on the local community and a more personalised service.
“I personally was the first of us to join BNI back in 2017 and undertook the Asentiv referral marketing course which we have adopted now completely. Since then we have supplied over £1 million worth of vehicles and BNI directly accounts for around 30% of our business, with referral marketing as a whole accounting for well over half of our business.
“We absolutely follow the BNI processes and have found that is the greatest route to success. We have a team BNI meeting every week involving all seven staff involved in the six chapters to see who we can help across the multiple chapters we are involved with. There is nothing truer than the BNI ethos of Givers Gain, and we have found if you help others in business, they will help you, simple as that.”
