If we were in a court of law would you be judged ‘Guilty!’ for giving quality referrals? Would your business colleagues say the same thing of you? In today’s rush, rush, rush society it can be difficult to slow down enough to invest the time to put all the ingredients together that make a quality referral.
Over the years I’ve been privileged to be a member of some great networking and mastermind groups including the Samurai Executive Networking Group and the Itasca Bank Women’s Initiative. My top-notch facilitators in these groups (Bob Lambert and Diane Middlebrooks) teach us to always use the Golden Rule in business. You guessed it ‘Do unto others what you’d like to have done to you’. You don’t hear this too much in today’s day and age but I’m old-fashioned and so, thankfully, are many of my colleagues and clients. When I invite guests to networking functions especially Samurai I tell them that both the seated members and guests are givers not takers. The ‘Gimme gimmee my name is Jimmy!’ or show up and spam people with business cards are not the folks we want to be around. Quality will always trump quantity.
Quality means investing the time to know, really know, what your colleagues’ businesses are all about. This includes learning:
- Their mission and vision
- Services they provide
- Target market
- Who their team members are
- What awards they’ve won
- Who they want to be connected to
Yep, this all takes building that ‘R’ word – R-E-L-A-T-I-O-N-S-H-I-P. I encourage you to go out today and be a giver. It may not come back immediately but at some point you will judged ‘Guilty’ of doing great things!
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