I met Seth Godin years ago at one of those kids activity centers where parents host their pre-schooler’s birthday parties. If you have kids, then you know that pre-school birthday parties means “no drop-off” thus you can’t run a few errands or stop by Dunkin Donuts. I was reading his “Permission Based Marketing” book amongst the happy screams of little kids and I notice out of the corner of my eye that 2 people keep walking past me and smiling. One of them finally approaches me and says, “My husband wrote that book!” The other person walking past me turned out to be her husband, Seth. You’d think that I’d recognize him since his handsome dome was right on the front cover of my book!

I was reading this while my kid was here

Seth’s recent post is about how intangibles are what allows you to charge more for your service vs the commodity-oriented competition. Some of his ideas include participation, enthusiasm, speed, focus, generosity and hope.

Hope? No, not “I hope this deal will close” as that’s not an viable or effective tactic for beating the competition. Instead, “is your offering going to be something great.”

As I’m reading this blog, it struck me that I consider all these intangibles to be my reputation. Just like an intangible, it’s hard to quantify reputation. You either have it or you don’t. Your reputation with your customer is what keeps them coming back to you instead of saving money with your competitor. Your reputation is what gets you the warm welcome when you meet with prospects.

Here’s a few suggestions of mine on ensuring you have the intangibles, the reputation, it takes to compete and win.

With 15+ years of sales experience, often working for small companies with no brand recognition or large marketing budgets, I’ve learned that a repeatable process for selling is a must. At the beginning of the sales cycle, giving and getting referrals is key to my business. Cold calling is a necessary evil in sales but it’s less and less effective every day with caller-id and spam filters.

Many sales reps want to GET referrals or will only GIVE a referral if they get one in return. But the most successful referral-based sales reps, business owners and rainmakers know that giving referrals without expectation of one in return is the best course of action in the long term.

My Karma Keys to a Referral-based Business are -

* It’s better to give then receive

Yes, this seems counterintuitive for a sales person but try to give referrals without the expectation you’ll get one in return. That doesn’t preclude you from remembering who behaves the same way you do and networking with them more than others.

* Give referrals to enhance your reputation

Don’t give referrals just as a favor to the person asking for one. Instead, give a referral to enhance your reputation and trust with your colleague that you are making the referral TO. (Often known as the Giver’s Gain theory)

* Get referrals from Customers, Vendors & Sales Colleagues

Don’t limit asking for referrals from customers as your vendors and sales colleagues often have great connections they’d be happy to introduce you to.

* Reputation Matters

No surprise but the better your reputation, the more likely you are to get referrals and be asked for referrals. If you say you can give a referral, make sure that you follow through with that warm introduction. If you get a referral, treat your colleague’s contact with the utmost respect.

Are you reading Geoffrey James’ blog, “Sales Machine” yet? I was introduced to his blog by Joanne Black of “No More Cold Calling” fame and I’ve enjoyed reading it ever since. Unlike the frequency of the Inquisix blog posts, Geoffrey is posting almost every day and I find them all worth reading. I was recently looking at all the starred items on my blog reader and was surprised to see that I have stars next to 16 of his blog postings, which is the largest number of stars I have for another blog.

Some of the posts are advice on how to improve your selling. Here, here and here.

Others focus on dealing with difficult co-workers and bosses. Here.

Others are about my favorite topic of referral selling. Here, here and here.

He has a recent series of posts where readers email him with sticky issues and he offers advice ala Ann Landers. Here and here. The questioner may not like his answers but I always find something interesting in them.

Like this afternoon’s post. He reviews a company’s video elevator speech and offers a suggestion on how to improve it. First, I always like people who offer solutions when bringing me a problem. Second, the company he’s critiquing is in the business of developing other companies’ elevator pitch. How ironic! Geoffrey, will you help Inquisix with our pitch on being the best networking site for referral-based businesses?

I recently listened to a podcast from John Jantsch at Duck Tape Marketing with Bob Burg. Burg is the author of Endless Referrals and together they discussed why a systematic approach to building referrals was so important.

You can hear the full podcast here.

The first step in deciding to systematically build a referral business is to ask yourself, “Am I getting referrals now? Am I giving referrals now?” If just by accident you are giving and getting then it’s worth building a system. But no system will help you build when there’s nothing to start with.

[shameless pitch] If you are ready to systematically build a referral-based business, then come join us at Inquisix!

To paraphrase, the Golden Rule of Networking is, “…all things being equal, people will do business with people they know, people they like and people they trust.”

Are you this kind of person?

To continue the theme of our March 2008 posting on Recession-Proof Selling, here are three more steps to accelerate your sales, retain your loyal customers and attract new business without increasing your cost of sales.

Steps 1-5 are here.

6. Stay Connected
Get out there. Attend at least one networking event a week. Even better—attend three. Talk to people, find out how you can help each other. Pick up the phone. Email is great, but you’ll get the best information and the most productive relationships when you have a person-to-person conversation.

7. Don’t Cut Price
Many pundits say that the worst thing we can do in a lagging economy is to cut price. Yes and No. Adjusting your price should never be the first thing you do. A marketing expert told me that 95 percent of salespeople cut price before they’re even asked. If you do adjust your price, always get something in return. (Trim fat, not muscle.) Carve out your work and offer smaller chunks. Get in and get started. Help your clients in a down economy and be there when their business turns around.

8. Commit to Building Your Referral Business
What if you could reach your market without hard costs—no marketing budget, no direct mail budget, no advertising budget, no trade show budget. The only budget you need to worry about is your “Time & Referrals” budget—simply your time…your time to ask for referrals!

You know about referrals. When a qualified prospect is referred, you get a new client a minimum of 50 percent of the time, and typically between 70 and 90 percent of the time. Additionally, you are pre-sold, your selling time decreases, you have credibility, and you ace out the competition. There is no other business-development process that can claim these results. Results are the only thing that matter.

Bottom line: Sell more with higher margins, accelerate your “win” ratio, and take business away from the competition.

Become a referral-selling star from your home or office with my No More Cold Calling Webinars.

I have over 1,500 names of business contacts in my Outlook folder. But there’s only about 100 business people that I know well enough to accept a referral from me. I have earned the right to make referrals to these busy people because of my prior interactions with them. So when I make a referral to them for you, it’s because I value my relationship with them and not necessarily because I’m doing you a favor. And I expect you to treat that referral like gold because how you handle the referral is a reflection on me.

Rick Roberge hammered this very issue home in his recent blog posting, “Why am I calling?” A guy could have received a great referral from Rick to one of Rick’s trusted contacts but that guy’s reputation with Rick earned him a “No”. A well-deserved “No” in my opinion. And I just loved Rick’s description of this guy in the second to last paragraph! A great lesson and one that made me laugh.

We have a guest author today. Marty Eerhart is an Inquisix member and manages a nationwide mortgage broker and lender business based in Rhode Island. He previously owned a sales and management training company providing networking training sessions coast-to-coast.

Marty’s Top 7 Rules Of Networking

1. Don’t sell at networking meetings. Your goal is to meet people. You don’t have time to do a good sales presentation. Besides, there will be too many distractions.

2. The best way to get something from networking is to give something. Don’t expect to get leads when you never give others leads. Networking is like marriage: You get out of it what you put in it.

3. Remember me? When someone asks you what you do, say something memorable. This way it is easier for the other person to think of you when they meet someone who needs your product or service.

4. Qualify the people you meet into three categories: Potential clients, source of referrals, interesting-but-nothing-more. Realize that not everyone will be a prospect. Networking is more then prospecting. It is also finding people who could lead you to potential new customers.

5. Networking is more like farming then hunting. It takes time to cultivate and harvest. But once the harvest season starts, you will be well compensated.

6. Did you miss me or am I just another number? Remember the first date you went on? You waxed the car. You put on your best clothing, shaved or put make-up on. You opened the door for the other person. You paid him or her a compliment. But after you see them a few times, the extra efforts are gone. Keep all your meetings like the first one!

7. Remember, it is net*work*, not net*eat* or net*play.* It takes energy and effort to make network work for you.

When I was graduating college and needed appropriate interview clothes, I spent my money on one good suit.

When I was furnishing my first apartment, I spent my money on one piece of quality furniture. Of course it was the stereo system.

When prospecting for business, I’d rather get one good referral instead of making 100 cold calls.

When I think of who I can really count on, I see a few very good friends instead of lots of casual acquaintances.

It seems simple - for the important things, quality triumphs over quality.

I received a request via LinkedIn from a guy who worked for me over 7 years ago asking me to endorse him on LinkedIn. I replied, “Sure, why don’t you write something for me and I’ll edit as appropriate and post.” I haven’t heard back.

I get the feeling he thinks I’m the bad guy here because I was asked to do something by a former co-worker who’s connected to me in LinkedIn and I pushed back.

But he’s looking for a reference from me, one that will be available for all to see. Google him, you’ll find my recommendation. Google me, you’ll find my recommendation of him. So my comments not only say something about him but also about me, too. After all, if I don’t have a good reputation then my recommendation of him is worthless to him. If I recommend everyone who asks me for one, then what’s the value of my recommendation?

If YOU wanted a recommendation from a former boss (or customer), how would you go about it? Would you call them? Send them a personal email? Or send them a form-generated email thru a social network like LinkedIn? I wonder how many other former bosses received the same form email as me?

How much effort was expended asking for this particular recommendation? Does it not deserve the same effort in return?

After reading Joanne’s post yesterday about recession proof selling, I saw this posting about recession proof marketing. Uh oh, it looks like almost everyone is agreeing we’re headed into a recession. (Unless you’re part of the tech industry in Boston, but I digress.)

Brian and Joanne both agree that one of the key areas to focus when economic times are tough is lead generation. Joanne gives her 5 tips for salespeople to improve lead generation through referrals. Brian tells marketers to, “…direct their budgets away from traditional awareness building campaigns that quickly eat up budget and instead expand and optimize lead generation programs that bring measurable results.” And he points to an IDC study that says that 80% of marketing expenditures on lead generation and collateral are wasted because the leads are ignored by sales people.

The Marketing department in a recession needs to focus on those tasks that generate valuable leads for the sales reps. So valuable that these leads are equal in value to the sales rep’s own lead generation through referrals.

Actually, marketing’s lead generation programs should be doing that even when times are booming!

The U.S. economy is in a funk. Have your phones stopped ringing yet? The “R” word–recession–is back. Housing starts are falling, the consumer price index keeps jumping, the stock market is like a roller coaster, massive layoffs occur daily, and renowned companies are declaring bankruptcy. The Fed has lowered its projection for economic growth. Is it 2001 all over again?

How do you tackle economic uncertainty? Cut advertising, travel, training, marketing, and discretionary expense line items? Cut purchasing? Ouch! The pipeline starts to dry up and the anxiety level goes through the roof. Many people think that since there’s nothing they can do, they should just do nothing. But “nothing” is futile thinking.

What if you could reach your market without hard costs–no marketing budget, no direct mail budget, no advertising budget, no trade show budget? The only budget you need to worry about is your “Time & Referrals” budget–simply your time…your time to ask for referrals!

You know about referrals. When a qualified prospect is referred to us, we get a new client a minimum of 50 percent of the time and typically between 70 and 90 percent of the time. Additionally, we are pre-sold, our selling time decreases, we have credibility, and we ace out the competition. There is no other business-development process that can claim these results. Results are the only thing that matters.

Here are five “Killer Steps” to accelerate your sales in a lagging economy, retain your loyal customers, and attract new business without increasing your cost of sales.

1. Broaden Your Perspective
What business are you in? Redefine and reinvent yourself. Is Starbuck’s in the coffee business or the people business? Build new alliances and consider alternate distribution channels. Don’t go solo. Assemble a group of advisors and get their input and creative ideas.

2. Be Nimble and Innovative
You’ll never have all the facts. Make quick decisions. Be fearless and make tough choices. Create new uses for your products. Why not a new business model?

3. Dazzle Your Current Customers
Your current customers need care and feeding. Don’t ignore them at the expense of new business, because they are your best source for new business.

4. Prioritize Wisely
The most important activity for any salesperson is to do what’s “closest to cash” the first thing every single day-whether it’s following up with a prospect, writing a proposal, or closing a deal.

5. Become an Expert
Companies hire experts because they can’t afford to make mistakes. Position your company as the expert with a specific product or in a specific market niche.

Bottom line: Sell more with higher margins, accelerate your “win” ratio, and take business away from the competition.