Truth or Delusion?

Busting Networking's Biggest Myths

Ivan R. Misner

• Publisher: Thomas Nelson
• Year: 2006
• eBook ISBN: 9781418530969
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Marketing digitale
• Index: Business

Many books teach the "who / what / where / why / how" of professional networking. Truth or Delusion separates the reality from the fantasy by presenting Truths and Delusions about networking and then shows why they are either real or fakes. For example: Delusion: The best way to ensure referral success is to treat your referral sources by the "Golden Rule." Treat them the way you would want to be treated. Truth: The best way is to treat your referral sources the way THEY want to be treated. The referral process is more about emotion than facts. Find out how your referral sources want to be treated and how they would like you to treat their referrals.

1. TRUTH OR DELUSION?
Networking is a fad.

DELUSION. Yes, that’s right. We’re starting with the biggest delusion of all. It wasn’t that long ago when businesspeople were saying, “Oh, networking is just the newest craze; it’ll never last. You have to get out there and pound the pavement, put up billboards, and place ads in the mass media, the yellow pages, the insides of buses, the outsides of people’s shaved heads . . .”

Did you say Truth? Well then, you haven’t been paying attention to what’s been going on around you. In our lifetime, an entirely new field of study is being codified. Whether you call it networking, word of mouth, referral marketing, relationship marketing, or social capital, it’s all about people learning how to connect with other people in meaningful ways despite, or possibly because of, our technological revolution. Geography no longer matters; if you share an interest with someone halfway around the planet, making the connection online is as easy as—no, easier than—picking up the phone and dialing.

And yet, as new as all this technological connectivity is, it simply takes us back to an earlier era, when we lived in small communities with our extended families and knew all our neighbors. We worked for and with people we knew personally. We bought everything we needed from people who were our lifelong friends, were treated for illnesses by doctors who had cared for our parents, and trusted our finances to accountants we saw every week in church.

We don’t live in a Little House on the Prairie anymore. We don’t know our neighbors, and we have very few, if any, relationships with the local business community. When these communities fragmented, much of the community spirit faded as well. No longer did we feel responsibility for the welfare of our friends and neighbors, or that we all shared in the common good. The entire decade of the 1980s was called the “Me Generation,” when businesspeople pursued their own interests at the expense of everybody else.

Networking is no more a fad than
sales and marketing.

Referral networking arose in the vacuum created by this disappearing sense of community. It has become a way of marketing your business by building the businesses of your fellow networkers. The old ways have become new again. In networking organizations, though we may be lost in a sea of people in our big cities, we form relationships and do business with people who live near us and share a mutual interest in helping our businesses grow. At the same time, our reach is worldwide, giving us vastly more options and resources to tap for any need. It’s the best of both worlds—and referral marketing is the discipline that brings it all together.

The first time I was asked, “Isn’t this networking thing just a fad?” was in 1987. The question came from a newspaper reporter with one of the largest newspapers in the United States. Confidently I told her, “Networking is no more a fad than sales and marketing.” Since I had just started this little networking organization called BNI^® (Business Network International), I was hoping that my prediction would prove to be as true as my answer sounded. More than twenty years later, I can confidently say it was. Since that reporter asked me if networking was just a fad, I’ve written eight books, and my organization has opened thousands of networking groups in dozens of countries across the globe. We have groups speaking almost a dozen different languages, operating on every populated continent of the world. In addition, these groups pass millions of referrals, generating billions of dollars’ worth of business for one another. Recently, we’ve developed a spin-off company (the Referral Institute^® ), which trains people on something that colleges and universities don’t—how to network effectively. In just a few short years, this business has expanded to several countries as well.

Twenty years ago, my instincts told me that I was on to something that would stand the test of time, but I didn’t have the body of work behind me that I do now. We truly live in a high-tech, high-touch society. The more technologically advanced we become, the more important it is to reach out and touch real people in our work—to connect on a personal level with people. That is what networking is all about.

—DR. IVAN MISNER

2. TRUTH OR DELUSION?
If you provide good customer service,
people will refer business to you.

DELUSION. And here’s the reason. Good customer service is a prerequisite. It’s a minimum expectation.

Good customer service is a prerequisite.

Think about it. Would you refer somebody to me if I provided lousy customer service? Of course not. You’d end up looking like a dope in the eyes of the prospect. Your own credibility would suffer.

Good customer service is part of what the prospect expects when you refer him to me. If you’re recommending me to him, I must be something pretty special, right? And if I want to keep that customer coming back, I’ll need to give him more than the minimum expectation of simply good customer service; I’ll need to provide great, outstanding, memorable customer service to really stand out.

This “Truth or Delusion?” was the genesis for this book. On several occasions, my coauthors and I discussed the point that I made in my book, The World’s Best Known Marketing Secret, about how people were under the delusion that good customer service alone was enough to enable them to build their business through word of mouth. We shared stories about people we’d met over the years who had gone out of business waiting for good word of mouth to rescue them. This got us thinking and talking about all the other delusions people had about networking and referral marketing. Truth or Delusion? We could write a whole book about it. Truth!

—DR. IVAN MISNER

People don’t refer you because you meet minimum expectations. They refer you because they expect you to do a good job, which enhances their relationship with the person they are referring. They may not even be doing business with you, so customer service may not be an issue with them personally—but of course they expect you to provide outstanding value to the prospect. They want the prospect to come back to them and say, “Thanks for sending me to Joe Trueblue. He had just what I needed, and the service was great. You sure know some outstanding people!”

Your referral source has a strong interest in making sure everyone comes out a winner. She knows that when the happy customer comes back to you again and again, you’re more likely to send business her way when the need arises. The great service you provide to the customer comes back to you in the form of a stronger relationship with your referral partner.

Being in a referral group such as BNI^® is one of several important parts of an effective word-of-mouth marketing plan. One of the things these groups emphasize is that you need to be very specific in what you do and in how your product or service is uniquely valuable. If you use general terms, you’re at the lowest level of competitive effectiveness. And if you say “customer service,” that’s not what people are buying.

We all know of companies and salespeople that couldn’t stay in business, despite having superior products. We’re also familiar with companies and salespeople that were remarkably successful with just an average product.

Of course, having an excellent product is important. However, technology today has made that commonplace and expected. In order to have qualified prospects “beating a path to your door,” you must be able to network and to market yourself and your product or service in such a way that it makes people want to do business with you and refer you to others. You need to provide them with such a great buying experience that they know they made the right decision. However, to get them there in the first place, it’s the networking and marketing that’s most important.

—BOB BURG, author of Endless Referrals

Don’t sell the process; sell the result.

As Ivan points out in his book, The World’s Best Known Marketing Secret, unhappy customers are eleven times more likely to talk about your business than happy customers. Good customer service only reduces negative word of mouth; it doesn’t necessarily increase your business through positive word of mouth.

Don’t sell the process; sell the result. Talking about what you do does not motivate people as much as what happens to their client or friend as a result of what you do. I used to sell copiers, and I never met anybody who was buying good customer service. They were buying the ability to make photocopies quickly and reliably. They weren’t shopping for customer service, because that’s a prerequisite. It’s part of what creates that end result.

—MIKE GARRISON

Unhappy customers are eleven times more likely to
talk about your business than happy customers.

3. TRUTH OR DELUSION?
If you provide outstanding customer service,
and your referral partner has experienced that
as a customer, it can definitely increase the
number of referrals you receive.

TRUTH. Although good customer service is a prerequisite for cultivating your referral network, great customer service to a referral partner can be a jump start. Referral networks and other referral settings often feature third-party testimonials, in which someone who has used your product or service (in this case, your referral partner) tells the group, “I’ve used Moe’s products, and I’m here to tell you, they’re the best I’ve ever found.” Hearing it directly from someone they know is often enough to get people to believe it and act on that belief.

Never underestimate the power of the
third-party testimonial.

I often tell people that testimonials are a very important part of the referral process, especially within referral groups. Never underestimate the power of the third-party testimonial. When you stand up and say, “I’ve used this person, and you should use this person too, because . . .” and then go on to explain why, it makes a huge difference in how people view that service provider. Your experiences become my experiences. This, of course, makes it much easier for people to refer that provider, even if they haven’t personally used his services yet.

—DR. IVAN MISNER

4. TRUTH OR DELUSION?
Word-of-mouth marketing is always working.

TRUTH. It just may not be working in your favor!

You may be thinking, Hey, I’m not asking anybody to refer me, so word-of-mouth marketing is not something I need to concern myself with. If I provide good products or services, and if my customer service is up to par, I’ll naturally get some customers by word of mouth. Why bother with plans and strategies? Why spend all that extra effort to get people to refer me? I’m getting word of mouth free, every day, and it’s not costing me any time or effort.

Well, here’s the thing: Yes, you’re getting word of mouth every day. It just may not be the kind you’re thinking of—the good kind. The message you’re sending out may not be clear. It may be too vague. It may even be—surprise!—negative.

Negative? But I have plenty of satisfied customers.

Yes, you probably have lots of satisfied customers, but they’re not the ones doing the most talking. You may have ten or one hundred satisfied customers for every one customer who leaves your shop less than happy. But who talks loudest and longest? It’s that demanding, unreasonable customer who thinks you’re a lousy tailor because you wouldn’t take care of her snarling, yapping Cairn Terrier while she went next door to the bakery.

Yes, you probably have lots of satisfied customers,
but they’re not the ones doing the most talking.

Negative word of mouth has legs. A study conducted in Texas revealed that the average dissatisfied customer gripes to eleven people about his experience, and these eleven in turn tell five others apiece—sixty-six (55 plus the original 11) horror stories about one unhappy trip to your store. Ask yourself: does your average happy customer make sure that sixty-six other people hear about your great service? Of ...

Table of contents

• COVER PAGE
• TITLE PAGE
• COPYRIGHT PAGE
• DEDICATION
• CONTENTS
• INTRODUCTION
• 1. NETWORKING IS A FAD
• 2. IF YOU PROVIDE GOOD CUSTOMER SERVICE, PEOPLE WILL REFER BUSINESS TO YOU
• 3. IF YOU PROVIDE OUTSTANDING CUSTOMER SERVICE, AND YOUR REFERRAL PARTNER HAS EXPERIENCED THAT AS A CUSTOMER, IT CAN DEFINITELY INCREASE THE NUMBER OF REFERRALS YOU RECEIVE
• 4. WORD-OF-MOUTH MARKETING IS ALWAYS WORKING
• 5. TO BE GOOD AT NETWORKING, YOU HAVE TO BE A REAL “PEOPLE PERSON.”
• 6. PRACTICE MAKES PERFECT. PRACTICING NETWORKING SKILLS WILL MAKE YOU A BETTER NETWORKER
• 7. YOU CAN’T PREDICT REFERRALS
• 8. YOU CAN CONTROL THE AMOUNT AND FREQUENCY WITH WHICH REFERRALS COME TO YOU
• 9. THERE IS AN UNLIMITED SUPPLY OF REFERRALS
• 10. YOU DON’T KNOW WHO THEY KNOW
• 11. AN ACCOUNTANT IS THE BEST CENTER-OF-INFLUENCE REFERRAL SOURCE FOR A FINANCIAL ADVISOR
• 12. YOU SHOULD ALWAYS GET A REFERRAL WHEN YOU’RE IN FRONT OF THE REFERRAL SOURCE
• 13. A DIRECTOR OF A NONPROFIT ORGANIZATION CAN BE ONE OF YOUR BEST REFERRAL SOURCES
• 14. PEOPLE WHO LIKE, CARE, AND RESPECT YOU WILL REFER BUSINESS TO YOU
• 15. THE MAJORITY OF BUSINESS PROFESSIONALS WHO GET INVOLVED IN REFERRAL GROUPS ARE SEASONED, ESTABLISHED INDIVIDUALS
• 16. TO MAXIMIZE YOUR CHANCES OF GETTING GOOD REFERRALS, IT’S BEST TO MOVE FROM ONE NETWORKING GROUP TO ANOTHER AT REGULAR INTERVALS
• 17. THE BEST WAY TO ENSURE REFERRAL SUCCESS IS TO FOLLOW THE GOLDEN RULE: TREAT YOUR REFERRAL SOURCE THE WAY YOU WANT TO BE TREATED
• 18. THE PERSON BENEFITING THE MOST IN THE REFERRAL PROCESS IS THE PERSON RECEIVING THE REFERRAL
• 19. WORD OF MOUTH IS THE SAFEST FORM OF ADVERTISING
• 20. IF YOU’RE GETTING ALL THE REFERRALS YOU NEED, YOU DON’T NEED TO SELL
• 21. THE MORE REFERRALS, THE BETTER
• 22. ONE OF THE ADVANTAGES OF REFERRAL MARKETING IS YOU HAVE PEOPLE YOU CAN BLAME IF THINGS FALL THROUGH
• 23. FOR NETWORKING SUCCESS, WHEN DESCRIBING YOUR PRODUCTS OR SERVICES, YOU SHOULD TRY TO TELL PEOPLE ABOUT EVERYTHING YOU DO
• 24. YOUR BEST SOURCE OF REFERRALS IS YOUR CUSTOMERS
• 25. YOUR REFERRAL STRATEGY SHOULD BE CUSTOMIZED FOR EACH REFERRAL SOURCE AND SALES PROSPECT
• 26. YOU CAN NETWORK ANYWHERE, ANYTIME, ON ANY OCCASION—EVEN AT A FUNERAL
• 27. IT’S NOT WHAT YOU KNOW, BUT WHO YOU KNOW
• 28. THE MORE NETWORKING MEETINGS YOU GO TO, THE BETTER
• 29. IT’S BEST TO LIMIT THE NUMBER AND TYPES OF NETWORKING GROUPS YOU BELONG TO
• 30. UNLIKE COLD-CALLING, THE REFERRAL PROCESS IS DIFFICULT TO MEASURE
• 31. EVEN AFTER YOU RECEIVE A REFERRAL, YOU SHOULD PUT JUST AS MUCH EFFORT INTO YOUR REFERRAL MARKETING AS YOU DID BEFORE YOU RECEIVED THAT REFERRAL
• 32. YOUR ABILITY TO HANDLE REFERRALS FROM YOUR NETWORK IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN YOUR NETWORK’S ABILITY TO HANDLE REFERRALS FROM YOU
• 33. ONCE YOU’VE BEEN REFERRED TO SOMEONE NEW, A GREAT WAY TO STRENGTHEN YOUR RELATIONSHIP WITH YOUR NEW CUSTOMER IS TO REFER HIM TO SOMEONE ELSE
• 34. WHEN ONE OF YOUR BUSINESS RELATIONSHIPS PASSES YOU A REFERRAL, THAT MEANS THE PROSPECT IS READY TO HEAR A PRESENTATION ON YOUR PRODUCT OR SERVICE
• 35. WHEN YOU GIVE REFERRALS TO OTHERS, YOU CAN EXPECT THEM TO GIVE YOU REFERRALS IN RETURN
• 36. THE LARGER THE NETWORKING GROUP, THE MORE REFERRALS IT WILL GENERATE
• 37. CUSTOMERS GENERATED THROUGH REFERRALS HAVE A LONGER “SHELF LIFE.”
• 38. BY GIVING REFERRALS TO PEOPLE, YOU ARE ALSO TRAINING THEM TO GIVE REFERRALS TO OTHERS
• 39. IF YOU JOIN GROUPS AND ORGANIZATIONS AND BECOME ACTIVE BY VOLUNTEERING, TAKING ON RESPONSIBILITIES, AND WORKING SIDE-BY-SIDE WITH OTHER PEOPLE ON A COMMON GOAL, THEY WILL GET TO KNOW YOU AND REFER BUSINESS TO YOU
• 40. WHEN EVALUATING NETWORK GROUPS TO JOIN, BE SURE TO FIND ONE THAT DOES NOT FOCUS EXCLUSIVELY ON YOUR TARGET MARKET
• 41. THE MORE YOU PROMOTE YOURSELF, THE MORE REFERRALS YOU’LL GET
• 42. IN A NETWORKING GROUP, YOU SHOULD TALK ABOUT MORE THAN JUST BUSINESS
• 43. PEOPLE ARE MORE LIKELY TO REFER OTHERS TO YOU IF YOU GIVE THEM A FINDER’S FEE
• 44. HELPING PEOPLE WORKS. YOU DON’T HAVE TO HAVE A SYSTEM FOR HELPING PEOPLE—JUST HELP PEOPLE, AND YOU’LL GET REFERRALS
• 45. NETWORKING IS ALL ABOUT REFERRALS
• 46. NETWORKING IS A UNIQUELY AMERICAN PHENOMENON
• 47. THE NUMBER-ONE TRAIT OF MASTER NETWORKERS IS THAT THEY GIVE REFERRALS TO OTHERS
• 48. THE BEST WAY TO FOLLOW UP WITH SOMEONE YOU’VE JUST MET IS WITH A HANDWRITTEN NOTE
• 49. READING MORE ABOUT NETWORKING WILL INCREASE YOUR BUSINESS BY REFERRAL
• ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
• ABOUT THE AUTHORS