An attendee, who recently attended a virtual program I presented, sent me a followup email with a very interesting question, and it’s one I thought was worth answering on my blog and sharing with all my readers.
The question was “it really is true that people want to do business with people they know, like, and trust – and as you added “care.” However, I think the “care” falls into place if they know, like, and trust you, don’t you think? I think if someone didn’t think you cared – they could not truthfully like or trust you, could they?”
I do think that there are folks that do business with others because they know, like, and trust them. I’ve noticed that caring isn’t always present. However, when the giving factor comes in, where we add that on a very regular basis, the caring aspect starts to show up, and I’ve seen it much more with people that don’t actually transact business, but still refer.
Furthermore…I have seen a number of times in business where they transact business based on the know like and trust factor, but true care isn’t there, as they see it as a business transaction. While that helps the business stay afloat, and solves a problem for the consumer, I doubt that it will produce an ongoing relationship that results in referrals.
The care factor plays a huge role in getting multiple referrals over the life of the relationship. Without the caring component, I’ve seen referrals drop.
If you are thinking that you can live your business life based on the know, like and trust factor, you’ll have some success. It will work for you. But why not ratchet it up just a bit and enter the caring mode so that you can have even more referrals, and deal with more people, on a more consistent basis, that you truly care about.
I continue to believe that we should be doing business with people that bring us joy and I also believe that “care” is a strong component of that!
One reason many people fall short of implementing the caring concept is that they don’t understand how to do it efficiently or the value that caring could bring to them in their life and business. In fact, while caring is about not doing it for the money, I always forced to show people how the money works. I’ll let you discover the value of caring for referral sources and partners by entering your numbers into the Referral Revenue calculator that you can get here: www.FireUpReferrals.com. Just fill out a few fields and you can see the revenue that you can create from doing this type of virtual networking with referral sources, or as I call them, referral partners.
