Scott The Card Guy.com

Today we are going to learn about increasing the size of your referral base.

Referral Action #3:
Increase the size of your network every day

1. The more people who know you, the more referrals you will receive.

2. Meet someone new every day, then acknowledge the meeting.

a. Join associations of best referrals

b. Attend Functions

c. Chamber networks

d. On line groups

#1. The more people you know, the more referrals you will receive. Not that profound, but probably one of the most important items in this series. There is a Harvard study which concludes the average person knows 2000 people by the time they are 21 years old. If you take that study and count only the people you have a relationship with on an ongoing basis, you can probably reduce that number to 200. Using real estate as an example, according to the National Association of Realtors, the average family moves every 6 years. If one-sixth of the 200 people you know move every year, that means 32 people who know will make a move this year. Did you get all of the transactions?

#2. The key is meeting and getting to know more people each day. How many people do you meet every day? It can be someone in the grocery store, at the bank, on the golf course, at the coffee shop or anywhere else you can meet and greet with people.

a. Do you belong to a referral group? There are organizations like BNI whose main purpose is to develop and provide leads to others in the group. You don’t necessarily have to join BNI. Why not start your own referral group? Meet each week and share referrals between the members. It is a time when you can get together with friends and associates, share your business experiences and also referrals.

b. I am going to give you the greatest technique you will ever use in developing your referral base. When you attend a function, whether it is business related, personal, a wedding or any other place where there are people gathered, collect business cards! Oh I hear you, “I have a thousand business cards.” Right, what did you do with them? When you collect someones business card there are two things you need to do, ask them what their birth date is and write down the day you met them. Then on their birthday, send them a nice birthday card. On the anniversary of meeting them, send them a card letting them know they are important to you. Do this one thing and eventually you will have more referral business than you can handle.

c. Most areas have Chambers of Commerce. Do you belong? Do you participate? Do you go to the monthly meetings and get involved? Do you speak to the group? Any group with which you can get involved can be a source of leads for you, if you take the steps necessary to earn the referral.

d. On line groups are fantastic if you are on line each day and respond to the people who show an interest in what you do. You can advertise your product if you wish. If you are a Realtor you can announce new listings. Keep in mind, this is one more tool in ways to increase your referral business. You have to be positive. People want to hear positive things. If you are mad at a politician, it probably is not a good idea to publicize it on Facebook. I have a friend who is a politician. He has a philosophy of being elected that seems to do pretty well. He says, “33% of the people will vote for you, 33% of the people will vote against you, it is what you do with the other 33% that matters.”

Hope you picked up at least one idea today. Tomorrow we will cover choosing a niche market.

Have a great day!

Referral – (noun) – A person recommended to someone or for something

Over the next several days, I am going to be sharing with you a proven referral building system that can get you that much closer to your goal of having 100% of your business be from referrals. Take these techniques and build your business so you can have more free time to enjoy your life.

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The goal of professional salespeople is to have 100% of their business be through referrals from past clients, professional relationships and friends.

Three keys to building your referral business:

1. Network of people who you know and what you do
a. Size of your Rolodex

2. Relationship with people who like and trust you
a. Amount of referrals is directly proportionate to the level of trust

b. “People don’t care what you know, until they know you care”

3. System for managing referrals
a. Consistent and repeatable

#1. In order to get to your goal of 100% referrals, you must build your network of people who can refer business to you. How many people do you meet each day? How many of them will remember what you do for a living? Do you make it a point to meet people each day? When you meet someone, what do you do to make sure they remember you? To become a top person in your industry, you must increase the size of your rolodex each day. At the same time, you must work that rolodex each day. Pick up the phone and call ten people you know each day. Not to ask them is they want to buy your product, but to let them know you are thinking about them. Send them a card through the mail telling them they are important to you.

#2. You must develop a relationship with people in order for them to feel comfortable with you. They must like you and trust you before they will send you business. Would you send a friend to someone just because you met them? No. You refer people to those you like and trust. These are friends who you want to maintain the friend ship. You do not want to refer them to someone who will not do a good job. To develop a good relationship, you must show people you truly care about them as people and not as sales or statistics. If you care about people, they will send you business.

#3. You must have a system in place to manage your referrals. You can not forget about them. If you want someone to care, you must care. How many birthday cards did you send out last year? What about anniversary cards? Did you send your clients a card on the anniversary of the date they purchased from you? You need a system to remind you of these dates and help you stay in contact with them.

Tomorrow we will get into specific referral marketing actions that will help increase your referral business.

Are We a World Out of Touch?

“Send me an e-mail.”  “I’ll text you an answer by COB.”  “Just leave a message on my voice mail.”  “Did you get my e-vite?”  “Meet me on line.”

Have we gotten to the point where our only form of communication is via e-mail, voicemail or chatrooms?  Where is our world headed with this lack of personal communication?  Could some of the problems we see each day be a result of lack of interaction between people?  What can we do about it?

Isn’t it amazing how you can communicate with someone around the world in the click of a button?  Isn’t it also amazing how we use the same form of communication to ask someone in the next office a simple question?  Has technology taken away personal communication?

Every day we see reports of incidents and wonder how someone could do such a terrible thing.  Do we really need to wonder?  You hear all the time, “he was a loner”, “she had no close friends” or “he kept to himself”.  Did he keep to himself, or did no one talk to him?  It is a dilemma we face with the advent of the wonderful technology we have available to us.  What can us as individuals do to better communicate with our friends, relatives or business associates?

When was the last time you picked up the phone and called a client instead of “shooting them an e-mail”?  Have you sent a thank you note to someone that did something nice for you recently?  Is it such a long walk to go to someone’s office on the next floor and get an immediate answer to your question rather than wait for a response to your e-mail?

Our communication is becoming nothing more than short phrases with abbreviations everyone is supposed to understand.  Does anyone else think LOL is highly overused?  Most of time LOL is more like ALC, a little chuckle.

How personal can an e-mail be?  How many people tear open an e-mail when they receive it?  How often does the e-mail get lost in e-mail purgatory, often referred to as spam filter?

There are many questions asked here and few answers given.  Can one person change the way our society has evolved when it comes to personal communication?  Maybe.

If all of us would make it a point to each day make a phone call to a friend or relative it would be a start.  If you need to thank someone for something they did for you, send them a card through the mail.  Surprisingly, it will get to them and they will read it.  Grab a cup of coffee and go ask your colleague a question rather than sending an e-mail.  While you’re there, ask him or her how their kids are doing.  We used to call it a conversation.

Can you change society’s ways?  In a small way, yes you can.  If each of us influences a few people by sending them a greeting card or calling them and having a conversation, eventually we may see more and more people communicating on a personal basis.  We can touch other’s lives in a way that makes them happy about themselves.  Will it solve the world’s problems?  Probably not, but it sure will make us feel better about ourselves and those around us.

Imagine you cleaned out your mailbox. You carry the load of bills, unsolicited credit card offers, advertisement magazines and carpet cleaning offers to the counter next to your trash can. You start throwing out everything except the dreaded bills and magazines you ordered through your child’s school fundraiser.

As you are going through the stack, an envelope addressed to you catches your eye. It is not a bill. You place it in a special pile. You open the envelope addressed to you with a friend’s return address. It is a greeting card telling you how much they miss seeing you and asking to get together again soon. A smile crosses your face, and you have a warm feeling. For the rest of the day, you catch yourself smiling when you think about the card. It made your day.

In the past 12 months, I have sent over 1200 individual greeting cards to friends in business and my personal life. That is 100 cards a month or a little over three a day if you include weekends. Often the card will have a picture on it of the person, their house, their children, prized car, boat or beloved pet. The cards are in my handwriting with my signature and they go through the mail.

The best part about it is I am able send these cards from my computer for as low as $0.62 per card plus postage and it takes just a few minutes to find the card, write a personal note and have it ready to be printed, stuffed in an envelope, stamped and taken to the post office for delivery. Now with a few clicks of your mouse you can send an unexpected card to someone in your life and have them thinking about you and your card for a long time.

To show you how simple it is to send a card, > Click here

I have set up a gift account for you to try this system. You will need to enter your name, address, phone number and e-mail address. The address you enter will be the return address on the cards you send. Go ahead, send a card to someone you want to know you card about them. Try the system and see how easy it is to stay in contact with the people who mean the most to you.