Turn Clients Into Word-of-Mouth Machines

This week’s blog post comes from Bill Cates’ newsletter, the Referral Minute (I encourage you to register for it as well since it contains many useful tips). I liked the idea so asked Bill’s permission to reproduce it here so you could also benefit from it.

I just conducted a special referral boot camp for a group of about 50 highly-successful financial advisors (I mean highly successful). One of the advisors shared what he does to generate a steady flow of referrals from his “A” clients.

This advisor turns his clients into Word-of-Mouth Machines by providing them with a continual flow of shirts, umbrellas, and other high-quality, utilitarian items that his clients use on a regular basis. He told the group that “a $50 shirt is a small investment to get your clients to let others know that they are using you.”

I’d like to add emphasis to the words quality and utilitarian. If the items you provide to your clients do not meet both criteria, you are probably wasting your money.

This advisor has created a “culture of referrals” among his clients. They love the work he does and are happy to spread the word in a low-key, easy way.

Isn’t it true that IF we get something from a company, we hardly want to use it because the item SCREAMS “I’m a billboard”?

How does it apply to your organization? What do you give away and will people be proud/happy to use or wear it? Or will they throw it away as seen as they return home?

To your success !

Jan

What Are Your Expectations When You Are Going To Events?

Many people in our workshops tell us that they don’t always feel comfortable when going to business events.

The main reason seems to be more about them than about the other participants.

These are some of the things they say to themselves:
– I’m probably not interesting enough.
– I’m not an expert so I don’t know enough to meaningfully contribute to a conversation.
– I don’t know any other people so other people will think I don’t belong here.
– I just graduated from college/university and don’t have enough experience yet so people won’t find me interesting to talk to.
– I’m not worthy of getting attention from other people.
– I’m an introvert so I lack social skills.

These are all judgments you have about yourself. 95% of the people you will meet, don’t think this way. The other 5% are probably not worth your time (and please don’t let them discourage you!)

The problem is that when you have these thoughts, the expectations you will have from attending an event will probably be low as well.

What the human mind does, is looking for confirmation of its thoughts.

So if your expectation is that nobody wants to talk to you (for whatever reason you have made up), you will look for the confirmation that they are not interested in you.

When someone looks briefly at you and then looks away, you might think they are not interested. The fact that they turn away makes you think they don’t want to talk to you.

However someone who expects that other people want to talk to him, will interpret this brief look as a sign of interest. He will notice the brief contact moment.

In other words: the way you expect things to happen will influence the results in a big way.

What do you expect when you go to events? That people will talk to you or not?

To your success !

Jan

How To Remove People From a LinkedIn Company’s Page?

Once in a while someone from our audiences ask: “There are some people connected to our Company Profile, but they don’t work for our organization. How can we remove them?”

The first step to take is of course to contact those people and ask them to change it on their Profiles themselves.

If that doesn’t work, use these steps (from the Help Center of LinkedIn, at the bottom left of every page on LinkedIn):

You can ask us to remove someone from your Company Page if they don’t work at your company or have never worked at your company.

To file this request, you must have a confirmed company email address registered to your LinkedIn account.

Provide the following information when you contact us:

– The full name of the person.
– A screenshot of your Company Page where that person appears.
– An explanation of why they should be removed.

We’ll review your request and let you know when the person has been removed, or if we need more information.

To your success !

Jan

PS: get your free light version and free updates (50 pages in the meanwhile!) of the book How to REALLY use LinkedIn (or in Dutch: het boek Hoe LinkedIn nu ECHT gebruiken)