Referral Sources Start With Your Contact Manager
Great to see you here!
As a kind-of prerequisite to this post we recently had a review of how to find referrals for your business and you can Go Here to check out that discussion.
The post gives an overview of where your going to get referrals and suggestions on who would be a good fit for you as referral sources…
…go check it out.
I’ve had a few request from readers interested in having me expand on the strategy of finding referral sources/referral partners and I wanted to dig in on that today.
Harvey Mackay, author of New York Times No.1 best seller, Swim With The Sharks Without Being Eaten Alive, wrote another little masterpiece called, The Harvey Mackay Rolodex Network Builder.
In his book Harvey Mackay goes through the importance of your contact manager (Rolodex).
He said in the book that you should guard your contacts with your life and if he was being mugged and had to choose whether to hand over his wallet or his Rolodex file, it would be no contest.
The wallet would go because of the importance in the information he’d gathered in his Rolodex was irreplaceable.
So, if you’re interested in finding quality referral sources it starts with having a strong and powerful contact manager.
Building Your Contact Manager is your starting point in cultivating valuable referral sources and partners for your business.
It has been said that the level of your success in business directly correlates to the size of your Rolodex, or in this case the size of your Contact Manager—and this rings true with any business.
The more people you have in your Contact Manager that you are actively communicating with, the more success you’ll have finding and building sources to drive the Referral Marketing Matrix machine.
I’ve attached a couple of documents I think can help you to strategically think about your contacts and referral sources.
The first is a memory jogger that gives you ideas on who would best serve as referral sources for your referral marketing strategies.
Get that here: Memory Jogger
The second document is a list of valuable contact information that you want to collect from your potential referral sources.
Get that here: Contact Manager
This document is an overview of the information Harvey Mackay suggests you gather on your contacts in The Rolodex Network Builder.
I suggest you get that book to understand the valuable concepts he outlines. You can get it over at his website www.mackay.com.
Through the process of developing your contact list in your contact manager you will be in the best position to find the partners and sources you will need to explode your business.
This explosion will be fueled by the gems in your list…your Centers of Influence!
We will discuss Centers of Influence in our next post…
Next, I need your feedback. Drop me a note at Schilly@ReferralMarketingSuccess or fill in comments below.
I’m interested in finding out what you are doing to expand your referrals and what areas of referral marketing are you excelling with.
Much appreciated,
Your Man, Schilly
Jeff Schilffarth
