Every business owner has opened up an email from a lead agency promising to send 10, 20, or 100 leads per month. But every business owner knows that not all leads are qualified leads and not all business referrals are created equal. At BNI, we strive to make all referrals great.
So what makes for a great referral? How do you increase them? And how can you use BNI networking to get and give better referrals? BNI training goes into it in depth, and you learn a lot from participating in your chapter, but we’ll break it down into a few steps.
Leads vs Referrals vs BNI Referrals
Some people use the terms "referrals" and "leads" interchangeably, but BNI doesn’t. For our purposes, a lead is anyone who might be a good prospect for your business. You can get leads from a thorough search on LinkedIn or Google. A referral, however, is someone who has heard about you from someone else.
Great BNI referrals share certain criteria:
-
The BNI member knows the person on some level and has brought you up.
-
The referral is interested, or at least willing, to speak with you.
-
A referral is someone who meets the criteria for someone you’d like to do business with, i.e., needs your services, is in your service area, and meets any other criteria you have. (Members can occasionally get this wrong, but get better at it as time goes on.)
-
Ideally, your fellow BNI member has obtained permission for you to contact the referral, rather than the other way around, and has provided you with the contact information.
Referral Marketing Best Practices
Since BNI is built on Givers Gain®, we know the best way to get good referrals is to learn how to give better referrals. So, how do you give great BNI referrals?
The best way to get great referrals is to use the BNI networking tools you already have. We’ve talked in depth about the power of one before. Make sure you’re doing everything you need to do to stay in the green on your Power of One Traffic Lights report.
And then, when you’re at your chapter meeting and at your one-to-one each week, listen carefully. After the meeting or during the one-to-one meeting, ask good questions. Learn how to spot the best referrals for your partners and how to ask for them.
What Do You Do After You’ve Received Great BNI Referrals?
Here’s one important thing some people overlook. What do you do after you’ve received a great BNI referral?
First, follow up with the referral right away. Second, mark it in the BNI Connect app. Finally, thank your BNI referral partner!
People love to help, but they also love to be recognized for helping. Not only will telling them what they’ve done for you make them happy and more willing to help you, but it will also give them a better idea of the perfect referrals for you.
That’s what we call a win-win!
You may also choose to go a step further. Think about what led your referral partner to give you such a good referral. What made the referral so good, and what did you do to solicit it?
Then reverse engineer it so you can duplicate it for other members of your BNI chapter. You can then use weekly thirty to sixty seconds to ask for similarly great BNI referrals!
