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Do you "Give to Get" or "Give for Money" Referrals?

3 Aug

Did anyone see JigSaw’s recent announcement that they’ve sent up an exchange where you can sell a referral to your contacts?  It’s called “JigSaw Connect” and given the number of members they have (850K registered  members), this could be the first exchange to make selling a referral by the individual sales rep successful.

Selling a referral to your customer isn’t anything new.  Companies have been doing it at the corporate level for years.  They call it the affiliate program or the business development partner program or just the reseller program.  And this seems to be a well understood and accepted practice by the customers.

Individual sales reps and agents selling a referral to their customer in certain industries isn’t new, either.  The introduction of a mortgage broker by the real estate agent that just found your new home probably comes with a kick-back to the agent from the mortgage broker.  Maybe the referral fee is not as well understood by the consumer but I don’t think anyone would be surprised.

Now JigSaw is taking this to a new level.  It’s at the rep level where an individual rep can earn $200 by referring their customer to any vendor that’s signed up to advertise on JigSaw Connect.  And it’s many industries, even ones where traditionally the selling of referrals at the rep level is frowned upon.  The only other site I’ve seen that offers this exchange of referrals for cash is SalesConx, a startup based in New York City.  But they don’t have the membership scale that JigSaw has.

I’ll be very interested to see how JigSaw Connect fares.  JigSaw itself received a lot of negative press early on because people were offended that their business information was sold anonymously.  JigSaw will say that they’re just collecting business information differently than a Hoovers or OneSource but aren’t any different in the information they deliver.  I’ve used JigSaw for years and Inquisix is a JigSaw data partner so I don’t have an issue with the service.

Still, selling referrals versus giving referrals is an interesting dilemma for some.  BNI members give referrals to get them in return, i.e. “Givers Gain“.  At Inquisix, we encourage members to give referrals to increase their reputation with their own customer.  But no money is exchanged.

Would you anonymously sell the business cards you’ve collected to a data broker, i.e. JigSaw?

Would you sell a referral to a business contact you have?

There’s a big jump in effort, responsibility, and reputation between the 2 questions.  Let’s see how this pans out.

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Future of B2B sales & Effective Networking Tips

30 Jul

In addition to the blogs listed to the right under the Inquisix blog roll, there are many other really interesting blogs that I read on a regular basis. Posts at these blogs that I recently found interesting enough to star and comment on are below:

  • The Future of B2B: Like It or Not – If Geoffrey’s predictions come true, selling will be 90% science and 10% art. And a lot less “interesting” especially for the traditional outside field rep.
  • 9 Tips for Effective Networking – Nice list of tips for effective networking. I’d boil them down to “get comfortable out of your comfort zone” and “Be Brief and Be Bold!”

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Consummate Networkers Presentation by Inquisix

29 Jul

As mentioned in a previous post, Pat Weber runs an online networking group called the Consummate Networkers and she invited me to speak to her group last week.

Pat has three key areas of consummate networking:

* Show Up
* Dive In
* Follow up

Pat asked me to talk about the Dive-In area so I presented to over 30 attendees on, “The Morning After….Attending the Networking Event.” We used the BlitzTime solution so that everyone could see & hear the presentation and then do one-on-one networking afterwards. All from the comfort of their home, office or car.

http://www.viddler.com/player/b22c378e/

Other blog posts (and Tweets) I found interesting and starred this week

23 Jul

In addition to the blogs listed to the right under the Inquisix blog roll, there are many other really interesting blogs that I read on a regular basis. Posts at these blogs that I recently found interesting enough to star and comment on are below:

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Phone Event on July 23rd – The Day After the Networking Event

21 Jul

Pat Weber runs an online networking group called the Consummate Networkers and she’s invited me to speak to her group this week. The event is phone-based and anyone can join the call via BlitzTime.

networking

Date: Thursday, July 23rd at 7pm ET

Topic: The Day After the Networking Event – What Do I Do Now?

Why not join us and participate by signing up here? The event is free and you’ll have a chance to meet other professionals interested in networking.

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Can I Date Your Sister?

10 Jul

Very nice article by Michael Katz about why asking your clients for referrals is a bad idea. His analogy is that asking customers for referrals is like someone asking you if they can date your sister. As I’ve written before, I agree about not asking your customers for referrals and instead ask them to be references.

Michael sends out an e-newsletter focused on writing better e-newsletters. You can read why Michael feels the same way I do about customers and referrals here. If you’d like to listen to the newsletter instead, click here.

And why a penguin below? Because Michael’s company is called Blue Penguin Development.

penguin_standing

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Other blog posts I found interesting and starred this week

9 Jul

In addition to the blogs listed to the right under the Inquisix blog roll, there are many other really interesting blogs that I read on a regular basis. Posts at these blogs that I recently found interesting enough to star and comment on are below:

  • How to Harshly Remind a Customer… – With customers and prospects not responding as often as salesreps would like, here are 3 good ways to reach out them for a response. Note that none of them use the, “Just checking in” cliche.
  • How to Stay “At Will” Employed – I guess posts with lists of to-do’s are resonating with me this week. This post resonating with me even more because a great sales guy I know just got laid off even though he was doing well. Probably because he wears his heart on his sleeve and championed the customer’s issues too loudly at corporate, which violates Garth’s first, second and third items for staying employed. I’d recommend The Sales Ladder  to Garth’s friend.
  • Make better cold calls by ending the “How are you today?” habit – There a few telesales cliches that just have to go. Geoff mentions a few. How about, “Just checking in…” as another? If you’re not making the initial calls, are you sure your inside partner isn’t making these mistakes?
  • Top 10 Ways to Waste Your Time in a Networking Group! – Loved this post! So many posts on how to be effective with networking groups but Dr Ivan Misner, with tongue firmly in cheek, discusses the ways you can waste time. Unfortunately, you waste a bunch of other people’s time as well. My favorites on his lists are also some of my top pet peeves.Like #6 Don’t rush following up on a referral. And #1, Take that call or text message during the meeting, it won’t bother anyone else.

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Get Back in the Ring

7 Jul

A colleague of mine sent me this quote from Teddy Roosevelt that keeps her going when she needs a pick-me-up:

“It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbled, or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena; whose face is marred by the dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions and spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best, knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who, at worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly; so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory or defeat.”

TeddyR

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Improving Your Elevator Pitch

6 Jul

Have you ever froze at a networking event when someone asked what you do?  Or maybe there were a few too many “ums” in your pitch?  Or, most critically, did you see eyes starting to glaze as you babbled on?

I think the 30-second elevator pitch at a networking event is too long given everyone’s reduced attention span.

Babara Lopez, the Elevator Pitch Coach, just gave me a great tip on creating a great and quick elevator pitch.

ElevatorPitch

Start with, “Well, you know some businesses have [insert the problem you solve]?”

Pause for acknowledgement.

Continue, “Well, what I do is [insert your solution]”

If you’ve done your pitch well and the recipient is interested, then a reply of, “So, how do you do that?” means you’ve done well.

Here’s the Inquisix pitch.

“Well, you know some companies are looking to expand their business through referrals?”

“Well, we connect those company owners and salesreps to reputable professionals to give and get referrals confidentially.”

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Other blog posts I found interesting and starred this week

1 Jul

In addition to the blogs listed to the right under the Inquisix blog roll, there are many other really interesting blogs that I read on a regular basis. Posts at these blogs that I recently found interesting enough to star and comment on are below:

  • 10 Tough Questions To Ask Prospects – Sometimes it’s the commenters that really make me think about what’s being written here. This is one of those posts because the first commenter disagrees with these 10 questions. He claims to be a buyer so the credibility should be there.
  • 10 Ways to Get More Clicks in Your Email Campaigns – Our VP Marketing, Betsy, has been sending out regular InquisixCONNECT newsletters to all our members. I’ve found this post to be a great checklist for me to quickly review her newsletter to ensure we’re getting the attention we want. I especially like these tips:
    #2 Link Headlines
    #3 Link Images
    #5 Tease them
    #10 Personalize
  • How to Gently Remind a Customer… – It’s end of quarter and you (or your salespeople) have a few deals left in the forecast. Are they going to happen or not? It’s the time for wondering how many times you can call the customer in a week just to get their update. You’ve already asked for the order. A “Yes” is a great response. “No” is not great if it’s because your competitor is winning but bearable if it’s just pushed out a few weeks. But it’s the no response at all that drive salespeople (and their managers) CRAZY. The stress of not knowing is almost worse than knowing it’s a “No”Geoffrey James has a few ideas on how to get the customer to respond. Better yet, the first commenter shared an email that made him respond to the salesrep asking him for the update.

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