Alan Weiss - Million Dollar Referrals: The Secrets to Building a Perpetual Client List to Generate a Seven-Figure Income

THE SECRETS TO BUILDING A PERPETUAL CLIENT LIST TO GENERATE A SEVEN-FIGURE INCOME

ALAN WEISS

Copyright 2012 by Alan Weiss. All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the United States Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced or distributed in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

ISBN: 978-0-07-176990-7
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This book is dedicated to Art Strohmer, whom I met
at Merck and has since retired, and who was my first
and still my best referral source ever.

CHAPTER 1
BUSINESS RELATIONSHIPS ARE A PROCESS, NOT AN EVENT

CHAPTER 2
THE ANNUITY FACTOR

CHAPTER 3
EXPANDED BUSINESS

CHAPTER 4
THE PLATINUM STANDARD

CHAPTER 5
INSTITUTIONALIZING YOUR PRESENCE

INTERLUDE
MY GREATEST REFERRAL

CHAPTER 6
THE CULT OF CEYK (CALL EVERYONE YOU KNOW)

CHAPTER 7
REFERRAL AMMUNITION

CHAPTER 8
YOU CAN GO HOME AGAINREVISITING PAST CLIENTS

CHAPTER 9
THE DIAMOND STANDARD

CHAPTER 10
THE KALEIDOSCOPE

APPENDIX

Electronic, on my site, updated regularly

Questions to Ask

Rebuttals to Resistance

Weekly Discipline Techniques

How to Stimulate More Referrals

IVE ALWAYS CONSIDERED REFERRAL BUSINESS to be the platinum standard in the acquisition of new clients. (Feel free to use diamond or plutonium or iPhone instead of platinum to reflect your own value system!)

I had also always considered referrals to be automatic, and as involuntary as respiration or as suffering when rooting for the home team. But when McGraw-Hill asked me to consider writing this book in our Million Dollar series, it struck me that too few people were successfully obtaining referral business.

Upon closer inspection, my suspicions were borne out: professional services providers (as well as almost anyone in a sales capacity) were not asking for referrals, were asking poorly, or were asking and failing to follow up. Most people Ive met who are raging successes in consulting, speaking, training, and related professionsand Im talking about seven-figure incomes hereclaim that they can trace most of todays business to less than a half-dozen original clients and customers. I thought that was a ludicrous claim, until I sat down with a calculator, Excel sheets, and an abacus, and arrived at a grand total of four for myself.

And so, I was on to something.

Ive assembled the very finest practices in this book, along with a free online, continually updated appendix of sources and performance aids. Well discuss unlikely sources, unlikely questions, and unlikely resultsall from the standpoint of regarding and pursuing referrals as though they were the lifeblood of your business.

Which they are.

If you hear that systolic beat underlying your practice, its the throbbing of referrals flowing through your professional veins (outgoing) and arteries (incoming). The problem is that many of you are not taking care of your hearts, but instead allowing referral plaque to accumulate.

Fortunately, youve come to the right place for a fitness regimen. You might not like the rigor, but youll thank me when its over. Just think of all those endorphins flowing like crazy, and all that business pursuing you madly.

Alan Weiss
East Greenwich, RI
July 2011

THANKS TO MY EDITORS at McGraw-Hill during this Million Dollar series: Betsy Brown, Mary Glenn, Knox Hudson, Leila Porteous, and Daina Penikas. And thanks to my agent through dozens of books, Jeff Herman.

Special gratitude here to colleagues and Mentor Program members Andrew Sobel and Aviv Shahar for sharing some of their insightful and original views about referral business, and to all those who contributed their greatest referral.

ALAN WEISS is one of those rare people who can say that he is a consultant, speaker, and author and mean it. His consulting firm, Summit Consulting Group, Inc., has attracted clients such as Merck, Hewlett-Packard, GE, Mercedes-Benz, State Street Corporation, Times Mirror Group, the Federal Reserve, the New York Times Corporation, and more than 500 other leading organizations. He has served on the boards of directors of the Trinity Repertory Company, a Tony Awardwinning New England regional theater, Festival Ballet, and has chaired the Newport International Film Festival.