Conducting 1-2-1 meetings with your referral sources

As I am picking this area for a very heavy emphasis this coming new year, I thought I better pen some basic ideas as how this can generate more referrals, which will help fill up your sales funnel for more business in the coming period of time.

I met the team-leaders of referral generation groups yesterday and we discussed in depth about the quality and quantity of businesses referred in their groups.

All of them agree that the quality and quantity of referrals passed among the members are a direct proportion to the quality of interactions, relationships among the members and the way to measure this is the frequency of 1-2-1s between the peers of a particular group.

Because, after an effective 1-2-1 with a colleague in your group will yield to an action, many current issues will be overcome concurrently at all levels.

Before that, let's examine the outcome, or the action after an effective 1-2-1 with your colleague in your group:

1. A commitment of a short term referral based on what products or services are offered, example, if your colleague is an optometrist, then you can commit a short term referral where say, in 2-weeks you will refer, say your cousin to his shop.
2. A commitment of a long-term referral based on this person's profile of customers. For example, a dentist may require more patients coming in for teeth polishing and whitening which could be more profitable as compared to a regular teeth scaling, extractions, etc.

The above 2 action items makes the referral process more predictable. Now as both parties get to work to achieve their respective commitments will solve the issues of:

1. No referrals to give, which could discourage a member from attending meetings regularly. So, now the issue of not attending is resolved.
2. Better level of excitement and energy as both parties attend their weekly meetings with qualified referrals to give.
3. This excitement and energy will now spill over in the meeting and guests visiting on the day will be enthused equally, and see the possibility of they themselves being party to this receiving and giving of referrals.

So, a simple action of a weekly 1-2-1 with another member in your referral group can be the seed, which will yield to unrecognizable results as the tree starts to grow and bear fruit!

I am so excited to see this happening, and will be moving ahead in this direction and work within the teams to make this into a successful culture in each groups so that as new members are admitted in the groups, they won't know any different. It becomes then, a natural culture.

When say 40 members in your groups conduct 1-2-1s in the spirit of teamwork, and under the philosophy of Givers Gain, then imagine the business growth each person will experience!