There are 5 Steps to the referral process, as identified by the Referral Institute and Dr. Ivan Misner. Each step is important and no step can be skipped, if what you want are high level referrals that close into quality business. The biggest complaint that that I hear from is they are getting leads or nothing at all. I hear over and over how this organization or that one did not work because they only got leads that turned in to low value business or no business at all. Blaming the organization for the lack of referrals is not productive, it all starts with you. Until you recognize that you cannot change the outcome. Getting Referrals has little to do with thorganization and everything to do with implementing the 5 Steps.
Each of the 5 Steps require a post of their own, so this is the beginning of the series of 7 articles.
Here are the 5 Steps to getting high value referrals from your network.
1. Trust, this is the biggest step and often the hardest.
2. Knowledge, a very small step, easy to achieve.
3. Need, is rarely if ever trained to referral sources.
4. Solution, you are the solution to the need but do your referral sources know how offer your solution?
5. The appointment, is the last and final step to teach, how do you want to be referred.
Each step is important and each step must be accomplished flawlessly. Unfortunately, no time or little time is spent on these steps and most people don’t even recognize that there is a system. So, stay tuned for the next 6 post, we will look at each of the steps in detail!