By Michelle R. Donovan
"Leadership is ultimately about creating a way for people to contribute to making something extraordinary happen." - Alan Keith of Genentech
The usual complaints I hear from business professionals include phrases like “My clients don’t refer me”, “My networking group is not productive”, and “I give way more referrals than I receive”. If “leadership is ultimately about creating a way for people to contribute”, then it would stand to reason that if we want to lead our referral results, we need to create ways for people to contribute to our referral efforts.
Leadership means that you’ve got to be proactive and productive in enabling people to refer you. You’ve got to make it easy for others to refer you or quite frankly, they won’t. You’ve got to give them the tools they need to be successful at referring you and empower them to use those tools. You’ve got to literally create the ways for people to contribute because without your help, they won’t or they can’t.
Not sure what I mean? Here are two things that you can do today to make it easy for other people to refer you.
1) Create a template email that other people can use to introduce you to someone they think might be a good prospect for you. Send this email to your top referral sources and ask them to simply cut and paste (modify as needed) when they want to promote you.
2) Create a list of the top ten ways that other people can refer you. Give that list to your primary referral sources. Use this as an educational tool when meeting with them and ask them for their top ten list too!
This definition also refers to “making something extraordinary happen”. There’s no question that when you effectively lead your referral network, extraordinary things will happen not only for you, but for the others in your network as well. It’s a win-win situation. Ordinary behaviors create ordinary results. This is probably what you’ve been experiencing. Extraordinary behaviors create extraordinary results. This is what I want you to experience.
Leadership is about helping people to achieve results they never possibly could imagine. It’s about leading and guiding yourself and others beyond your perceived finish line. Leadership is all about taking action! Begin to take action today and lead your referral network to refer you like you’ve never experienced before!
If you wish to know more about getting high quality referrals for your business, you can reach Michelle at 412-741-1926 or at
Michelle@ReferralInstitutePittsburgh.com.
Michelle R. Donovan is the International Best Selling Author of The 29% Solution.
Visit Michelle’s websites at
http://www.referralinstitutepittsburgh.com/
and
http://www.michellerdonovan.com/
