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Refine Your Networking Skills and Gain Referrals

12 Ways to Strengthen Referral Relationships

1. Send a thank-you card. Always a nice gesture, a handwritten thank-you card makes a great impression, especially in this age of electronic communication. Be sure to write a personalized note that mentions what you’re thanking your referral source for. SendOutCards.com and other organizations are a great resource for this.

2. Send a gift. Like a thank-you card, a gift, however small or inexpensive, creates visibility and builds credibility with your referral source. Try to find out what your referral source likes (favorite foods, hobbies, etc.), and send a gift that is personalized to her tastes.

3. Call a referral source. An occasional phone call is a good way to keep the relationship strong, if you take care to call only when it’s least likely to be an unwelcome interruption. It’s also a good idea to have a piece of news or some tidbit of information to pass along that will benefit or interest your source.

4. Offer a referral. Giving your referral source a referral is a wonderful way to build your relationship. By helping build your source’s business, you create a debt of gratitude that will encourage your source to respond in kind.

5. Display a source’s brochure. Doing a bit of sales work on behalf of a referral source can only enhance your relationship. If you have a public area for your business, offer to place your source’s materials where your clients can read them.

6. Send an article of interest. Set up a file for holding newspaper and magazine clippings that may be of interest to people you would like to be your referral sources. Sending an article, especially one that is pertinent to your source’s current business or personal circumstances, says that you are thinking about your source’s needs.

7. Arrange a one-to-one meeting. Meeting a referral source in person is an excellent opportunity to learn more about his business and interests. Prepare some questions in advance so that the conversation flows smoothly. Be ready to give an update on your business and to ask lots of questions about your source’s interests.

8. Extend an invitation. Invite a referral source to a networking event. Introducing her to other businesspeople you know gives your source an opportunity to meet others in your target market and may also provide new business opportunities.

9. Set up an activity. A recreational activity, such as a golf outing, fishing trip, concert, or play, is a great opportunity to let your referral source see a different side of you in an informal setting. The activity should be one that will give everybody time to relax, but it may also include an element of information. The one thing the people in this group will definitely have in common is you, so you’ll certainly be the focus of a good many conversations. Group activities may be social, such as a barbecue or a ball game, or they may be educational, such as a seminar or demonstration.

10. Nominate a referral source. Watch for opportunities to nominate a referral source for an award. Local service and civic organizations often present annual awards recognizing contributions to a particular cause, and local periodicals often sponsor awards contests for businesspeople. Find out what groups and interests your referral source is involved in, and check to see if there is any form of recognition associated with them.

11. Include a source in your newsletter. Even a brief mention of a referral source in your newsletter can pay dividends down the road, including the opportunity for your source to reciprocate with his newsletter.

12. Arrange a speaking engagement. Help your referral source get in front of a group that would be interested in her business or area of expertise. Local chapters of service organizations, such as Rotary and Kiwanis, are always looking for good speakers. If you belong to a group that invites people to speak, use your contacts to help your source make the rounds among various chapters.

Give some thought to which of the above techniques would work for your business. Have you incorporated some that aren’t listed above? I’d love to have you share them here.

 

 

Ten Ways to be a Better Networker

1. Be Prepared -- Savvy Networkers always have their networking tools with them at all times. The Networking tool kit includes: an ample supply of business cards, your name badge, any collateral material (flyers, brochures, etc), and your marketing message (often referred to as your elevator speech).

2. Arrive early -- Savvy Networkers arrive early and have their business cards readily available and can relax and focus on learning about the other people in the room. As an early, Savvy Networker, you can pause to calmly gather your thoughts and your intentions so that your time spent networking will be of benefit to you and your goals. Preparation goes a long way in making you appear to be someone that other people will want to get to know. People do business with people they like. And you will be judged by others, like it or not, based on their first impression of you.

3. Have a plan --  Savvy Networkers always have an idea of what the goal is for each event they attend. Know, before going in, what the outcome is that you want for yourself or for the people you meet at each event. Do you want to meet 3 people and focus on getting to know them really well? Are you looking for an introduction to a certain type of client? Are you looking for information or connections that will get you that information? When you have a plan, it is easier to stay focused and achieve your expected outcome. It also helps you to keep on track to help others in achieving their goals when you remind yourself to be generous with your own knowledge and connections. And, when you have a plan it is easier to stay on task as you meet with people.

4. Be a Giver and/or a Connector -- When you focus on "giving" and being helpful to others, the "getting" will come later ... and it will come in unexpected ways. Foremost to remember, is that no one likes a person with a "taker" mentality. When you are generous, people will notice and repsect you for your kind nature. And, people generally do business with people that they respect, trust, and like. Act like a host at every event you attend by connecting people. This can be a simple act of intruducing 2 people to each other or as elaborate as giving a testimonial about 1 person and their services to the entire group. All of these acts allow you to focus on the "other" and grows your social capital in the room.

5. Leave your troubles behind -- Put on a happy face at the door and remind yourself that it is "show time". This is your time to sparkle and shine. People will look forward to seeing you and meeting you if you are energetic, positive, and outgoing. Again, people enjoy doing business with people that they like. BE a person that others will like. Hopefully you've heard the zen expression "Be the ball" ... well, whenever you have the chance, "Be the ball of the ball!" Do not burden or bore people with your troubles or your problems. Everyone has enough of their own, and, trust me on this, they do not need or want to hear about yours.

6. Listen with focus -- When someone is speaking with you, give that person your entire focus. LISTEN. Really hear what the person is saying. Keep your eyes and ears focused and keep your self talk and thoughts focused too. The greatest gift that you can give to another person is to truly hear what that person is saying. You've seen this before and it bears repeating: you have 1 mouth and 2 ears for a reason. Listen twice as much and talk 1/2 as much and everyone you treat this way will think you are a genius!

7. Be Genuine -- Everyone knows when someone is "schmoozing" on or at them. And, no one likes being "primed" for the pump. Be genuine in your interactions with others at an event. Again, it comes back to building trust, to building "brand YOU". There is a huge difference between being INTERESTED and in trying to be INTERESTING. When you are interested in learning about someone and their business entirely for the sake of learning about the other person, you will leave a lasting impression as someone who genuinely cares. On the other hand, when you are interested only so that you can take what you learn and then use it to make yourself or your products interesting to this person ... well, my friend, you have slipped into the category of "scorched earth networking" and it is not a good place to be.

8. Do Teach/Don't Sell -- The Savvy Networker knows that the immediate sale of a product is not the goal in networking. Networking is about building relationships with people who will be happy to tell others about who you are and what you do. Word of mouth advertising is the most cost effective and powerful advertising. At every opportunity, teach others about who you are, as a person, and what it is that you do. Always present a clear emphasis on the type of client that you are looking for. In doing this, you will be building a salesforce that can reach far wider than you can on your own.

9. Follow up --  After the event, send a thank you card to each person that you had direct contact with. Mention something from your discussion in the thank you card (it helps if you jot notes on the back of each person's business card that you collect). If there is a referral that you can supply to someone you've just met, include that in the follow up note. Showing up and following up are the two most important parts of networking. Showing up, in most cases, is the easy part. The follow up is, sadly, the most neglected part of networking. Since so many people fail to follow up, you can really stand out by just doing this simple act of reaching out to remind someone of who you are and what you do ... and that you are interested in exploring a relationship.

10. Follow up some more ! -- Depending on where you look, marketing statistics state that it takes 7 to 12 impressions for a consumer to make a buying decision. It also take somewhere between 5 to 12 impressions to become "top of mind". AND those are the OLD numbers. Because of the overload of information that we are all faced with every day, the number of impressions is actually quite higher. It is more likely to take 15 - 20 impressions before you make the connections that you are looking to build! Meeting face to face is the 1st impression. An email, a phone call, another card, a lunch date ... don't stop after 1 or 2 impressions. Keep going. Savvy Networkers know that to build strong relationships they must dig deeper and make the continued effort to build ongoing relationships!
 

Six Degrees of Separation

Six degrees of separation (also referred to as the "Human Web") refers to the idea that everyone is on average approximately six steps away from any other person on Earth, so that a chain of, "a friend of a friend" statements can be made, on average, to connect any two people in six steps or fewer. It was originally set out by Frigyes Karinthy and popularized by a play written by John Guare.
Six Degrees of separation has been studied by numerous networking organizations including Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter as well as Mathematicians and Staticians most of which came to the conclusion that on average we are separated from any other person through only six other contacts. These numbers exclude children who are too young to participate and indigenous tribes that do not have contact with the outside world. If we can reach out to anyone in the world through only 5 more people imagine the sphere of influence we can have in Massachusetts if we have our current network of friends, family, and colleagues extending out as little as one or two steps from themselves for our mutual benefit. The moral here is that networking is no small thing, it is becoming the main engine of commerce, and the world is smaller than it has ever been. The sooner we realize this and help everyone around us to realize it the sooner we can work together to achieve more and strengthen our networks.
 

 

How can networking help you expand your business

"Networking" described a process whereby business owners could promote their companies to colleagues and potential clients. It is an essential skill for most business people, but especially for entrepreneurs. The strong association between the entrepreneur as a person and his or her business demands that entrepreneurs get out into the world and create and maintain business relationships.
 

5 Reasons to do social networking

  1. Word of mouth. Networking is all about building trust and relationships, and seeing how you can help others and how others can help you.
  2. One to One meeting. Have a clear understanding on what other professional business are and find out how you can help them and how they can help you.
  3. Spark the interest. Notice the tone and attitude of the group. Do the people sound supportive of one another? Does the leadership appear competent?
  4. Be visible. Hold volunteer positions in organizations. This is a great way to stay visible and give back to groups that have helped you.
  5. Referral source. Become known as a powerful resource for others. When you are known as a strong resource, people remember to turn to you for suggestions, ideas, names of other people, etc. This keeps you visible to them.

Types of networking groups

  1. Chambers of Commerce (www.uschamber.com)
  2. Industry Associations (www.ipl.org)
  3. Professional Networking Groups (www.BNI.com)
  4. Civic Organization (www.rotary.org)
  5. Electronic Networking: