I recently had a call with someone who was referred to me. The purpose of the call was to speak with me about helping their company grow their business through referrals. For context they’ve been in business for over 10 years. When I got on the call, after the greetings…
I said “so I presume that we are talking because you want to get more referrals in your business, yes?”
Response: “Yes”
Me: “Are you getting referrals now?”
Response: “We get them regularly from friends and family. But we don’t seem to get them from customers and partners. We are thinking that we just aren’t asking them in the right ways.”
Me: “I know why you aren’t getting referrals from them…”
Now…keep in mind.I wasn’t toying with them. I knew exactly why in less than a minute why they weren’t getting more referrals from their customers and partners.
Response: “umm”
Me: “Would you like to know why?” (now this is me…playing just a bit…I even played with my voice when I said it”
Response: “I sure would”
Me: “It’s because you aren’t making your customers and partners your friends and family!”
Response: [Silence]
Me: “Are you there?
Response: “Yeah, that’s so genius. It’s so obvious but so clear that we haven’t done that. Can you help us do that?”
Me: “I sure can, but I only work with a few select people and companies as a consultant. I don’t take on just anyone, I want to be sure it’s a good fit. So, If I may, let me ask you a few questions..”
Here’s the thing. It is simple to understand that we need to treat our customers and partners like our friends and family, but it’s much harder to implement in a consistent way.
I’ll give you one big tip here.just start thinking of them this way. It’s starts with the brain. The moment you start thinking about others as friends and family, the quicker you will treat them as such. Building that relationship will take time, it won’t happen overnight, but if you start today, you’ll have more friends and family one year from now, I assure you of that!