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How to Expand Your Referral Base

Written by: Vicki Kunkel

Article Overview: Everyone talks about the importance of networking. But, do it the wrong way or talk about the wrong things, and you'll do more harm than good for your company and your promotions. Here are some tips to get the most out of any networking event, and walk away with more than just a stack of business cards.

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How to Expand Your Referral Base

During a "lunch-and-learn" networking skills presentation that I gave today to a local professional association, one of the participants asked me how to best offer a “value proposition” during a networking conversation.

He was asking about the best way to differentiate his product by highlighting benefits. Unfortunately, he was missing the real purpose of a networking event.

When networking, you absolutely want to set yourself apart from the crowd. But a networking event is NOT the place to focus on product or service differentiation; it’s time to focus on PEOPLE differentiation.

How can you differentiate yourself at a networking event and, as a result, get more referrals? By asking non-selling questions. That’s right; stay away from the typical prospect qualifying questions. Rather, ask “comfort questions” and “the big resource question.”

COMFORT QUESTIONS

Comfort questions are questions that most people LOVE to answer. There are two types of comfort questions:

(1) How did you get started in the (fill in the blank) business? People love to tell their story. So give them a chance to tell it. This will set you apart by showing that you are not simply there to make your product pitch or do the business card shuffle.
(2) What do you enjoy most about your business / product / company / industry? This is another question that makes the other person feel as if you truly care about him or her as a person – rather than just another business contact. You’ll build rapport quickly if you ask just a couple of comfort questions back-to-back.


THE BIG RESOURCE QUESTION

Notice that it is singular – resource question, not questions. This question needs no others to really fast forward rapport. The big resource questions

“Joe, how can I know if a person I am speaking with would be a good prospect for you?”

This question serves three purposes: (1) It sets you apart from the “how-can-you-help-me” crowd that you find at most business networking events; (2) It solidifies your conversation partner’s feelings of trust toward you (3) It enhances your credibility as a sincere person.

Notice that you haven’t even mentioned your product or service. And perhaps you won’t at all in this particular meeting. But that’s OK because when you truly establish that rapport and trust with someone, then that person will tell his or her associates about you. Did you know that the average person knows 250 people? So think of it this way: every time you cement rapport and trust with a prospect, you are potentially building rapport and trust with 250 additional people. If you use this approach consistently, you’ll eventually have an endless stream of referrals – not because you did a great job of pitching your product, but because you did a great job of pitching yourself as a trustworthy, sincere person.

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Home > Business-Coach > Vicki Kunkel > How to Expand Your Referral Base
Article Tags: business card, business contact, business networking events, business product, card shuffle, comfort questions, crowd, lunch, networking event, networking skills, participants, product pitch, professional association, referrals, resource questions, service differentiation, singular resource, typical prospect, value proposition

About the Author: Vicki Kunkel
RSS for Vicki's articles - Visit Vicki's website

Vicki Kunkel is an award-winning social anthropologist who has been recognized as an expert in persuasive communication by many media outlets. She’s been interviewed by MSNBC, CNN, Entprerpeneur Magazine, and myriad local radio and television stations across the U.S and Canada. During the O. J. Simpson trial, she was a regular guest expert on AP Network News, commenting on the subliminal body language messages sent by all the players in that trial, as well as which trial strategies would be most persuasive with jurors. Vicki received the “Women With Vision” award from the Women’s Bar Association of Illinois for her breakthrough research in primal persuasion factors, and successful application of those factors in business, law and politics. She’s been the driving force behind winning political campaigns and blockbuster personal branding campaigns for top CEOs. Her new book: Instant Appeal: The Eight Primal Factors that Guarantee Blockbuster Success, (AMACOM, New York) will be released November, 2008. Vicki also previously spent 11 years as a TV news anchor and radio talk show host. To learn more about business persuasion, visit Vicki’s website at: www.beapowerplayer.com.

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Picking a corporate lawyer Picking a corporate lawyer - Hi Everyone, I was just curious to know what's the most important criteria a small business owner should look at when choosing a corporate lawyer? -Cost/hr? -Location? -Reputation/Referral? -Experience? -Personality? How did you pick your lawyer? And what's a fair price to pay per hour? Thanks
Re: FREE Toronto Referral Workshop Re: FREE Toronto Referral Workshop - Hi there, Indeed, I have never heard of a Referral Seminar. What a good idea. I guess being offered for free, there must have been a great deal of people attending. It is another way of saying: Do you want to increase your customers. Come along and we help and teach you. It has been said, that even in downturn of business confidence and consumer's caution, business will not come to a grinding halt. Please Andy, can you let us h ave these 14 ways of getting referrals. Thanks.
Re: How to develop sales contacts? Re: How to develop sales contacts? - Everyone has the right idea here. Depending on your business, there are different techniques that you could use. For consultants and sales heavy businesses, there are three tactics that I have found especially useful in my business: 1. Attend Networking Events 2. Cold Calling 3. Referral Program 4. Affiliate Program (most successful) The affiliate program was successful for me, as I hooked up with a franchise consultant, and he gave multiple unit businesses that needed my credit card processing services. I highly suggest you hook up with a sales partner, and give him a cut of the monthly revenue.
Re: A Tip to Increase Traffic Re: A Tip to Increase Traffic - I do believe that Link Referral is also a powerful way to increase your traffic, however, here are some tips that I have came across with the other day from Webblogs: Write Well and Write Often Frequently updating your blog with useful content is the first step to building your blog's audience. The content you write is what will keep readers coming back for more. Make sure you have something meaningful to say to them and say it often to maintain their interest and keep them loyal. Furthermore, post frequently to increase the number of chances you have for your blog's content to be noticed by search engines such as Google or Technorati. 2. Submit Your Blog to Search Engines Get on the radar screen for the popular search engines such as Google and Yahoo! by submitting your blog's URL to them. Most search engines provide a 'Submit' link (or something similar) to notify the search engine of your new blog, so those search engines will crawl it and include your pages in their results. It's important to understand that simply submitting your blog to search engines doesn't mean your pages will appear at the top of a Google search results screen, but at least your blog will be included and will have the chance of being picked up by a search engine. 3. Use and Update Your Blogroll By adding links to sites you like in your blogroll, the owners of those blogs will find your blog and will be likely to add a reciprocal link in their blogrolls. It's an easy way to get the link to your blog in front of many readers on other blogs. The hope is that some of those readers will click on the link to your blog on the other blogs' blogrolls and find your content interesting and enjoyable turning them into loyal readers. 4. Harness the Power of Comments Commenting is a simple and essential tool to increase your blog's traffic. First, respond to comments left on your blog to show your readers that you value their opinions and draw them into a two-way conversation. This will increase reader loyalty. Second, leave comments on other blogs to drive new traffic. Make sure you leave your blog's URL in your comment, so you create a link back to your own blog. Many people will read the comments left on a blog post. If they read a particularly interesting comment, they are highly likely to click on the link to visit the commentor's website. It's important to make sure you leave meaningful comments that are likely to invite people to click on your link to read more. 5. Syndicate Your Blog's Content with an RSS Feed Setting up an RSS feed button on your blog makes it easy for your loyal readers to not just read your blog but also know when you publish new content. 6. Use Links and Trackbacks Links are one of the most powerful parts of your blog. Not only are links noticed by search engines, but they also act as a tap on the shoulder to other bloggers who can easily identify who is linking to their sites. Linking helps to get you noticed by other bloggers who are likely to investigate the sites that are linking to them. This may lead them to become new readers of your blog or to add links to your blog from theirs. You can take links to other blogs a step further by leaving a trackback on the other blog to let them know you've linked to them. Blogs that allow trackbacks will include a link back to your blog in the comments section of the post that you originally linked to. People do click on trackback links! 7. Tag Your Posts It takes a few extra seconds to add tags to each of your blog posts, but it's worth the time in terms of the additional traffic tags can drive to your blog. Tags (like links) are easily noticed by search engines. They're also key to helping readers find your blog when they perform searches on popular blog search engines such as Technorati. 8. Submit Your Posts to Social Bookmarking Sites Taking the time to submit your best posts to social bookmarking sites such as Digg, StumbleUpon, Reddit and more can be a simple way to quickly boost traffic to your blog. 9. Remember Search Engine Optimization When you write your blog posts and pages, remember to optimize your pages for search engines to find them. Include relevant keywords and links but don't overload your posts with too many relevant keywords or completely irrelevant keywords. Doing so can be considered spamming and could have negative results such as your blog being removed from Google's search entirely. 10. Don't Forget Images Images don't just make your blog look pretty, they also help people find you in search engine listings. People often use the image search options offered by Google, Yahoo! and other search engines, and naming your images with search engine optimization in mind can easily boost your traffic.


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