This is a rebroadcast of Episode 130.
Synopsis
This week Dr. Misner wants to expose three common delusions about referrals and referral sources.
You should always get a referral when you’re in front of the referral source.
To maximize your chances of getting good referrals, it’s best to move from one networking group to another networking group at regular intervals.
Your best source of referrals is your customer.
Dr. Misner recommends creating a curriculum for your referral sources, breaking what you do down into 30-second or 60-second highly-focused sound bites that others in your BNI chapter or any other networking group can use to refer you to others.
Brought to you by Networking Now.
Complete Transcription of BNI Podcast Episode 130 –
Priscilla:
Hello everyone, and welcome back to The Official BNI Podcast which is brought to you by NetworkingNow.com, which is the leading site on the Net for networking downloadables.
I’m Priscilla Rice, and I’m coming to you from Live Oak Recording Studio in Berkley, California, and I am joined on the phone today by the founder and the chairman of BNI, Dr. Ivan Misner.
Hello, Ivan. How are you?
Ivan:
Doing great, Priscilla, and I’ve got an interesting topic today, Three Common Delusions About Referral Sources.
Priscilla:
Great! Well, tell us all about it.
Ivan:
Here’s number 1, Delusion Number 1. You should always get a referral when you’re in front of the referral source. That’s one that you know seems counterintuitive. Many of these delusions kind of do. But the truth is, if your referral strategy requires you to be present in order to get a referral, you’re putting severe limits on your potential business. Referrals happen when you’re in front of the referral source only if your system is dependent on you asking for the referral and getting it at the same time. So what that means to BNI members is that it’s very important to remember that you are trying to train that referral team, not close a sale or not just get a referral as you’re standing in front of them, but teaching them how to go out and listen for referrals so that they can bring them back to you. You don’t need to be in front of your referral source every time you get a referral; it’s a delusion.
Priscilla:
Okay.
Ivan:
Delusion Number 2. To maximize your chances of getting good referrals, it’s best to move from one networking group to another networking group on regular intervals. This is what I call “scorched earth networking,” and it’s about as friendly as it sounds. And I think in BNI, a lot of people, they get that, they understand that it’s about the relationship building. But there’s still sometimes new people into BNI are coming in thinking, “Well, I’ll be in for six months or a year and get all of the business I can, and then I’ll try something else out; or I’ll do this or I’ll do that.” I see it in Chambers, where somebody will join a local Chamber and they’re in for a little while, and they work it for a year and they kind of move on to the next Chamber. I think I may have used this analogy a couple years ago on one of the podcasts, but it’s like planting a citrus tree, and you wait for a year, of course, you care for it and take really good care and fertilize it and water it. At the end of a year, how much fruit are you going to get out of the tree you plant, Priscilla?
Priscilla:
Not much. I have one, and it’s . . .
Ivan:
Yeah, and so it’s like you plant it, you care for it for year, you don’t get a whole lot, and you go, “Well, you know what? It’s not working so well here, so I’m going to rip it up from the roots, and I’m going to plant it over there instead, because if it didn’t grow well here or give me much fruit here, it’s bound to grow more fruit over there.” And then you replant it someplace else, and you let it sit there for a year, you take good care of it, but how much fruit are you going to get that second year?
Priscilla:
Right. None.
Ivan:
Not much. And so you look at it and say, “Well, it’s not working there. I’m going to rip it up from the roots, and I’ll go plant it someplace else.” Now, that sounds ridiculous, but that’s exactly what people do in networking groups. It’s exactly what they do. They join a networking group. They’re in for six months or a year. They plant the seeds. They start to build these roots of relationships. They don’t come to full fruition yet, because it’s all based on trust and relationship building. And they go, “Well, you know, I’ve been in here for a little while. I’m going to rip this up from the roots, and I’m going to go plant my network someplace else and see if I get more business.”
It’s a bad idea to move around unless you’ve got some serious issues in that networking group. You want to stay and build the relationships, whether you’re talking about a Chamber or a BNI group or a service club or other networks. Don’t practice “scorched earth networking.”
Priscilla:
Great.
Ivan:
Delusion Number 3. Your best source of referrals is your customer. And it’s a delusion. The reason people sometimes fall into this delusion is that they’ve been trained to believe it and they’ve never really pursued any other source of referrals. And the only referrals they’ve ever received are from customers.
Now, in BNI, I think, to a large extent, we get that, that your customers are not necessarily the best source of referrals. Now, don’t get me wrong; I’m not saying they’re not a good source of referrals, but they may not be the best source of referrals. And that’s one of the reasons why I created BNI, because I knew my customers were a great source of referrals, but I also knew that many other businesses, that if I could develop a relationship with them, would be a great source of referrals. Because you can create this sort of symbiosis with them, where you’re referring to them and they’re referring to you. And I found personally that although my customers are a good source of referrals, they were not the best source of referrals if I worked with other businesses that were compatible to mine that I could develop a relationship with and generate business with.
And so these are the three common delusions about referral sources. You should always get a referral when you’re in front of the referral source to maximize your chances of getting referrals; move from one networking group to another on regular intervals; and your best source of referrals is your customers. Those are the three delusions that I have for today.
Priscilla:
That’s great. I have a question for you, Ivan, and it’s a little bit off topic, but not completely. When you’re in your BNI chapter and you’re giving your 30 second infomercial and you want to stimulate referrals, what can you do in 30 seconds? It just seems so incredibly short, and I’m wondering if you can help us.
Ivan:
Well, you’re in a big group, Priscilla, and you’re doing 30 seconds, but most of the chapters are doing a minute, so that’s pretty much the norm in most groups. But I think the question still applies, what can you do in a minute? You’ve got to be laser specific about what you do. The more laser specific you are, the better. What tends to happen is really two things.
One is, in the chapters that are not as successful, members, on average, just wing it on their 60 second presentation. So they’re not prepared in any way whatsoever. Or they’re preparing their 60 second presentation while the guy next to him is giving their 60 second presentation.
Priscilla:
Right.
Ivan:
You’ve never seen that, I’m sure, right?! So that’s the first mistake, not preparing. Give some thought to what you’re going to say in advance. As a matter of fact, I recommend that you create a curriculum, sit down and. either for the next year or at least for the next two months, create your curriculum, your Product 101. And be laser specific, and each week talk about something else, break it down. You’ve hear me talk about this in a lot of my books, the LCD, the least, or lowest, common denominator. Another way of looking at it is it’s a laser shot rather than a shotgun. Rather than say I’m a full service whatever, I can do anything you want, you talk about one little aspect of what you do. And the reason for that is, that gives people something to remember. They remember a specific product or service that you have. And if you do that every week with different products, different services, different benefits of the various products or services, your qualifications as a business person, and you do all those little bite size pieces over the course of year, you’ve given almost an hour’s worth of content.
In big chapters like yours, maybe not quite an hour’s worth, but you’ve given many, many, many minutes worth of content about what you do that’s so specific that’s it’s hard for people to forget about elements of your products or services. That’s what I would recommend.
Priscilla:
Okay. And even in a 30 second?
Ivan:
Yeah, especially in a 30 second, you need to be prepared more than anything else, because there’s no time to wing it and expect any kind of results. But again, the overwhelming majority of chapters worldwide do 60 second presentations.
Priscilla:
Okay.
Ivan:
But when you get really big, that’s a good problem. When you have lots of members, you’ve got to cut something back, and sometimes that’s one of the things that gets cut back. But then you end of passing a lot of referrals within the group, especially if you’re doing one-to-ones like we talked about with Dr. Goulston and in other podcasts that I’ve done. You do those kinds of things and big chapters can not only be better, but generally are better because of those – they became big because they’re doing so many things right. Does that make sense?
Priscilla:
Yeah, it does. Okay, great. Well, thank you for sharing that with us.
Ivan:
Thanks, Priscilla.
Priscilla:
Well, I think that’s it for this week. Thank you so much, Dr. Misner.
This podcast has been brought to you by NetworkingNow.com which is the leading site on the Net for networking downloadables. Thank you so much for listening. This is Priscilla Rice, and we hope you’ll join us next week for another exciting episode of The Official BNI Podcast.