I’m continuing the theme I started last week on making us care. The more we care about you, the more willing we are to refer you.
One of the best ways to set you apart from the pack of roaming referral seekers is your willingness to help others. Simply put, those who give will receive in return. You may not know how giving will come back to you, but it will. Trust in giving. It does work. It does make people care in a very meaningful way.
A big part of helping others is finding out what they want in return for helping you. I’ve had clients who needed to build referral relationships with multiple people in a particular profession, like accountants. They often ask me, “But if I need referrals from multiple accountants, how can I give referrals back to all of them?”
It’s a good question. And the answer might be that you don’t. Sometimes what people want is a really good person to help their clients in areas they can’t. I know a very good provider of payroll services. She needs referrals from lots of accountants to fill her pipeline. She can’t possibly give referrals back to all of them at the rate she needs to receive them. But she doesn’t have to. Why? Because most accountants can process payroll. But many of them would rather not have to. Or they are willing to do it for their smallest clients, but it takes too much time for the larger ones. So what this payroll person gives them is time and confidence. She gives time by taking care of something they can do but don’t want to. She gives confidence that their clients are being taken care of by a qualified professional. And when she can toss an occasional referral their way, that’s gravy.
A good way to find others you can help is to look at what you do. You are probably qualified and able to do many things for your clients. But do you want to do all of them? Are you effective at all of them? Are all of them equally profitable for you? Probably not. There’s probably 70-80 percent of what you do that you like and are good at. And the rest you could gladly give up if you knew someone else who could do it as well as you. Find that other person where your 20-30 percent is in their 70-80 percent. A client of yours can be a client of theirs and vice versa. Then each of you are doing what you like and letting someone else take care of what you don’t.
There are lots of motivators out there for your referral sources. Some want a good person to take care of their clients. Some want referrals in return. Some want appreciation. Some want cash. Some want something I haven’t listed. If you take the time to learn what each of your referral sources wants and make an effort to give it to them, that will make you easy to refer and easy to care about.
Tags: Networking, Referrals, Relationship building, reputation