Are You Referral Ready?

Help me help you!

Assuming you have a highly credible and trusting relationship with someone, chances are he or she will speak favorably about you to other people. But will they say the right things? Will they qualify prospects for you and open doors for introductions? Do they have the conversational skills to recognize and create opportunities for you? They will if you coach them.

An uneducated sales team can still open doors for you, just not as many and perhaps not always the right ones. Just as the key to sales is to spend more time with people who want to buy, the key to networking for prospects is to spend more time in front of those who are already pre-qualified and anticipating an introduction to you. The better you train your network, the more this occurs.

Train your referral partners to fluently use phrases that you listen for and conversation-starting questions that you might ask while you are qualifying a prospect for your product or service. For example, a commercial realtor might teach his referral parners to listen for these phrases:

• “I like my dentist, but I wish his office was easier to get to.” Chances are good that other people feel the same way.  An introduction would facilitate a discussion about the dentist’s satisfaction with the current location, and what alternatives exist should he or she want to move.
• “If we land that new contract, we’re going to have to hire more people.” Hiring more people often requires an expansion of space, and planning for that kind of growth is often done many months in advance.

On the flip side, the commercial realtor might consider teaching his/her referral partners these conversation starters as well:

• “Do you own or lease your building?”…the answer to that question opens a world of possibilities.
• “Are you planning on adding any locations in the future?”…because someone could be working on that for you right now.

When the right people learn how to listen to and start conversations on your behalf, you gain powerful networking benefits that multiply your potential results with minimal effort. If you take the time to train them, your sales force will become much more effective.