Effortless Networking

I got this comment recently:

“[My biggest challenge in business networking is] Motivating my referral partners to enthusiastically refer a steady stream of clients to me every single month.”

Here’s the brutal and honest truth:

1. First, it takes long time to build up a “referral engine”.

   You have to find the right people — those who have access to the kinds of leads you want.

   Then, you have to make sure these people are willing and able to send you quality leads.

   Just because they can, doesn’t mean they’re ready to do so. You have to demonstrate your credibility and earn their trust first.

2. Second, even after you build this “referral engine” there is no guarantee that the referrals will flow in regularly and consistently.

   You really have no control over this.

   Influence, yes; control, no. You can encourage people, provide incentives — but, in the end, you have no control over what they actually do.

   Think about it: how often (and how consistently) are you able to send referrals to people in your network? Why do you suppose this is?

3. Before you despair, here’s the third fact.

   The best and most effective referrals come from your satisfied customers.

   This is something over which you have a LOT of influence. So cultivate this source of referrals.

   I recently published two success stories from business owners who do just this.

   Check out Sandy’s story and Jeremy’s story to see what they do.

The good news — I think — is that you can use networking to accomplish other things while waiting the referrals to flow in. I cover this in Lesson 5.

In a nutshell: you can network your way to other business building opportunities, that work quicker.

This entry was posted on Sunday, December 2nd, 2007 at 12:00 am and is filed under Getting Results. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.