Yesterday I wrote about the various pools prospects can fall into. Today I want to discuss how effective networking can get you introduced to the roughly 60% of people who need you but aren’t actively shopping for the solution you provide.

The short answers are clear triggers and strategic partners.

Triggers

What are things that your ideal clients do or say that other people could pick up on? We often experience pain points well in advance of deciding to take action. What are those signs? Let me illustrate with a couple of examples.

Before someone makes the decision to buy a house, they might say things like:

Rents have gotten so high
We’re tripping over each other in the house
Where are we going to put the new baby?

A business owner in need of some organizational help might say things like:

I can’t find my desk!
Where did I put those proposals and quotes?
Email has taken over my life

When people say these things, they are experiencing pain, but they are probably still at the point of suffering without looking for a solution. If you can train your network to listen or look for these signs, they can refer you at just the right point.

Strategic Partners

These are people in complementary but non-competing businesses. They are marketing to and servicing exactly the same clients as you. If they are good, they are probably already having conversations with their clients about pain points. For example, as a coach, I sometimes uncover a need for counseling. Some of my clients weren’t in the market for a therapist, but I was able to point them in the right direction. I was able to match the person to the right therapist, and none of them got “three estimates.”

Sometimes your strategic partners get it right away and don’t need coaching. But sometimes, they need help. That’s where you can sit down for a productive one to one meeting where you discuss questions they could ask to uncover referrals for you. Of course, I always recommend those be two-way conversations where you also ask how to find referrals for them

These two methods will increase the chance that you will get referrals from the 60% pool. If the referral is handled properly by all parties, these prospects will never need to move into the 30% (actively shopping) pool.

Tags: Networking, Referrals, Relationship building, Triggers

This entry was posted on Friday, June 18th, 2010 at 6:34 am and is filed under Referrals. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.