By Steven Zyskowski
What’s the ONE major difference between belonging to a facilitated referral team and belonging to a Member-ran referral group? You know …. that’s easy! It’s having a professional facilitator as your partner in the referral team business.
Are you taking advantage of your partnership with your facilitator? The most consistent and highest performing facilitated referral team Members do. The teams who don’t take advantage of the partnership just aren’t as successful.
Example: I am always talking to the team Members whom I facilitate for about the importance of getting good visitor leads to me so I can help call on them to help market the team. In other words, I know the Members of the groups are busy professionals. However, I don’t want them to be so busy they don’t see how they can help.
Two weeks ago, a chiropractor, who has been a Member of a Brighton team I facilitate for a couple of years, recently sent me a text message with a photo attached of a flyer that was posted at a local sub shop. Trigger! The chiropractor knew that residential house cleaning was an open category on his team. I thanked him for the tip-by-text and promptly called.
I left a voice message for the cleaning company and shortly after, they called me back. Within a minute or two I explained how and where I had gotten their information and was given permission to email them a link to the Caerusnet website. They agreed they’d check it out to see if it was something they were interested in.
The following week I received a phone call from the cleaning company saying they visited the website and were very interested in visiting (yes, it pays to have smart website). They plan to attend an upcoming meeting in June. Of course, I followed up with Dr. Stephan to thank him and let him know his effort to get me the information was worthwhile. Hey may have a new Member coming to pass referrals to. And possibly one that refers to him at some point. Regardless, he’s taking ownership of his networking team.
That’s the value of a partnership. It’s called working together. Please remember Caerusnet when you are looking at business card display walls or when getting ready to attend a local networking event. If you aren’t comfortable inviting professionals yourself or feel awkward at talking to strangers, then let your facilitator know about those professionals you need help reaching out. We also appreciate knowing about noteworthy events we might want to attend.
Remember, Gods don’t wait for opportunities … they CREATE them.