As a small business owner, how valuable would it be to belong to an organization where members treat you like family and provide you with enough qualified leads to make up more than half your business?
Two members of LeTip International Inc. say that’s exactly the way it works for them. Each is president of one of eight LeTip Tucson chapters whose members exchange bona fide business tips constantly.
 Tim Wagner and Jennifer Pillow discuss LeTip |
Tim Wagner, technical consultant at We Three Net, a computer solutions company for small businesses at 3029 N. Tecumseh Court, is president of LeTip’s Midtown Tucson Chapter while Jennifer Pillow, an American Family Insurance agent who operates the Jennifer O. Pillow Agency at 6121 E. Broadway Blvd., Suite 143, is not only president of the LeTip Tucson Tippers Chapter but also serves as a "chapter ambassador." Currently, Tucson’s eight chapters have about 125 total members – www.letip.com has chapters and information.
LeTip, which has 10,000 members in 525 chapters across the United States and Canada, describes itself as a "privately owned business-to-business referral organization." It is sort of like a franchise networking organization that has developed guidelines members have followed for over 27 years for successful business networking.
"When I started my chapter," Pillow said, "I had my own business to run so I didn’t have a lot of time to spend starting the organization. They give you everything you need, including bylaws, materials, badges and referral forms. You just have to be an ethical and dependable person."
Here’s how it works:
LeTip lists over 300 business categories in an official category list. Each category can have only one business representative in each chapter who can sell and promote that business, so potentially each chapter could have over 300 members.
Members pay an initial $365 fee to join and are expected to attend weekly meetings ($15 each). Applicants for membership must be screened by an onsite "inspector" and approved by chapter members. New members must be trained and follow all LeTip bylaws.
Members exchange business cards with all other members and always have them available in a business card folder, have a special "tip" form where they can refer a business prospect to other members, and keep exact numbers on business produced by "tips," calculating net dollars, not gross, which are reported monthly to both the local chapter and the national organization.
At each weekly meeting (7:01 a.m. to 8:31 a.m. if a breakfast meeting, 11:31 a.m. to 1:01 p.m. if a luncheon meeting), there is a "speaker" who spends about seven minutes explaining his or her business, a "showboater" who can display his products or services and sell them, and a business meeting where committees report the number of "tips" that were passed on in the previous week. All members must greet each other and each attendee offers a 30-second "commercial" about his or her business at the end of the meeting.
Wagner, who has been a member for eight years, said 62 percent of his business now comes from member tips. Pillow, a member for three and a half years, said 55 percent of her business comes from member referrals.
In the course of doing business, each member learns about the customer’s business needs. If, for example, one of Wagner’s customers is new to Tucson and setting up a new business here, he might mention business associates he knows and trusts and ask if he can have those associates call the customer. Then he sends referrals to those associates, who might be the club’s one insurance agent, residential real estate agent, dentist, physician, and other professionals who might be needed by a new resident starting a new business.
But what makes LeTip different from other networking organizations, Wagner said, is how members define "tip": a company or person who is interested in a specific service or product and is expecting a call from a LeTip member.
"It’s a non-threatening way to do business," Wagner said, adding, "Some of my chief business mentors have been LeTip members."
Pillow said belonging to LeTip gives owners of small businesses four things: 1. Dollars in your pocket; 2. Makes you a better public speaker and a better networker 3. Your chapter is like a family 4. You get ‘psychic income"—the great feeling that comes from helping others’ businesses grow.
The eight Tucson chapters are planning a Sept. 18 event open free to all guests at the Tucson Convention Center where LeTip members will have an opportunity to "showboat" their products and services. The event, "Power Position Your business," begins at 10 a.m. and will feature a noon luncheon presentation by Kim Marie Branch-Pettid, who recently purchased the LeTip international business from founder Ken Peterson, a San Diego insurance executive who founded the organization in 1978. Branch-Pettid, who lives in Mesa, recently moved the business there from San Diego.
Contact reporter Ed Egger at eegger@azbiz.com or (520) 295-4238.
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