Truth or Delusion?: Busting Networking's Biggest Myths by Ivan Misner

Author:Ivan Misner [Misner, Ivan]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: ebook, book
Publisher: Thomas Nelson
Published: 2006-10-16T14:00:00+00:00

25. TRUTH OR DELUSION?

Your referral strategy should be customized for

each referral source and sales prospect.

TRUTH. As we discussed earlier, always remember the Platinum Rule: treat others the way they want to be treated. This rule applies to every transaction, every relationship you have—with your referral source, with your prospect with your customer, with anybody.

Be aware of the personality types you’re dealing with and their behavioral preferences. You’ve got behavioral preferences of your own, of course, but as the person seeking referrals and asking for a sale, you’ll often have to be the one to adapt. In sales, mixed teams of different personality types are often used to cover all the bases and ensure a closer match with the prospect’s temperament.

Your most interesting and productive referrals can

come from the most unexpected sources.

Think of yourself as in a partnership with your referral source. If you and your source are of different temperaments, you might be more likely to achieve success if the partner whose personality type more closely matches the prospect’s needs takes the lead in asking for an appointment. Face-to-face selling is not your strong point? Better at follow-up? Go to the first meeting with your referral partner, who’s a better salesperson.

In any case, you should find out from your source as much as possible about the prospect’s preferences before following up on the referral. If you go blind into your first face-to-face, you may find yourself misunderstanding or misconstruing the prospect’s needs, responses, and intentions.

The tools and strategies you use will vary over time as well. When you’re making your first approach to the prospect, you will use one set of skills. In a growing referral relationship, other skills and strategies will be more productive. And in a mature business relationship, still others will be most appropriate. This applies not only to the development of the relationship but to the age and maturity of your growing business as well as where you and your contacts are in the business cycle.

Even with a full book of business, each year you expect to replace one or a few obsolescent, low-quality client relationships with new, higher-potential ones. In maintaining and using your network, selection of new clients should be part of your strategy, and that strategy depends on the timing for yourself, your referral source, and each prospect.

The secret of successful referral sales—indeed, all sales—is to acquire, develop, and use all the sales tools you can, and learn to match them with the situation and the personality you’re dealing with. In referral marketing, the tools include not only your personal and professional skills but also the variety of venues that you can use. Referral masters will urge you to become involved in at least three different kinds of organizations. These usually, but not always, include a strong-contact network such as BNI®, a casual-contact network such as a chamber of commerce, and a charitable or service organization such as the Kiwanis or Rotary. If you’re networking effectively, you’ll have occasion to use most or all of these tools because your networks should be as diverse as possible.

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