The inner circle

Imagine the scenario, you are sitting at your desk when someone calls you and says, 

“I was referred by your friend John, he tells me you are just the man to help with the problem I have. John told me you are worth every penny and I am to pay you exactly what you say as you are brilliant at what you do. Can you come and see me?”

It would appear at first glance as something that would happen very rarely, but with a bit of knowhow and a little bit of planning it can become a more common occurrence. I get a call similar to this at least once, sometimes twice a month. It didn’t happen overnight and has taken a couple of years to build, I’ve kissed many frogs but now have a set of princes and princesses that continually refer perfect clients to me.

I describe these people as my inner circle, a group of friends that I refer to my clients and they refer me to theirs. We all service the same kind of clients, all trust one another and have no fear that we would be stepping on each others toes at any point. We are all focused on doing what is right for the client and share similar values.

We have all trained each other to position each other in a manner to set the right expectation with a prospect, we never push the members of the circle but offer them should they be the answer to the issue which needs addressing.

We have clear expectations from each other such as supporting each others events, number of coffee meetings we set up for each other and we meet regularly as a group to make sure we keep un to date with each others developments.

It is a small group, a very select group and one that will stand the test of time. If every professional services business owner had a group like this we would only need sales people to close the business.

If you want to know how to build the network, leave me a note and I will send over a separate sheet on the subject, you can wait for further articles on the subject as I write them or check out the current article on getting more from networking. This article will tell you how to go about finding people to build the inner circle.