Referrals are the holy grail of the business community. Every business wants them, every business person is out networking in hopes of getting referred prospects for their business. Referrals come in different shades, just like the color red. The higher you can move the quality of the referral the less time you will need to spend it the sales process. Good referrals do not come quickly or easily. People must trust you if they are going to put their reputation on the line for you. After all, when you are being referred you are in essences borrowing that persons reputation and credibility.

If you want to move the quality of the referrals you get to a higher level here are 3 steps you can begin to implement with your network.

Build a deeper relationship with the person you are networking with. People want to do business with people they know, like and trust. Developing relationships built on trust takes time. Spend time finding out about what your partners are trying to accomplish, and help them accomplish it.

1. Know exactly how you want your network to refer you, then teach them how to do it. The more time that you spend training and being trained by your referral partners the better results you will get from them and they will get from you. If you want a face to face introdution then you must train your referral partners how to set that up for you.
2. Know who you want to be connected to. If you are telling your network that you want to be connected to anyone who, or everyone is a good connection then you are dropping the ball. Your network members want to help you but you have to make it easy for them.

Getting good referrals from your network requires work on your part, it requires time invested in your network, and it requires time to train your network. The more time you invest in the development of your network the more valuable the referrals will be when you get them.

One of the first things I work with my clients on is the proper use of “Networking”, as well as the best ways to use their time and energy when they are networking. Over the last 15 years, I have watched people spend many hours networking. As a matter of fact I was one of those people. It is exactly how I got the moniker, “Queen of Networking”. One day, my mentor asked me to begin to track all my time. Time that I spent networking, time I spent answering the phone, emails, working on projects, surfing the net, and so on. This was an eye opening experience.   I found that most of the stuff I was doing was not having a positive impact on my business bottom line.

60% of all of my activities in a given week were around networking. Going to the events, following up with every single card that I collected, staying in contact via email and phone calls, screening and fielding emails and phone calls from people who met me while networking, signing up for other events, driving to events, preparing for the events and so forth and so on. You get the picture; I was a very busy lady. Busy does not equal profitable.

Once we had a clear understanding about where my time was going, it was now time to look at how much of that time was actually having a positive impact on my business bottom line. What became painfully clear is while 60% of my time was spent, adding people to my database, and networking, networking, networking, 80% of my income was coming from 10-12 people, 200 where people whom I knew, supported and referred and the other 3000 names and contacts in my database were just that – names and unfulfilled relationships.

The most important feedback that my mentor gave me was simply this statement; “Imagine what your business would look like if you spent 60% of your time nurturing the 10-12 people who are helping to grow your business.” It was a statement that would keep me up at night.

Today you will not find me at every event and when I attend a networking event, I do so very strategically. I have a goal in mind, a purpose to be fulfilled and connections to make for at least one of those 12 people who were helping me to build my business. When I network for others, my own business grows with very little effort on my part. I have the opportunity to see “Givers Gain” in action.   Before you go to your next networking event ask yourself the following questions:

• Where is most of my business coming from?
• Which organizations are producing results for my business?
• Who passes me the most business?
• What are my goals for the event?
• Who do I need to help?
• How can my networking activities help my referral sources?
• What is my networking budget in both time and money?

Men are from Mars and Women are from Venus but networking is networking right? Last week I was talking to a BNI member, a young lady, about why it was important that a BNI Chapter have women in it. I told her that women were good at building strong relationships within their network. Her retort was simply, “Well that might be true but most of my referrals come from guys, in and out of BNI.”   That got me to thinking, is there a difference?

Women by nature are nurturers, traditionally in most families they were the caretakers of the children, the organizer of the family members, and often the caretaker for the elderly members of the family. While men were the bread winners, doing business, starting and running businesses. Over the years that has changed, and the roles are more equal, men and women both raise the family, both do business, own businesses and run businesses.

Is that change reflected in business-networking?   What is your experience with networking, do the girls do it better than the guys?

Every year for the last 5 years I have set a goal to walk the Indianapolis Mini Marathon. Every year that goal went unmet. This year, it is no longer an unaccomplished goal. Saturday May 8th I walked the 13.1 miles in the largest mini marathon, with 37,000 other people.

What made this year different than the other 4 years. Simple really, I implemented the same 5 strategies that I tell my Referrals for Life students to implement when building their referral system.

1. Support - I found a group of other people who wanted to achieve the same goal that I did. Having a team of people to support you and cheer you on makes a big difference in your energy, you motivation and your desire to achieve. When you are building your business by referral, you need a strong network that will support you in your endeavors. You cannot build a network of people who will refer you all alone, it is a person to person activity.

2. Education – I learned more about participating in a marathon. I learned about shoes and why they are important, how to eat right, what kind of clothing to wear in the different kinds of weather. As business owners it is important that we always seek out more education, allowing us to stay sharp and be able to grow our businesses and ourselves. No one is born knowing how to network or how to build a strong network. Get educated, learn the art of networking and the science of referrals. The more education you get the more successful you are. Learn more to earn more.

3. Accountability – Having a system of accountability was key to my training. When you add accountability to your learning you accomplish so much more. Accountability breeds success. If you and your network are not accountable to each other you will soon lose momentum. Hold each other accountable for greater results.

4. Training – Consistent use of the educational material breeds huge amounts of success. The training allows you to practice what you have learned until you are good at it. Having the ability to practice over and over again allows you to develop the networking and referral muscles. You do not want to practice on your referral or prospects.

5. Coaching - Above all else this is the one thing that set this year apart from all other years. Having a coach to guide, educate, support, and implement accountability made the biggest difference in may ability to complete the Mini Marathon. Having him tell me when my gait was wrong or if my tempo was off was invaluable and made the difference in my wanting to do the marathon and completing the marathon. Education without coaching is entertainment. Your Coach can tell you what you are doing wrong, how to do something differently or more effectively. If you are trying to build a business by referral you need to find yourself a qualified referral trainer – coach. You will be surprised by your results.

Creating a system that generates referrals for your business is like training for a marathon, it is simple, but it is not easy!

I regularly meet with prospects and help them understand how much business they are getting from their network and what is being left behind. It is very enlightening and they are always surprised by their results. Do you know your referral percentage? No? Don’t worry, most people don’t know. So, grab a pencil and a calculator and I will help you find your “Referral Percentage” here we go,

1. List 4 people in your network who have passed you the most business by referral this year. For instance Tom, Sue, Bill, Kim.

2. Now, for each person write the number of referrals they have passed you in the last 12 months. Tom=4, Sue=12, Bill=5 and Kim=8

3. Think about each of those people, how many people do you believe each of them know? On average, we each know about 250 people. So, Tom=300, Sue=500, Bill=800 and Kim=200

4. Next step, add all of the referrals you have received together, in our example it would be 29, and then add all of the network members together. In our example, it would be 1800.

5.Last step, you will need your calculator to complete the process, 29 divided by 1800 equals .016%

What is your percentage? Are you surprised? Did you have 4 referral sources? Many of my clients are shocked and frustrated when they do this exercise. It is possible to increase this number. The very first time I did this it was .010 and I was shocked.

Here is the real question, what are you going to do to change this percentage? What steps can you take to develop a higher referral percentage? Hint: Stop adding people to your network, instead start digging deeper into your network and develop stronger strategic relationship! Start with the 4 people you listed here and if you did not have four then work on the ones you have. When you are sure that you have increased that relationship, then move on to create a new one, until your have your “Four”.

If you would like a system for generating a consistently higher percentage take a look at The Referral Institute for help.

I teach a program called Referral Dynamic, it is an amazing program, and I love the results that our participants achieve as a result of this program.  One of the topics that we have a very spirited conversation around is competitors.  You see it’s my belief that there are no competitors, just opportunities for collaboration.

Here is a note that one of our students sent us about his experience with competitors after our discussion:

“When I was taking the Referral Dynamics class Denise, our instructor, suggested that I consider working with a company whom I considered a major competitor.  I told her that would be crazy since they were paid to do what I do.  One afternoon I called an old friend of mine who happens to be this company’s top sales person.  I explained to her what I wanted, and asked her if there was any opportunity for us to work together.  To my total surprise, she went on to tell me that there was more than just an opportunity, there was in fact every reason for us to work together.  I turns out, when her company sold a program, they then turned it over to an advisor to manage.  Today, this has become a very profitable relationship for my company.  What I once considered a competitor is now one of my top referring partners.

The moral of the story, “Don’t assume that you know everything that your competitor does or how they do it.”

• Do you know who your competitors are?
• How do you compete?
• Who is their target market?
• How aer you alike?
• How are you different?
• What is their strength?
• What is their weakness?
• Do you know their price points?
• Who are their top sales people?
• Where might there be an opportunity for collaboration?

You might find that whom you thought was a competitor is truly an opportunity.  Spend the time to do the work, you may be very happy that you did.

Have you ever ask someone for a referral or introduction to one of their contacts only to be put off or not introduced at all?  Did you wonder why?  You might be surprised to know that your referral source did not have the same level of credibility as the level referral you were asking for.

I once had a referral partner who boasted a very large database.  We decided to sit down an do a little identifying out of each others database.  He had great contacts in his database, but when we began to rate the level of referrals that I was looking for against the level of relationship he had with the contact, there was a great disparity.

He quickly realized that his network was wide, but not very deep and he had some work to do to build higher levels of credibility with some of  the people in his database.  Once he had done some that work, be became a much better referral partner.  Most people spend a lot of time adding to their network instead of building relationships with their network.  They are always collecting cards and adding them to their list, but they take little time to go deep and develop strong credibility with the right people.

The reality is for most of us, we already know all the people we really need to know to accomplish the things that we want to accomplish.  Get to know the people you already have in your network.  Spend time building credibility with them before you go adding more people to your network.

When business people tell me that they do business with anybody, everybody or small businesses, I know that they have not spent time identifying who they want to work with and they are hoping that someone else will figure out for them. They are aiming at the sky hoping to hit a bird and every now and then, a flock will fly over a few get hit, and now the businessperson thinks their network is working. Reality is the flock just happens to fly over at the exact same time that the bullets fired. This is reactive and requires you to use a lot of time and energy with unpredictable results.

If you are going to build a business by referral, you have to narrow the scope so that you can identify referral sources who are working in the same target market, you will know where to spend your time networking and you will be able to collaborate with referral partners.

Look at your current clients, what do they have in common?

Survey your clients and see if you can find a common denominator? Surveymonkey is a free tool that you can use to customize a survey, go to www.surveymonkey.com design your own survey. You can get a great deal of demographics in a very short period, this can give you a snap shot of current clients and allow you to find the common thread.

Working on your target market takes time and energy; it will pay off in the end.

I have been reading and working through Jack Canfields book, “The Success Principals“.  I mentor a couple of people and we hae decided to work this book together, allowing us to hold each other accountable to actually implementing the principals in the book.  So we have had a lot of conversation about Responsibility and how responsibility shows up for each of us.

As I have worked through this first section of the book I have done a lot of thinking about all the ways that we do and do not take responsibility and how that applies to the many areas of our lives.  As a person who teaches  business owners and sales professionals systems for generating top level referred prospects for their businesses I look at how responsibility applies to that process.

In his book Jack talks about taking 100% Responsibility and giving up excuses.  So, let me ask, do you take 100% Responsibility for the results that your network produces?  Most of us will say yes, but I know taht is not ture.  I hear over and over again the following statement, “Oh I was a member of that organization or tried that program and “It” did not work for me”  Who has the responsibility in that statement?  The very moment that you use that staement, you have given up all responsibility.  Once you give up responsibility you have given up any and all opportunity to change the results.

Building your business by referrals takes a system, networking by itself is only one tool used to develop referrals, and it is your responsibility to learn to use those tools to their full potential.  There is a lot of resposibilite that comes with networking and referrals such as:

• You are responsible for making your referral partners look good.  Even if that means you walk away from the deal.
• You are responsible for giving to your network if you expect them to give to you.
• You are responsible for learning how your referral partner want to be referred
• You are responsible for learning whom they want to be referred
• You are responsible for teaching them the same about you
• You are responsible for keeping your network updated on the referrals that you have received from them
• You are responsible for tracking and rewarding your network for their help

If you network is not working and your referral partners are not referring then it is time for you to take 100% Responsibility for it and stop making excuses.

I went out into my backyard today to look at my crop of Indiana Tomatoes.  I was quite disappointed to find that they still have not ripened.  The weather has been very cool this year and that means the tomatoes ripen more slowly.    I am losing my patience because I want vine ripe tomatoes NOW!

Ironically,  I came into my office to open an email from one of our newest clients.  He and I are meeting for some one to one coaching around his DISC profile, he is a high D and likes results, NOW.   In his email he stated “Please send me the roster of current and past participants, so that I may have 2 referral partners identified by the time we meet.” Oh if it were only that easy!

Unfortunately,  the key to developing strong strategic relationships with a referral partner is patience.  Like my tomato plants there is more  involved than just sticking the plant in the ground and telling it to produce.   Your referral network must be nurtured, tended to, and supported.

Here are four keys to developing a strong referral network and growing good tomatoes

1. Identify the right kind of person to build the relationship with.  Just as choosing  the right kind of tomato plant is important,  you need to know what kind of referral relationship you want.  You can have contact sphere relationships that will yield lots of little incidental leads that can keep you very busy, kind of like the little cherry tomato plant that will give you bowls full of tomatoes quickly, or you can have a full fledged referral partnership that will yield larger, proactive,  high value referrals.  Similar to the the Big Boy tomato plant.  They take longer to grow, but well worth the wait.

2. Understand that time and consistent nurturing is required.  You can’t  just throw the plant in the ground and expect tomatoes to spring forth.  The same holds true for your referral relationships.  The relationship has to be built on a foundation of trust, understanding, collaboration and educations.

3. There has to be give and take in the process.  The tomato plant needs care, water, and plant food in return you get juicy red ripe tomatoes for all of your efforts.  When you give to your referral network they will in return give to you, if you consistently take with out giving eventually your network will wither and little or no fruit will be provided.

4. Diversity is important, this year I planted one kind of tomato, so of course I am still waiting.  If you plant a variety of tomatoes; plant some cherry tomatoes who will yield great flavor quickly,  as well as the slow growing variety that give your the bigger more flavorful fruit later in the year.  Your referral network can be built with a variety of relationships.  Those who will give you leads to follow up on while you are waiting for those that will give you the quality of referrals that will allow you to work smarter not harder.    Those little tomatoes will keep you fed until the big ones are ready!

Over time and with the right work, you can have  consistent quality referrals coming into your pipeline from a well nurtured network.  Remember, like the tomato plant, it takes time and work before you realize the fruit of your labor.  Be patient and don’t try to rush the process!