Episode 165: “Working by Referral”

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Synopsis

This week Brian Buffini joins Dr. Misner to discuss creating a proactive system for referrals. You need a systematic approach to cultivate referrals on a daily basis. The essence of it is:

• Build relationships
• Provide value
• Remind the people in your database that you’re looking for referrals

This requires sorting your database by your most valuable customers and who is most likely to refer you. Then you take a three-step approach to dealing with those people, and set aside time for it every day.

1. Contact
2. Care
3. Community

For more information about Brian Buffini’s trainings, go to the Buffini and Company website. You’ll find live seminars and coaching and mentoring programs. Dr. Misner endorses this system wholeheartedly, and Priscilla is an active client.

Brought to you by Networking Now.

Complete Transcription of BNI Podcast Episode 165 -

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 Live Oak Recording Studio in Berkley, California, and I’m joined on the phone today by the founder and the chairman of BNI, Dr. Ivan Misner.

Hello, Ivan. How are you today?

Ivan:
I am doing great, Priscilla. And I’m really excited because I have a guest on the line. He is a friend, a friend of BNI. His name is Brian Buffini. Brian is one of those who is extremely knowledgeable about referral marketing and, here’s where you find people who are knowledgeable, but they’re not really good at the second part, Brian walks the talk. He has been a huge supporter of BNI for many, many years. We have really appreciated his support of our organization and I highly recommend the training program that Brian does, and I’m really excited to have him on our podcast today.

Brian, do you want to say “Hi”?

Brian:
Well, hello, Ivan. Great to be with you here today. The feelings are mutual; we’ve been very excited to endorse BNI to the people we coach and the people we have in our live events over the years. And we have such great, great results with that. We have some of the folks we coach who talk about 50 percent of their income comes from the referrals they get from Business Network International. So we keep referring you, and they keep being more successful, so it’s a win-win situation.

Ivan:
Well, I’ll tell you something that I said when we first met years ago, and that is, I can walk into a BNI meeting and I can immediately tell when somebody has been trained in your training program. They absolutely stand out as a superior member in our program, because they go deeper in the process, and it’s not as superficial as some people. Some people – I hate to say it, but some people come to BNI and their only networking is what they do at that meeting, and I can always tell when there’s somebody who’s been through your training, because they’re all about building relationships and drilling deep for the referrals.

So it’s great to have you on the podcast. Let me ask you this question.

Brian:
Well, it’s great to be with you.

Ivan:
Thanks.

Tell me about the referrals. What is the power of referral marketing? And you are absolutely one of the world’s experts in this, and I think my members get benefit from hearing it from you.

Brian:
Well, no doubt. I think the big difference for me is, my dad would have been a classic BNI member. He was a house painter in Dublin, Ireland, and my father always used to say, “The work will speak for itself.” So my father was committed to doing a great job. In fact, all of us kids, we grew up in the family painting business, and every day my grandfather, who was kind of the Mr. Miyagi of our family; he mentored you and trained you in the business, and every day he’d ask you, “Can you put your name to the work you did?” And if you didn’t put your name to the work you’d done, you had to do it over, whether the customer saw it or not.

So doing a great job for people was imperative, and that’s where my father and grandfather knew their future business would come from. So they were very, very committed to what you would call a word-of-mouth business. And so I was raised in that, so that’s what I knew.

Now, when I immigrated to America and got into the real estate business, I was looking for referrals, but I found that the rhythm of waiting for referral, like the way my father and grandfather had, wasn’t working for me. So I had to go and cultivate it on purpose, and that’s where over a period of a number of years I developed a proactive system to cultivate referrals. And that’s really where it goes from word-of-mouth to working by referral, is that you have a systematic approach to intentionally cultivate referrals on a daily basis.

As we’ve talked about, Ivan, the people in our coaching program from real estate and lending side, for example, they earn seven times that of the national average. And it’s not that they’re any smarter or work any harder, they actually do it typically with less advertising budgets, but it’s done in regards to a systematic approach to your database and building relationships, providing value, and reminding those people that you’re looking for referrals. And so I think this is a big thing where a lot of folks, they do a great job, they’re committed to customer service, and they get the occasional referral, but you can’t count on it; you don’t know when the next referral is coming in, you can’t predict it.

And so our system is that you build, sort, and qualify your database. The database isn’t just something on a computer; it’s a list of relationships. And you have some business relationships that are closer than others. And in our system, we encourage you to spend more time, more energy, more effort with those clients that are the better clients, the most likely to refer you, those who have referred you in the past, those who’ve done the most business with you. So instead of the squeaky wheel getting the grease, in this system, the squeaky wheel really doesn’t get any of your time at all. So we’re investing time, energy, and resources in building relationships with our best customers and our best referral advocates.

So the first thing you have to really get familiar with your database, know who you have, know who they are, and then know a little bit about them. And many of your books go into great detail about how to do that. Where we, then, go is providing systematic approach, and we have a thing we call the Three Cs, which is Contact, Care, and Community. So you want to contact these folks. You’ve got to be seeing them in person, you’ve got to be calling them, you’ve got to be connecting with them. We believe in marketing to folks proactively, so providing something of value.

So rather than a Realtor who traditionally sends out a note pad with their picture on it or a football schedule or a recipe card for potpies, we’re providing something of value. So for example, here’s how to raise your credit score; here’s how to protect yourself from identity theft; here’s the 15 new laws, the tax laws that just came down that can help you with your tax burdens for real estate and other things. So practical, tactical things that are items of value.

Sometimes it’s a little more fun. The postage rate changes by a couple of cents, and you’ll send your customers 20 two-cent stamps in the mail. And just little tokens, little items of value that give you a chance to build the relationship deeper with the customer.

Then we recommend you go see them, you go have coffee with them, you build relationships, and then you systematically ask people for referrals. And this is something that we’ve done in our own coaching program. You talk about walking the talk; we’ve been doing this for years ourselves where our company grew on average by 49 percent a year for ten years by generating referrals from our customer base.

So it just flat out works; it just flat out works. It’s a systematic approach to a dedicated group of people familiarizing yourself with the database, building relationships with them, providing something of value, then you’ve got to go out and see them.

And then, I guess, the last little piece to this puzzle here, just in giving an overview, is just having a daily set of activities set aside. So for us, we have a little process we call the Win the Day Formula. And it basically is two hours of cultivating leads, of generating leads, of spending time with your database, talking to your database, connecting with your database, and letting them know that you’re never too busy for their referrals, and actually, kind of going from schmoozing to cultivating, and I think that’s really a key component here.

And so the number one thing, and I think you’ve seen this probably throughout BNI, Ivan, is that the people who do well in business are people who are committed to generating leads. So many people are dealing with the symptoms of a lack of leads, inconsistent income, poor quality customer, or you end up dealing with the high maintenance customer. Well, if you’re generating – in my business in real estate, I was averaging 35 referrals a month. Well, when you’re generating 35 referrals a month, you’re going to get a couple of bad apples.

Ivan:
Yeah.

Brian:
You’re going to get people that, “Hey, I want you to do this for almost free; I want you this;” they’re high maintenance; they’re after you all the time.

And you go, “You know what, I just don’t think we’re a good fit for one another.”

Well, you can say that when you have a bunch of lead. That’s hard to say that when you don’t have any leads.

Ivan:
Yeah, when you feel that the pipeline is full and there’s a lot of business coming, then it’s easier to say that, no question about it.

Brian:
Right, right. So, Ben Franklin said, “Tis hard for an empty purse to stand upright.” So we all tend to fold when the bank account’s empty, when we need food with our meals.

Ivan:
Well, you know what else Franklin said, and I talked about this in one of my previous podcasts, is that – he seemed to have a thing with purses – he said, “If you empty your purse into your head, you’re gaining something that no one can ever take away and that’s knowledge.”

Brian:
Yeah, best investment of all time.

Ivan:
Absolutely, and that’s exactly what you’re doing, what BNI is all about. And we do training in BNI, but there’s only so deep we can go in our weekly meetings. So your program’s all about really going deep with people and giving them systems. I love systems. That’s what BNI is all about, is a system.

Brian:
Right.

Ivan:
But it’s those systems for following up, and I think that’s what’s made your students sell much better, BNI members is that the system that they have they employ, they employ not only in BNI but in their business, as a rule.

Well, listen, tell us briefly, because we’re almost out of time, tell us about your trainings and where people can get information. There’s very few podcasts – and listeners, you know this is true – very few podcasts that I recommend go to a training or read a book. This is one of the few ones, and the reason for that is I so believe in the kind of training Brian does.

And so tell them a little bit about where they can go, Brian.

Brian:
We appreciate that, Ivan. BuffiniAndCompany.com is – my name, Buffini, B-U-F-F-I-N-I, AndCompany.com, has a lot of layout of where we do our live events, where we do our systematic training called 100 Days to Greatness, and then ultimately, our coaching programs. And it’s a wonderful thing. We have, obviously, a number of mutual members where we have a number of BNI folks we’ve been able to kind of help get to the next level by coaching them one on one in an in-depth capacity.

We have kind of an unusual setup in that we have like a 90,000 square foot headquarters in Carlsbad in California where we have a highly skilled, trained staff of coaches that coach people one on one, a lot of Realtors, a lot of lenders, but we also have about 15 percent of our business is general market folks in many walks of life.

So we get a great opportunity to coach folks one on one in the systematic approach of generating leads, holding folks accountable, teaching them these systems, bringing them to our live events, and it’s a lot of fun. It’s a lot of fun to see people grow and prosper. And yours is an organization right now that’s doing very well and continues to prosper because of the value you provide, and then we try to do the same in the coaching side of the business in helping folks grow their business, run their business like a business, and then holding them accountable, and it seems to work very well.

Ivan:
Well, I’ve been to your facilities. I was very impressed. You have an amazing team there and a great operation. And I think it’s interesting that Priscilla, who’s our host on these shows.

Priscilla, you’ve been to Brian’s program.

Priscilla:
Yeah, I’m an active client. I get all his materials. I send them out. I did my first client party this year, and that’s something that Brian has been promoting and telling us to do forever and the coaches tell you to do. And I discovered why it’s so magical to do that, and I’m a great believer in that. I love his system.

Ivan:
Well, Brian, thank you so much for your comments.

Priscilla, I appreciate your endorsement, your testimonial.

We do testimonials in BNI, so it’s a perfect segue into this.

And listeners, if you have a chance, go to BuffiniAndCompany, that’s A-N-D, BuffiniAndCompany.com to take a look at what Brian and his team have put together. It’s one of the few training programs that I recommend in networking.

So Brian, thank you so much.

Priscilla, back to you.

Priscilla:
Okay, great! Thank you both very much.

I’d just like to remind the listeners that this podcast has been brought to you by NetworkingNow.com, the leading site on the Net for networking downloadables. Thanks 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.