Your weekly disruption

Last week we looked at the power of positioning and in particular the first three growth platforms of the New World Selling ladder – marketing, sales & relationships.

This week we are going to look at the growth platforms that differentiate the black belts of selling (aka the tipping point). This dawned on me this morning when I was watching Sunrise on Channel 7 and they were doing a segment on a coffee that was being sold for $150 per serve. Now the beans may be spectacular; however I am speculating that the asking price hasn’t come down to marketing, sales nor relationships. The tipping point occurs due to the referrals, recommendations and positioning that the café has been able to attain.

Word of mouth rules! When you have past clients talking about how great you are and actually referring to you then business just got a whole lot easier. Basically you get good at what you do then over time get known for being great at it. This is terrific when you have time to become known, it is not so great when you are new to a business or simply trying to grow faster than the natural organic growth that doing great work requires.

There are three essential qualities required to be referable. These qualities instruct the actions you need to take to make referrals as integral part of your business.

Quality One: Be Reliable

People don’t refer the smartest or most talented person they know, they refer the smartest and most talented person they know who they can rely on to do what they say.

Referrals become a circle with three reference points, wherein energy moves from the referee to the referred and to the referrer and back again. The dance between each is essentially based on trust. If you refer someone to me you are trusting me with your reputation, the person you referred is of course trusting you that I will do what you promised them I could. So to complete the triangle I need to be reliable.

Quality Two: Be Grateful

When someone gives you a referral you need to say thank you. Most of the time it’s not about the money. It is about showing appreciation for the trust. It’s about treating the referral as a gift – at the very least say thank you. And this is a great time to go old school and unplugged. Go out today and buy 100 cards. Every time you get a referral from someone at the very least send them a handwritten card of appreciation.

Quality Three: Be generous

A person who is referred has high expectations. It is hard to meet these expectations with average. Be as generous with your time and knowledge as you possibly can, because a person who is delighted beyond expectation can become a raving fan. But you have to overdo it, be more, do more and make every “stuff up” a moment of truth. Referrals are great as they are a form of low cost of advertising. They are not free though. Exceeding expectations is something you need to obsess about. It is what Steve Jobs called being “insanely great.”

A referral is great, but they are often passive in nature, hard to track and not always going to lead to the most qualified client. Many who receive lots of referrals end up in an unexpected and odd dilemma. It’s easy to think that any client is a good client, but as anyone who has run a client facing business knows, some people are good for your business and some not so much.

The point is that referrals can be hard to manage and can be hit and miss. Don’t get us wrong, we love them and they are the fourth platform for growth, but partnerships can offer a high value client type. We call these recommendations.

A recommendation platform is one in which key people put you forward and you have a formal relationship with them, an agreement for them to actively position you to their clients and derive a benefit from them engaging with you in some way.

Five principles for setting up effective joint ventures and partnerships:

When you and your company are positioned as a market leader or specialist in your domain, then things change exponentially. Being positioned as an expert in your field is a thing of beauty for a salesperson. It means that your job is now to educate, not convince. People come to you for advice and your understanding of them, their problems and their aspirations. From this place sales is completely an act of service.

Positioning is the ultimate pull platform – you attract people to you rather than having to go out into the market to find prospects. Positioning also means that the conversation is not centred on ‘price’. A situation that has benefitted the salesforce at Apple’s genius bar in every store.