Circle of Influence

I've been thinking lately about who can best help to refer one business to another. Of course one needs to develop trust in your referral partners but it makes sense to focus on getting the right partners in the first place. I think that a referral partner needs to have three important qualities:

1. Be really good at what they do.
2. Be someone that I can refer to and
3. Be someone who can influence my "ideal or best prospect profile".

For this post, I'd like to focus on the last. It is really important for us to identify our best "prospect". Don't do much hunting till you can identify in detail your best "prospect" profile. Really focus and boil it down to a couple of profiles that define the kind of a person/prospect you need to be referred to. Once you do that, then think of the kinds of vendors/suppliers that might have the best impact/influence on this prospect and particularly not be in competition with you directly or even indirectly.

Only after you have done this, can you really start to develop your circle of referral partners and look at #1 (being really good at what they do (meaning they are referrable and have good traction with their contacts) and #2 someone that I can help.

In the next post, I'll try to identify a few ways to identify your best "prospect" profiles. In the meantime, think for yourself....."If I could get in front of three prospects tomorrow, what kind of an opportunity would be best for me?"

Don't hesitate to leave me a few thougths.

Paul
Up to PAR

First Blog

Hello readers,

This is my first blog so I thot I might explain why I've got a blog and what I expect to post.
First of all, I must tell you that I have white hair (less than before) which qualifies me (in addition to over 30 years of experience) to offer advice to business owners (Hence my company, PAR Business Advisors LLC.) and to mentor business owners and others along their business career path.

In this blog I hope to leave some good tidbits along the way to help others on a regular basis the way that those who have mentored me have done for me. Some of them will taste good to you and you might want more and others just might taste like medicine (as well they should at times) and others might be like other peoples' shoes and not quite fit so you'll toss them aside. That's allright too. The end result, I hope is a better you and a better me.

That's all for now.

Paul Ream (PAR).