Episode 754: I Want Referrals, and I Want Them NOW! (Classic)

Hello, this is Priscilla Rice and I'm coming to you from Live Oak Recording Studio. This week we're going to have a rebroadcast of one of our earlier classic podcasts. We hope you enjoy it and thanks so much for listening. Episode 596. I want referrals and I want them now. You're listening to the official B&I podcast with B&I Founder and Chief Visionary Officer Dr. Ivan Meisner. Stay tuned for networking and referral marketing tips from the man who's been called the father of modern networking along with suggestions and insights into getting the most from your membership in the world's largest networking organization B&I. Hello everybody and welcome back to the official B&I podcast. I'm Priscilla Rice and I'm coming to you from Live Oak Recording Studio in Berkeley, California and I'm joined on the phone today by the founder and the Chief Visionary Officer of B&I, Dr. Ivan Meisner. Hello Ivan, how are you today? I am doing fantastic Priscilla. I've got I think a fun topic. I want referrals and I want them now and I love the way you said it to that exclamation point now. So I run into people and you know they're they're they're almost like desperate for referrals and desperation is not referable. So I'm sure this isn't for every listener. So when you hear this I'm not talking about you. I'm talking about those people who are coming across desperate for referrals. So you want referrals and you want them now. Well you can't have them unless you've built meaningful relationships with your referral partners. And like I said, I'm often asked how long does it take for people to receive referrals from their networking? How do we speed this process up? That's the one that I love. How do you speed this process up? So building a referral based business is all about building a powerful personal network. If your network is a mile wide and an inch deep you'll never get any kind of referrals that make a difference in your business. This means you have to go deep in building a number of strong relationships. So from my experience strong referral relationships are a lot like building close personal friendships. Now Facebook has redefined what a friend is but I'm talking about truly close friendships in a study that I recently read. It was published in 2018 by the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships. It was found that it takes about 50 hours, 50 hours of interaction to move from being in acquaintance to becoming a casual friend. It takes a total of 90 hours to become what they called real friends and get this Priscilla a total of 200 hours to become close friends. That's a lot. It's a lot. And according to the study Friendship Status was examined as a function of ours together, shared activities and regular conversation. Now this fits the B&I experience so well because people who are in B&I for a year that's when things oftentimes start clicking for them and at two years they're really really strong and generating on average more referrals. And that's that 200 hour mark is in that second year. And so when I read this it was like oh my goodness they could have written this about B&I. So you know when it comes to how long does it take to build a close relationship it's somewhere between that 90 and 200 hours and that sounds right to me. This matches up perfectly with what I've seen in B&I. When B&I members hit that 90 hour mark they almost always begin receiving more and more referrals. And based on an independent study published in 2012 for B&I when those same individuals cross the 200 mark they generate an average of five times the number of referrals they did in the first years. Yes you heard that right more than 500 percent more referrals when they built a strong relationship with the referral partners. That's just a shocking number. So the best way to speed up the process is to actually spend time in the process of developing relationships with the people that you're networking with. Networking truly is and you've heard me say this a lot more about farming than it is about hunting. This is hard data that helps support that. It's about building relationships and friendships with other business professionals. Now it's important to note that there's a confidence curve that you have to negotiate before trying to do business with someone. We talk about the time confidence curve in our member success program training and in other places. But I'm going to include it here in the podcast just to remind you if you take that curve too fast you'll flip your reputation and end up in a very awkward position. And when it comes to getting referrals from your network confidence is a vital component. Not your confidence but the confidence that your fellow network member has in you. None of them want to risk their personal reputation by referring business to someone that they don't know like and trust that they're not at credibility with them in the VCP process. So even though you may have known many of your networkers for some time until they've gained a certain level of confidence that referring context to will not harm their reputation with their clients or friends you're still a referral stranger unless you hit that point. So the time confidence curve is here in the podcast. It's also in my book Networking Like a Pro and it illustrates the dynamics of the process. Your success in getting referrals depends partly on your competence of course but also on how far up the confidence curve the refers confidence in you has progressed. If you're at a point in the relationship where you're just starting you're not going to get very many referrals but if you're at higher level in the relationship and you've known each other for a while but you haven't quite achieved the necessary confidence level to this person to get the referral from them then you're still not going to get referrals. It's only when you hit that critical confidence level on the curve where people now feel comfortable with you and by the way the time confidence curve varies by profession for a florist that may be really quick but for a financial planner it's really really long. One way to expedite this process which is the question that I'm often asked is to do regular one-to-ones with people and go deeper in knowing how to refer them as well as teach them how to refer you. It's not always easy to know how far you've progressed up your confidence curve. Many networkers spend a lot of time and effort trying to build others confidence in them and then when they're on the brink of success they get disparaged and they stop going to the networking meetings they were going to or they stop coming to B&I and oftentimes they stop right at that point where things are going to really kick in. I remember once heard a story about a guy who'd been in for two years and he certainly made more than his investment back but it wasn't the big numbers he was hoping for and he almost didn't do that third year membership and three weeks into his third year he got the biggest referral of his life not just from B&I but from all referral sources and it was three weeks into that third year and that was that's a great example of and he was in one of those professions that takes time use of financial planner so you know if you drop out you're going to lose those kinds of connections. So here's what you can do to gain perspective on your efforts and results that they're producing. Ask yourself the following four questions and keep asking them over and over until you've attained success and the answers become obvious. Here are the four questions. One, am I being realistic about the time it will take in my profession to gain the critical level of confidence I need. Two, am I regularly making stimulating educational presentations to my fellow networkers about the value I provide to my clients. I recommend you go back and listen to the podcast I did with Charlie Lawson. I think it was entitled Don't Bore Me to Tears which is a great title and he talks about how you do a really good weekly presentation. Number three am I doing business with others in my network so I can give them dynamic testimonials and steer business to them so that they will return the favor. And number four am I meeting regularly with my networking colleagues to learn about their businesses so I can confidently refer my contacts to them. So if you're following these simple tactics you're asking yourself these questions then you're well along the road to getting all the referrals from others in the networks that you participate in and be an eye in particular. So I'll leave you with one last thought and then if you have some questions or want to talk some more Priscilla I'm happy to do that. Here's my last thought. Okay. Remember it takes time to build friendships unless you're in kindergarten then you can do it in about five minutes. Right. Well I do have something to say which is I'm a big proponent for using each other's services. I think that that can really move along the the timeframe for tests. If you give a testimonial for somebody that you've just used their services if you loved what they did that can really change the timeline. Yes. I just had it happen to me. I used a personal organizer in our group. It had been a long time before I used her services and she was wonderful. Now I can just truly say that to everybody and to anybody I refer her to and you know it changes everything. So I think it's I know you're not supposed to sell to your fellow members but I really think it helps for fellow members to use each other's services so they have the personal experience. You know so I'm not sure I've ever said to anybody you shouldn't sell to your fellow members. I think you don't want to target your fellow members exclusively. I do think I agree with you or so I think using each other's services is brilliant because then you can come back and do those testimonials which will in fact give referrals. So I'm a fan I just I caution people not to exclusively give internal referrals. Some chapters call them internal referrals which is a member to member an external referrals an outside member to a member. Some chapters call them tier one and tier two referrals whatever you call it you want to transition to the latter over time you want to transition to those outside referrals but it's hard to transition to outside referrals if you can't speak about the person personally which is your point I think yeah I couldn't agree more and so it's to me it's not either or it's both and it should begin with the internal referrals and and graduate over time to the external referrals. Good point Priscilla thank you. That's everything I've got today. Okay well that sounds great. Thank you Dr. Meisner I really appreciate it. So for more of Ivan's content go to IvanMeisner.com. Thank you so much for listening. This is Priscilla Rice and we look forward to having you join us again next week for another exciting episode of the official B&I podcast.