How many referrals did you get last week?
Reuben Swartz
Fun "Anti-CRM" for Solo Consultants Who Hate "Selling" but Love Serving Clients. Put the "relationship" back in CRM: conversations, referrals, follow-up, lead magnets, proposals. Host of the Sales for Nerds Podcast ????
Like you, I built my consulting business on referrals. (Because I wasn't very good at sales and marketing, but that's another story.)
You'd think that I would have paid close attention to this most critical aspect of my business development-- tracked it, worked at it, improved it-- all the things that go into "practicing" (they don't call it a "consulting practice" for nothing).
But if you thought that generously, you would sadly, be wrong. ;-)
I didn't know how to do these things, and it all just seemed so "icky" to "chase" referrals.
That's because I didn't know how to do it in a way that felt natural and even fun.
Big mistake.
领英推荐
Assuming you do great work for your clients, you act ethically with your partners, etc, why wouldn't you want to nurture your referral network intentionally? (As I rant to my past self...)
There are 3 main elements to this, and they are very, very simple (I didn't say "easy", I said "simple").
If you want some help with these steps, as part of a fun group of folks going through the same thing, join my 5 Days to More Referrals Challenge next week, kicking off on Monday the 10th. (Get more info, and some free training here.)
Devops Engineer with expertise in CICD | Docker | Kubernetes | Ansible | Terraform | and System Monitoring with Prometheus and Grafana
1 年Reuben Swartz I want to hop on your calendar
Co-CEO, Co-founder at Hifive ?? || x-LinkedIn, x-Trello, and x-Atlassian.
1 年CoSell - is a platform that helps individuals and teams unlock introductions and referrals in an operationalized way. Check out - https://cosell.io/download
Scale Your Impact and Income w/o Sacrificing Your Sanity ?? Business Growth Strategist for Coaches ?? Scalable Genius Method? ??? Podcaster ?? Co-Founder GEM Networking Community
1 年Your third point feels so refreshing, Reuben. We assume things like prospecting, referrals, and sales will be hard. That's why we avoid it! Finding ways to make it more fun (and aligned with our personality and strengths) makes us more likely to be consistent at it...and consistency is everything.
Last night someone asked me for business advice and bragged 100% of their clients came from referrals. "That's too bad," I said, "you are only getting half the business you should."
Author of “Ignite Your Leadership: The Power of Neuropsychology to Optimize Team Performance"| Technology Gurus and Engineering Experts: Lead Your Team to OUTSTANDING Results/Build a Legacy| The Technology Leadership Guy
1 年Reuben, I especially like your thought about making this process fun, and your other points help create the mindset to do so. The emotions of "anxiety" and "excitement" are experienced very differently but show up physiologically in the body as identical. The difference? It's mindset. Your approach helps create a mindset of excitement instead of anxiety. Well done!