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
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