Your foundation for building your practice with referrals is the set of attitudes, beliefs and assumptions you bring to your prospecting efforts. This is your referral mindset, and to fully maximize your selling potential there are seven attitudes you must develop and use. These attitudes will create the most powerful action in gaining an unlimited supply of high-quality referrals.
As I share this referral mindset with you, give yourself a rating of 1-5 on how well you've adopted each one.
1. "I meet my prospects the way they prefer to meet me." How does your next great client want to meet you? Simple! Through an introduction or referral from a friend, family member, colleague or other trusted advisor. Cold calling is purely a numbers game that aggravates most prospects. Once you realize that a client's preferred way to meet you is through a referral, it MUST become your primary method of meeting them.
2. "I understand that building my practice from referrals is the most cost-effective and time-efficient marketing strategy available." What does it cost to buy leads? Run a direct mail campaign? Host a seminar? Lots! What does it cost to build your practice from referrals? Virtually nothing. A practice built on referrals is clearly the most profitable way to go.
3. "I work to fully leverage the life-time value of my clients." The longer the relationship lasts, the more trust you can build (if you provide quality on-going service) and the more high-quality referrals you will receive. The life-time value of a client is not just the business they can do with you over their lifetime, it's who they can introduce you to as well. Quite often, the best referrals come later on in the relationship – as long as it's not merely a transactional relationship. Handling transactions does not make you referable. Putting people through a process and following that with ongoing great service does!
