Building Your Referral Network

(For all my Business Owner friends - here is a good reminder of how powerful personal referrals are)

Presented By:
Monika Hengesbach, EA, ATA, ATP
Decision Financial Services, Inc.

How many of us have attended a chamber of commerce event or other networking venues and collected a handful of business cards and swore that we would contact all of these people the very next day? How many of us, weeks later, still seeing the stack of business cards on our desk, have yet to contact them? How many of us eventually just throw them away? Not a very effective way of networking, is it?

Word of mouth marketing is the best way of receiving referrals and as entrepreneurs we can spend hundreds of hours meeting fellow business owners in an attempt to get our name out. What if we could spend those hours just marketing to our sphere of influence (SOI)? Would that be more effective? You bet!

The first step is to identify the people in your SOI: power partners, people who get more business when you get more business, people you have given referrals to, anyone who has given you referrals, and other members of business referral groups.

Once you have identified the people in your SOI, the second step is to have a meeting with them to see how both of you can help each other’s business grow. For example, if you are writing a monthly newsletter or blog have your SOI contribute an article. Not only do they get their name out to all of your clients and contacts but you get your name out to their clients and contacts. Another great example is to arrange “lunches” with your SOI’s referral sources. If they are a referral source to your sphere of influence, they would be a good referral source to you too. Plus it is more powerful to have someone introduce you than you just blindly picking up the phone and making the introduction yourself.

And the last step to building your referral network is WORK it. Otherwise you are back to looking at that stack of business cards and saying “next time I will…..”

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More about Monika and DFS

If you run your own business, you know important it is to find the right business financial partner. You know how important an accountant can be. But not all accountants are created equal!

Most accountants do a fine job recording the history you give them. They compile monthly, quarterly, and annual books and records. At tax time, they put the “right” numbers in the right boxes on the right forms. But then they call it a day.

At my firm, we’re different. We don’t just record history. We help you write it, with a proactive attitude and complete menu of tax and accounting services.

For more information about our services, visit us at http://www.decisionfinancial.com/

or give us a call 925.937.2319