You should be checking in on yourself on a regular basis and evaluate whether or not you’re spending your time in the right way. Are you doing the right activities? Are you reaching the level you want to be at? Do you know how you’re spending your time and what you’re doing?

Take a look now at what you’ve achieved and see if you’re going in the direction you want to go.

You want to focus your time on the most important activities you need to do each week to accomplish your goals – the ‘right’ activities.

More likely than not, your key activities should focus around engaging with your network, creating conversations, engaging with your sales funnel and building your partnership teams. This is because these are the activities that will generate new business.

Your first step is to identify the specific ‘right activities’ relevant to your business.

Next, write down about 5 – 7 of these activities, following these criteria:

1.    Does this activity generate new business?

2.    Is this an activity I can (and should) do on a weekly basis?

Commit to these activities and create a plan to spend at least 75-80% of your time doing these things. Otherwise do what you can, even if it’s just a small amount each day.

Stick to this and you’ll be creating new opportunities every week, your business will build momentum and by focusing, you’ll take your business to another level.

Good business is all about what your interactions look like as one person to the other. Your focus needs to be on creating the types of conversations that help build relationships and build rapport.

Keep an open mind and remember that not every conversations has to lead to a sale. You might be creating opportunities to sell but also, very importantly, opportunities to partner or open another door.

You know you’re on the right track as long as the focus is on building the relationship because people buy from those they know like and trust. If have the right sorts of conversations that build trust, rapport and relationships, people will connect with you and are more likely to be able to help you.

Here are 3 quick to help you to understand the other person

1.    Do you have a similar audience? Could this be a cross promotional partner? Might this person be right for your referral team?

2.    Are there any doors you can help the person to open?

3.    Engagement and understanding. You must genuinely engage and be interested in the person, (if not, they’ll sense it). Doing so allows you to really hear them and to quickly identify if you have a solution to their challenge.

When you focus on understanding the person, hearing their needs and challenges and how you can help each other. You move away from a transactional conversation and into building a mutual relationship from which you can both grow and benefit.

Business and getting new business should be so simple and it is so simple when you have the right structure in place.

Focusing on the new website, the logo, changing the brand, the fancy new flyer is not what you need.

Focusing on FB ads, SEO, pay per click is what you need.

Unless you have your 3 segments to marketing all built out and working like a finely tuned steam engine.

In this ‘Get More Referrals’ today podcast I look at exactly what you need to make more sales into your business today!

Remember to grab our ‘Building Your Million Dollar Referral System’ Guide here – www.michaelgriffiths.com.au/guide

Remember to subscribe to us on…

I-Tunes

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U-Tube

The Referral Network On Facebook

{Interesting Experience} We all get frustrated, we all feel stress & overwhelm in different ways, but how you show up in one thing is how you show up across the board.

When you’re identifying possible partnerships, don’t underestimate the little guy. For some, it can be tempting to focus all their time and effort on the big companies. However, don’t rule out smaller businesses! The smaller and lesser known companies can often be your best partners.

They can help you build credibility for future partnerships, help you try out new products or work out kinks in a lower-risk environment. They may also be less likely to be developing multiple strategic partnerships if they’re smaller or in the early stages of their business, making them hungrier to work together. Of course, use your judgment and be cautions as to which smaller businesses have a solid grounding on where the business is going.

FOMO – the “fear of missing out” – is real. It is a phenomenon that drives social behaviour, and social behaviour drives business. When you build solid strategic partnerships, you can create FOMO for each other and in turn, help each other’s business grow.

As always, use your network. Reach out to your network and see who might be able to connect you to businesses that share a similar or complementary customer base. Finally, look for people with whom you can do the same. Before you approach someone to request an introduction, see who you can connect that person with. You’ll bring those people together and they’re both more likely to return the favour.

Last but not least, be confident in your service/product, but above all be confident in yourself. If you don’t believe in your product, you won’t inspire and partner with someone who does.

In this ‘Get More Referrals Today’ podcast we look at the importance of creating engagement with your clients and showing them how much you really care about them. Adding your clients to your social platforms is so clever and so easy to do, BUT there is another HUGE benefit that most of us don’t understand.

Tune in and look at some simple strategies for client engagement that turns them into walking billboards much faster for you.

Remember to grab our ‘Building Your Million Dollar Referral System’ Guide here – www.michaelgriffiths.com.au/guide

Remember to subscribe to us on…

I-Tunes

Spotify

U-Tube

The Referral Network On Facebook

Establishing and building trust are critical factors in building relationships. Trust grows in bits and pieces. Make every interaction count and focus on specific actions you can take to establish and build trust.

Eliminate distractions. Communicate that the person you’re talking to is important. Silence your phone, including email and text notifications and put it phone down, ideally out of sight. If you’re on the phone, make sure you’re somewhere where you can talk freely without interruptions or distractions. If you’re meeting in person, choose a location that won’t be too loud or distracting.

Set time expectations. Tell the person you have X minutes to talk – doing so puts the person at ease because they know what to expect and helps you build reliability. But don’t set a time if you can’t or won’t stick to it.

Ask, then listen. Show genuine interest by asking questions to understand the person, their business and how you could help them.

Understand. Seek to fully understand them. Paraphrase what you heard to show you’re listening and to maintain clear communication.

Watch your and their body language. And watch for non-verbals and body language to learn about the person’s anxiety, confidence, and degree of emotion around the topic.

Share credit generously. When in doubt, share. Don’t take credit for yourself, or allow others to give you credit for an accomplishment that was not all yours.

Never talk negatively about others. Use direct communication and don’t talk with others about problems you are having with someone else.

State your intentions. Be explicit and direct about your intentions. Avoid being unclear or not exactly explicit about what you need or expect.

Be humble. Be timely, be humble and be willing to be wrong. Never withhold potentially useful information, opinions or action to heighten drama, minimise your risk or being wrong or maximise credit for being right.

It is easy to forget this and it is even easier to be consumed so much by our own world that it in facts shoots us in the foot with others.

Think it’s a pretty important message for today 🙂

Come hang out with me and my networks and get great inside tips on getting more referrals into your business in our Facebook group – www.michaelgriffiths.com.au/facebook

Make sure you subscribe to get great small business marketing tips, video’s and how to’s on referral marketing, using your business networks better and creating partnerships to fill your sales funnels. Great for any coach, consultant or professional service business.

Remember to jump into the ‘ Referral Network’ group on Facebook  and create new opportunities with great business owners. www.facebook.com/groups/michaelgriffiths

Remember to Subscribe to our YouTube Channel right here for more great coaching.

Remember to grab your copy of the Referral Game Plan at www.referralmarketingguru.com.au/gameplan

Who is Michael Griffiths? Michael is the founder of Referral Marketing Guru & the #1 authority on referral marketing training around the globe. He speaks some 60+ times just on referral marketing and partnerships and runs the leading referral marketing training program to help you build your own Million Dollar Referral System. He encourages active networking in BNI, Chamber Of Commerce and Referral Groups to build your own referral teams.

Regardless of what you do for work or in life, one of the best ways to make a favourable first impression is to remember people’s names. Remembering someone’s name is the first, most basic step in showing respect and building a meaningful relationship. So why do so many of us struggle?

Some people are naturally better at remembering names than others, but first, let’s talk about why it’s often so difficult to remember names. Many people forget the other person’s name immediately after meeting them. The reason is simple; as the other person is introducing themselves, we aren’t listening! We’re usually thinking about something else, our own introduction and what we’ll say to make a good first impression. We think about the handshake and hope we connect properly. And in sometimes our attention is focused elsewhere.

Now let’s take a look at some helpful tips so you’ll remember more names, and build better relationships at your next networking event.

Commit and Concentrate. You can only remember what you observe in the first place. If you’re distracted or if not paying attention, you won’t register the person’s name so you can’t possibly remember it. Commit to being 100% present with the person and concentrate on what they’re saying. Focus on paying attention to the person’s name when you first hear it, and forming an impression of the person.

Repeat. Repeat their name as they introduce themselves. Use their name a few times during your conversation to help you remember it during your chat and afterwards. An easy way to do this is to ask them a question and include their name. (“So, what type of business are you in, Michael?”)

Associate Try to make an association between the person’s face and an image the name suggests. Even if you can’t create an image for the person or name, just by working on it, you’re reinforcing your memory.

If you remember visual images most easily, try creating an image based on the name and linking it to some physical characteristic of the person. If you’re auditory, try rhymes or songs.

Conclude with their name: Close the conversation by saying their name. It’ll be validating for them, build trust in the relationship and give you another chance to convince your neurons to fire that way again.