Are You Referral Ready?

If you want to be Referral Ready, you need a strategy for building relationships that feeds your network and allows you to manage it systematically. Perhaps the most user-friendly system was advanced by Dr. Ivan Misner, the founder of Business Network International (BNI). His system is also known as the VCP model, which stands for Visibility, Credibility, and Profitability.

If two people know each other on a first name basis but not much else, they are at the Visibility stage. If they have actually scheduled and kept appointments together or done business with each other, they are probably in the Credibility stage. If they consistently find ways to refer each other business, they are in the Profitability stage.

Most people equate the networking process only with Visibility, spending more time and energy into building relationships than they do enabling those relationships to yield mutually beneficial results. The “work” part of networking is applying the entire VCP model to your current and future relationships. Visibility is only the beginning.

Now think about the people in your own network. Do you have a strategy to move the relationship to the next stage? What types of activities might best move a relationship from V to C? From C to P? What role does time play in the movement of relationships from one stage to another? In terms of your networking activity, at what stage in the process would you consider your time best spent?

With a process like the VCP model, you can do more with fewer and existing relationships than you can by randomly adding more people to an already crowded network. Success is in the system, not in the number of people you meet. Building relationships has always required the investment of time in other people, not just meeting them.