Getting Referrals? ……. Check your “ASK”
By Victoria Trafton
"Any book on referrals will state the number one reason people don’t get referrals is they don’t ask! Sounds simple enough and it is true in many cases. The danger is if you just “develop the habit” of asking for referrals, as recommended by those books, you may get a lot of bad referrals or hear a lot of no’s. Either way, this approach may not motivate you to turn “asking” into a habit.
My experience tells me there are three main reasons people don’t get all the high quality referrals they want and need to build a healthy business:
- They ask at the wrong time.
- They ask the wrong people.
Check your “Ask”. If you are not getting good referrals when you ask for them, the problem may be in the way you ask. Specifically:
Are you asking at the right point in the relationship; are they motivated to refer to you?
Are you asking someone who has easy access to your ideal prospects?
Asking at the right time means you have established credibility with the referral source. They must trust you to provide high value to the people they refer to you. Are they motivated to refer to you because you have helped them achieve their goals?
Before you ask, take time to deepen the relationship with the source. Spend one-on-one time with that person. Find out how you can help them. It may take time in the beginning of the relationship development process, but the payoff is there for the life of the relationship as they continue to give you high quality referrals. A word of warning here: don’t spend time developing relationships with the wrong people and expect to get referrals!
If you want high quality referrals to your ideal prospects, make sure your source has easy access to the right kind of prospects for you. Do you share the same client profile? If you do, you can refer clients to each other. You can also refer prospects to each other. You can both spend less time prospecting if you are able to share those prospects through referrals.
The next time you find yourself thinking I am not getting enough referrals from my sources, make sure you are asking people who know the kind of prospects to refer AND they are motivated to refer their best relationships to you.
Try this. Do a little research before you attend the next networking event. Find out who (by name if possible) will be attending. Research that individual. Would they make a good referral source for you? How could you reciprocate? Would they fit into your contact sphere? Is your profession/service consistent with good referral exchange? Who would not be flattered to meet someone who had taken the time to do all that research? So, now that you have interested one referral source prospect, would you move her into the corner and put the arm on her? Not exactly. Use the Gains approach to get acquainted. Share the following information with each other and see where it takes you.
G – Goals:
Business, personal, athletics
A – Accomplishments:
Writing a magazine article, building a brick wall, raising 4 kid
I – Interests:
Travel, music, reading, collecting.
N – Networks:
College, trade associations, speakers bureau, little league, scouts or memberships.
S – Skills:
Selling, recruiting, negotiating, speaking, fundraising.
Ok – Now we’re getting somewhere! So we know what each other is about, we have shared interests. We are similar in personality and we are matching needs with sources. Surly, now we are ready to start networking? Not exactly.
Lets set some goals. If two business persons specifically inform each other what type of referral they are looking for, weekly, on the phone (not v-mail, email) and follow thru with the reciprocation, times 50 weeks a year, you can see what may well happen."