We have the opportunity to ask all our fellow BNI members for introductions to people who could be of value to our business approximately 48 times a year. Whether it’s a potential customer, or someone in a complimentary field who can direct multiple customers our way, there’s always someone who we’d benefit from meeting. These opportunities can come to us in the form of our Weekly Presentations, where we address our Chapter and make our referral requests.
What a valuable opportunity!
Our fellow members have extended networks and we only have a limited idea of who they know within those networks.
Perhaps there’s a person out there who could massively increase your business’ success, if you could only get a meeting with them! It could just be that someone in your Chapter knows this person. Maybe they’re a customer of theirs, or a friend, or relation. Regardless of what the connection is, when you make your fellow members aware that an introduction to that particular contact is valuable to you, the chances of the introduction occurring increase handsomely.
I mean, would your fellow members generally know to introduce that individual contact to you, if you’ve never told them you want to meet that person?
Laser Specificity.
When you’re laser specific with your referral request and you ask for an introduction to someone by…
- Name
- Company
- And position
…it makes it much easier for your fellow members to meet your request. If they know the person, there should be a straight forward introduction (if not, perhaps a One-to-One with that member is required first, to discover what the roadblock is).
They may not know that person specifically, but now that you’ve made them aware of the kind of industries you’re looking to meet people from and the ideal positions within that kind of industry / company, they can think of other people they know who are similar to the person you specifically asked for (and who would most likely be a valuable connection for you too).
Minimal effort, maximum impact.
It only takes a few moments to find the names of people you’d like to meet in business. Start with the industry, then Google for local companies within that industry and visit their website. There’s a good chance that people and their roles will be listed on the company website. If not, you’ll need to do the extra step a company search on LinkedIn to find out the name of the person you want to be introduced to. With just a small amount of effort on your part, you significantly reduce the effort required by your fellow members to find you a referral and therefore substantially increase your chances of generating new business.
Next time you’re preparing your referral request, avoid being general with it. Get specific, and enjoy the terrific results.
For more about the value of specific referral requests, check out this great podcast from Dr. Ivan Misner.
Or for other informative BNI Blogs, simply click here.
There’s also plenty of great informative podcasts to listen to here.