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Synopsis

Dr. Misner developed this technique for getting referrals in the earliest days of BNI. He realized that he needed to be the “go-to” guy whenever anyone needed a referral—to anyone. He started sending the following letter to his clients three or four times a year:

“Dear _____,

I really believe in the process of referrals, so part of the service I provide is to be sure to refer my clients and associates to other qualified businesspeople in the community.

Attached is a list of areas in which I know very credible, ethical and outstanding professionals.  If you’re looking for a professional in a specific area I’ve listed, please feel free to contact me.  I will be glad to put you in touch with the people I know who provide these services.

Sincerely,

Dr. Ivan Misner

He didn’t include direct contact information for the professionals, because he wanted to make sure people came to him first. It worked like a charm, and people really appreciate the service.

Read Dr. Misner’s article on Entrepreneur.com.

Brought to you by Networking Now.
Complete Transcription of BNI Podcast Episode 104 -

Priscilla:
Hello everyone, and welcome back to The Official BNI Podcast brought to you by NetworkingNow.com, which is the leading site on the Net for networking downloadables.

I’m Priscilla Rice, and I’m coming to you from the beautiful Live Oak Recording Studio in Berkley, California, and I am joined on the phone today by the founder and the chairman of BNI, Dr. Ivan Misner.

Hello, Ivan. How are you?

Ivan:
I’m doing great, Priscilla. I’m going to be talking about a topic today that really helped me a great deal in my business many years ago.

Priscilla:
Okay, what would that be?

Ivan:
Well, we titled this, when I first wrote about it, Entrepreneur.com titled it The Networking Trick to Increase Business. When I first saw that, I was like it’s not really so much a trick. But when you think about it, it is certainly a technique that really helped me a great deal, and that’s what I’m going to be talking about in my podcast today.

One of the most important networking questions, and certainly one of the common networking questions I get asked is, “How do I generate referrals for other people? Because I understand that if I want to get referrals, I have to help other people. So how do I generate those referrals for other people?”

Well, this is the same question that I asked myself in the early ‘80s when I was just starting my consulting business before I started BNI. I came up with a technique that had a huge impact on my ability to provide quality referrals to others, which, of course, led to me getting referrals. I first did this before I started BNI, and then when I started BNI, this technique became even easier for me to employ, and I’ll explain it in a minute.

I realized that I needed to be the person who people came to if they needed a referral for anything, for any kind of business. I wanted to be the gatekeeper of referrals, sort of the “go to” guy. So what I did is I composed a letter that I sent out to my client list several times a year. Today you could send out a quick e-mail to your database, but you should be able to send it out – I would recommend that you send out a hard copy at least once a year as well so that you stand out from everybody else who’s doing all the e-mailings.

So here’s a sample of the letter. “Dear ‘Blank,’ I really believe in the process of referrals, so part of the service I provide is to be sure to refer my clients and associates to other qualified business people in the community. Attached is a list of areas in which I know very credible, ethical, and outstanding professionals. If you’re looking for a professional in a specific area I’ve listed, please feel free to contact me. I’ll be glad to put you in touch with the people I know who provide these services. Sincerely, Dr. Ivan Misner”

Now, you’ll notice, Priscilla, I said, “Attached is a list,” but I didn’t actually – in a list of areas or a list of professions, but I didn’t actually include any names or numbers of the people so that they could contact them directly. You know why?

Priscilla:
So they’ll have to call you.

Ivan:
Yeah. I didn’t want them to contact people directly. I wanted them to contact me because I was concerned that some of the people that I would send this to might just contact the person directly and bypass me, and I wanted to be the “go to” person. I wanted to make the connection. And they may or may not have ever said how they heard of the person, or the individual may not have asked, how did you hear of the person. So you’ve got to notice when you read this letter that I just listed professions; I didn’t list names and numbers. I wanted my clients to contact me so I could put the referral and the contact together so that I could build business relationships by being the “go to” guy.

What began to happen was that others would ask someone on my client list. “Who do you know who does X, Y, Z?” If they didn’t know anyone, then they would send that person to me. They would refer people to me because I got to be known as somebody who knew a lot of people. And I did that because I was trying to build my referral list, my ability as a networking person. And this is before I really had a lot of BNI chapters, before I even had five or ten BNI chapters by the time I was really in the middle of this. And I just learned that if you are the person who is the gatekeeper, if you are the person who is putting people in touch with people, more and more people are going to come to you, and if they need you, they’re going to ask you about your services.

See, the importance of becoming a gatekeeper is huge for anyone who is seeking to grow a business through word of mouth or through work of mouth marketing. It’s a strategy that gets people not only to contact you for a referral but also to open up a dialog with people about what your business is all about and how you can help them. This, in turn, leads to more business with existing clients and new business with prospects.

I think it’s a great technique, and I’ll tell you a real quick story that happened in the middle of this process for me. I would put people on who I met and had a conversation with. I wouldn’t just send this stuff cold to people, but if I met them, if they were my clients, if they were my friends, if they were on the list. But if somebody didn’t respond or if I ended up not doing business with them and there was no ongoing contact, I would drop them off the list. And I was sending this out about three or four times a year, and by the fourth or fifth time I sent it, I started dropping some names off the list, because I didn’t want to just send mail to people. Remember, this was before e-mail.

Priscilla:
Yeah.

Ivan:
So it was expensive to send this out. It cost me some money to print everything and put stamps on everything and mail it all. It cost a little money, and I didn’t want to just keep sending letters to people who weren’t interested, so I dropped some names off the list. It was really funny, because two months later I got a phone call from some guy who I’d met at a meeting many months earlier, and I put him on the list. After we didn’t have any contact with each other for a while, I dropped him off the list. He called me up, and he said, “Hey, do you still send that letter out every now and then, because I haven’t gotten one for a few months?”

And I said, “Yeah, as a matter of fact, I did, but I didn’t want to bother you anymore because I hadn’t heard anything from you, so I took you off the list.”

He said, “No, no. Send me the current list, because I need somebody who does some graphic design work, and if you’ve got a person that you’d recommend, I could really use that referral.”

And so I learned a lesson. Don’t drop people off the list unless they opt out, unless they want to be out of the list. And so I started asking people if they wanted to be dropped off the list, just contact me or drop me a note back. And I kept people on.

I’ve got to tell you, that was the way I built my personal network, and it was one of the things that helped lead me to build BNI was because of building my own personal network.

Priscilla:
Yeah, and it just heightens your reputation among your friends, because since I’ve been in BNI for about five years now, people know me as somebody who’s really connected in the community and that I would have a resource for almost anything. And they do that, they come to me and they ask me, do I know somebody who can take care of their house or whatever it is that they need. And it’s really a great service that you can provide. It makes you feel very good.

Ivan:
It does. And you are helping a lot of people, and you can expedite the process of being considered the “go to” person, the gatekeeper by doing a technique like this, because you’re now formalizing the fact that you’ve got a lot of contacts and that you would love to share those contacts with anybody who needs those. And people appreciate it, and it’s one of those touch points where you’re not asking anybody for anything, you’re not asking them to buy something, you’re not asking them to read something about your product. You’re simply letting them know that you can help them if they have a need, whatever their need is, that you’d be glad to help them. That’s the epitome of Giver’s Gain. It’s a perfect example of how can I help you and you’re not asking for anything in return. That’s the way to build a powerful personal network.

Priscilla:
Yeah, it sounds like a great idea.

Ivan:
I’d love to see BNI members all over the world start to use this technique with their clients and customers, because I think you’ll find that it’s a very effective technique.

Well, thanks, Priscilla.

Priscilla:
Okay, great. Well, thank you, Dr. Misner.

I think that’s it for this week, and I want to remind the listeners that this podcast has been brought to you by NetworkingNow.com, which is the leading site on the Net for networking downloadables. Thank you so much for listening. This is Priscilla Rice, and we hope you’ll join us next week for another exciting episode of The Official BNI Podcast.