Itโs easy to become unnerved by the dipping economy, but staying true to your business and its core offering is crucial if you want to be seen as a credible supplier and stand a chance of being recommended byย others.
Here are some of the most common ways in which businesses are ruining their chances of getting valuable referrals:
- Promoting a different business or service every time you meet themย This will lead to no referrals because theyโre not specialising in one area, which will eventually lead to confusion in professional stance and ultimately ruin their credibility withย others.
- Delivering a poor service and then not putting it rightย I shouldnโt have to mention this one, but sadly it happened to one of my contacts in a networking group. Then what happened? Thatโs right, he told everybody! This is not the ideal situation when you need people to talk about how good your products and services are. The result was an instant loss of future referrals.
- Selling to the group without any prior qualificationย I always remind people of the following statement: the people in a networking group are your route to market, not your target market. This means that until they are properly qualified they donโt require the hard sell. If you do, the result will be people avoiding you.
- Publicly asking for help and advice, then arguing with it or not doing anything about itย This has two effects on the person you are seeking help from. Firstly, the initial impact on the person that tried to help is they wonโt bother wasting time like that again. But it also might communicate a form of one-upmanship.
- You donโt need to ask for help if you are only going to ignore the advice givenย ย This will demonstrate that the advice wasnโt needed in the first place, and that you thought you knew better. This doesnโt create a great overall impression.
- Not giving (but expecting) referralsยญ ยญ Iโm not talking here about โoh, you should really talk to xyz, he might know people that need your helpโ, but proper referrals โ a qualified introduction to someone that needs your help (and is willing to pay for it). Result? People get fed up with your taking attitude and donโt bother with you.
- Not connecting with people at a deep enough levelย Until people really understand what it is you do, how can you expect them to give you referrals? Let alone trust you enough to refer you to their biggest client, where their reputation and credibility is on the line? So make sure that you are coming across as the leading expert in your field โ and add some confidence in there too.
