CHAPTER 3
BECOMING FEARLESS
—Nelson Mandela
The vast majority of people I coach and meet have reservations about asking for all they want. Frankly, almost everyone feels bashful much of the time. I would like to share the lessons they have learned so that you can get the results you want far sooner.
FACE YOUR FEAR OF REJECTION AND FEAR OF PEOPLE
While most of us hate to admit it, let’s come clean about our primary challenge. Most people in sales are, at best, uncomfortable contacting strangers and uncomfortable meeting them. At worst, they can’t even pick up the phone because they’re fearful of the responses they might get and afraid that their feelings might get hurt.
The same is often true when asking for referrals. The vast majority of people are not comfortable doing it, and I see lack of comfort as the main obstacle for most people.
You don’t need a Ph.D. in psychology to know that the solution is to face your fears. It’s not easy. If it were easy, everyone would make many more sales and the turnover in your industry would be much, much lower.
What matters is that you develop the mindset that people want what you have to offer. Your belief that you truly can make a difference makes all the difference! It’s called congruent communication.
STOP HESITATING AND START SUCCEEDING
In his audio program The Psychology of Sales, Brian Tracy gives the perfect example when he suggests that you imagine that you have been given a long list of people who all want to buy what you sell, but you only have until midnight to contact them. He asks, “What time would you start that day? How late would you work? Would you find other things to do before making your calls? Would you take coffee breaks? Would you take an hour for lunch? No! You would be contacting as many people as possible! There would be no hesitation!”
When facing your fears, the reminders you need as often as necessary are that:
1. You admit to yourself the truth and not blame other things. Don’t lay blame, for example, on not having a polished referral script, elevator speech, or high-end sales materials to hand out.
2. You get enough leverage on yourself to face your fears. This is based on what I covered in Chapter 1: you act when either the pain gets too great (dissatisfaction can be a good driver) or the pleasure juices you up enough to be driven to take more action. That’s your responsibility.
3. You know that most people are also afraid of you and worry that you will judge and reject them! It’s time to start noticing that most people avoid your eye contact in public and avoid interacting with you. Frankly, it is unbelievable! Be more aware of this fear that others have and make a mental shift—use this knowledge to empower yourself. Say to yourself, “They might be uncomfortable too; I should put their mind at ease. I am not a shark. If they’re interested, great, I can help them. And if they’re not interested, it’s okay—not everyone is going to be interested.”
4. You focus on helping the other person. The founder of Mary Kay Cosmetics had a great saying that everyone has an invisible sign around the neck that says “Make me feel important.” Yes, it’s an intelligent way to treat someone, and, yes, it also reduces a person’s fears; but most important, it gets your focus off yourself and onto something constructive. Your fears will be reduced.
5. You remember that how you look at any situation in life is a choice! Every way you interpret a situation can be looked at in a completely different way. There are people who go through a relationship breakup and are empowered to finally be free of something negative; other people are devastated and vow never to be hurt so much again (it took me more years than I care to remember to realize I had done that one to myself). There are salespeople out there who truly enjoy doing the things that make others uncomfortable. As Stephen Covey says, “If you want to change your life, you’ve got to change your paradigms.”
FACE IT SOME MORE!
What’s the number one need almost every business owner and salesperson has? More prospects, right?
Fear of rejection is very often the main obstacle to contacting and meeting more prospects. The solution is to face your fears more and more by building your “courage muscle.” I know from my own experience that this is much easier said than done.
I truly hope that the following three incredible stories help you face your fears better and see them in a truer perspective.
RAOUL WALLENBERG
This Swedish banker had a very comfortable life in a neutral country during World War II. Even though he wasn’t Jewish himself, he was so outraged by what the Nazis were doing, that he chose to go to Hungary, one of the world’s most chaotic and unsafe places in July 1944, to save as many Jews as he could from extermination. His accomplishments are remarkable.
Want courage? When Jews were being rounded up to be taken to the death camps, he would calmly walk up to the SS commander and tell him that he had Swedish protection passes and that if any Jews were taken away, this commander would be reported and hanged as a war criminal. He saved as many as 25,000 Jews this way even though he forged many of the passes. As many as 25,000! One eyewitness recalled:
He stood out there in the street, probably feeling [like] the loneliest man in the world, trying to pretend that there was something behind him. They could have shot him there and then in the street and nobody would have known about it.
On another occasion, he actually invited Adolf Eichmann, head of operations for Hitler’s Final Solution, over for dinner. Eichmann was obsessed with wiping Jews out of existence. Yet Wallenberg told him that the Nazis were going to lose the war, and then he explained why Nazi ideology was so flawed. Eichmann was so enraged by this that he told Wallenberg, “Accidents do happen, even to a neutral diplomat.”
Wallenberg disappeared once the Soviets arrived and is believed to have died at age 33 in one of their gulag camps.
Would you have the courage to do this knowing you would likely never see your home country and family again? Is it really so uncomfortable to ask for that referral when you’ve helped someone out?
MARTIN LUTHER KING JR.
Picture this: It’s January 1956. Your newborn is asleep in her cot, and your young spouse is fast asleep too. But your house was recently firebombed, and you’ve had numerous death threats. It’s after midnight, and you’re sitting alone at the kitchen table with a cold cup of coffee. You’ve just received another phone call telling you to get out of town before you or your wife and child will be killed. What would you do?
It was at this point that Martin Luther King Jr., found that his courage had deserted him. He was terrified and had a panicked conversation with God. “I tried to think of a way to move out of the picture without appearing a coward. I got to the point that I couldn’t take it any longer. I was weak.”
Was a seat on a city bus worth putting his family at risk?
As he prayed, he “could hear the quiet assurance of an inner voice saying, ‘Martin Luther, stand up for righteousness. Stand up for justice. Stand up for truth.’ At that moment I experienced the presence of the Divine as I had never experienced Him before. Almost at once my fears began to go.”
Over the years, the death threats continued, and King was assassinated 12 years later in 1968 at age 39.
I understand that the cause of our livelihood is likely not as momentous as King’s. But if King faced death threats for over a decade, how long do you think it would take for you to get past your prospecting fears if you faced them every day with the same amount of courage? Everyone concurs that our fear diminishes when we confront it over and over.
AUNG SAN SUU KYI
She was the world’s most renowned female prisoner of conscience for almost 20 years until 2010. While living a very comfortable life in England as a wife of an Oxford professor and a mother, she returned to her home country, Burma, in 1988 as prodemocracy movements swept the country.
Her father had secured independence for Burma from the British in 1947, but he was assassinated that same year. So she decided to fulfill her duty to a father and country she loved.
Despite preaching nonviolent protest and despite being democratically elected in 1990 to be prime minister (with 81 percent of the votes!), she was under house arrest without charge from July 1989 to November 2010—more than 20 years! Courage? Her arrest came on a day when she and some of her colleagues confronted the soldiers in an army unit, who were pointing their guns at her. Rather than surrender, she walked toward them alone, offering herself as an easy target.
Her best-known writings are called Freedom from Fear; can you apply this to your business?
Fearlessness may be a gift, but perhaps more precious is the courage acquired through endeavor; courage that comes from cultivating the habit of refusing to let fear dictate one’s actions, courage that could be described as “grace under pressure”— grace which is renewed repeatedly in the face of harsh, unremitting pressure.
Aung San Suu Kyi won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991. In May 2008, when Cyclone Nargis hit Burma, Suu Kyi lost her roof and was living in virtual darkness after she lost electricity in her dilapidated lakeside bungalow. She is now 66 years old and has rarely been allowed to see her two children since 1988. She always had the option to leave Burma and live in comfort, but she refused since she would never be allowed to return and fight for democracy.
Got the courage to sustain your beliefs about what’s right for 20 years despite being confined to your decaying house by a paranoid military dictatorship? How long have you been uncomfortable about asking for referrals? Do you have it in you to push through this? How long might that take?
COURAGE
Three people who could all have chosen a quiet, comfortable life and never have made an impact. They all learned how to find more courage. You are not being asked to put your life on the line or your family’s safety at stake. What do you want out of your life? Is it time to hold your chin up higher and say, “I’m not walking into a life-threatening situation. I am extending my help to others. I believe in what I’m doing. If they don’t want it, that’s their loss. I will move on and show more courage. If it was easy, everyone would do it. I intend to do it.”
As humans we are all made of the same stuff. What are you made of, and how much of this is showing?
OVERCOME THE BIGGEST MYTH IN OUR CULTURE
Some time ago, I was invited to the annual awards banquet of an international financial services company. When the top producer for the year walked up to the podium to “say a few words,” I was not expecting to hear anything earth-shattering. What he said was amazing and inspiring. First he told his life story with such passion that it took my breath away. He was a former teacher (like me) who now absolutely loved what he did. He was living his mission, not working a job.
Then he asked those in the audience who were in their first five years in the industry to stand up. I expected the speaker would offer a motivational plug to them, but instead he looked them in the eye and explained how they would never know how many times he had felt like a failure. He shared that he almost quit on numerous occasions in his early years and that he even kept his teaching license current just in case. Most highly accomplished people have fallen on their faces many times, but they keep getting up.
The myth in our culture is that it’s mostly naturals who make it big with little effort.
Here are three priceless observations on “failure”:
Relationship expert Barbara DeAngelis points out that “the only path to success is to do it badly first.”
Billionaire rebel Richard Branson once said of his accomplishments, “I’ve just failed a lot more than most people.”
Success Intelligence author Robert Holden states that most people define successful people as “people who have not failed at anything.”
Clearly, it’s a huge myth in our culture that high-achieving people were all overnight sensations, that getting to the top was a pretty seamless experience for them, and that their success is the result of innate talent.
DEMYSTIFYING THE MYTH
Contrary, there have been many well-known people who have had all kinds of rejections and failures but have become successful “because they have used their failures well.” Here are a few classic examples from Holden’s book:
As a composer, he is hopeless.
—A music teacher referring to one of his students,
Ludwig van Beethoven
He has no talent at all, that boy … Tell him please to give up painting.
—Edouard Manet to Claude Monet, 1864,
about Renoir
He is too stupid to learn anything and should think of a career where he might succeed by virtue of his pleasant personality.
—A teacher writing about his student
Thomas Edison
Can’t act. Can’t sing. Balding. Can dance a little.
—MGM executive commenting on a screen test by an
aspiring entertainer called Fred Astaire, 1928
He lacked imagination and had no good ideas.
—Newspaper editor after firing his employee,
Walt Disney
You’d better learn secretarial work or else get married.
—Director of Blue Book Modeling Agency to would-be
actress Marilyn Monroe, 1944
You ought to go back to drivin’ a truck.
—The theater manager who fired a singer called
Elvis Presley after one performance, 1954
We don’t think your ideas have any merit here.
—IBM executive to a young man named Bill Gates
You’ll never make any money out of children’s books.
—The publisher who took on J. K. Rowling’s first
Harry Potter book (Rowling is now the highest
earning woman in England at $1 billion.)
FOLLOWING FAILURE WITH SUCCESS
So what can you do to achieve your dream of being a high achiever?
1. Realize that falling on your face is normal. Have you ever come across a biography of anyone who reached a significant goal who did not face adversity? Excuse my cliché, but we all have to stumble around before we crawl, crawl before we can walk, and walk before we can run. Getting good at generating referrals is no different.
2. Develop a support system. The high achiever who spoke at the financial services company awards banquet I wrote about earlier said he could not have done what he’s done without the unconditional support of his spouse. He went on further to say that without a supportive spouse you could not fulfill your potential.
What is your support system? You can get creative about this (beyond people). It can include anything empowering that makes you feel good: audio programs, books, photos, inspiring music and literature, pets, or even locations. Build a support team around you (see Chapter 7 for more on this). I believe it also means minimizing time with energy vampires—negative people. You become the sum of the people you spend the most time with.
3. Build empowering beliefs about yourself. You can only expect others to open doors for you when you have enough faith in yourself that you are the right person for the job. For more on this, see the section “Become Your Number One Fan” in Chapter 4.
4. Define success and failure for yourself. You decide your own definition of success. For example, “I did my best and learned something.” You decide when you deserve to feel like a failure. This might be when you have not kept your word or perhaps haven’t lived according to your values. This is infinitely superior to feeling bad because your house isn’t as large as someone else’s or because someone makes more money than you.
The ultimate belief is to accept that failure is only a necessary and normal part of the journey.
STOP MAKING EXCUSES
How much responsibility do you really take—for your life and your referral business?
On a scale of 1 to 10, how much responsibility do you take for everything in your life? I think this is an area where we fool ourselves.
WHO IS RESPONSIBLE?
Who do you suppose said this? “I have spent the best years of my life giving people the lighter pleasures—helping them have a good time. And all I get is abuse: the existence of a hunted man.”
It was Al Capone. I spent an entire semester of college in 1989 doing a U.S. history independent study on Capone and organized crime in Chicago in the 1920s. Without going into detail, he either personally killed or sentenced dozens of people to premature and violent death.
A recent newspaper headline story was about a 23-year-old woman who had killed her youngest child. Her reason? “I only have enough love for one child.”
Thinking about these examples, I can’t help but recall all the feeble excuses I heard from students about not doing homework when I was teaching. “Who’s responsible for doing your work?” I would ask, and there would usually be an awkward silence followed by a quiet “I am.” Did it make a difference? I failed more students than any other teacher—but those who passed only did so because they took my lesson to heart. If grade school students can learn responsibility for their actions, so can professional adults.
THE RESPONSIBILITY SCALE
Several years ago I went to a Brian Tracy seminar. During the first break I went up to talk to him. I guess I really didn’t think through what I wanted to ask him. I just wanted to talk to him in person. He had been telling his remarkable life story for 90 minutes and weaving in what it took to be successful. All I could muster was a vague “Your story is amazing. How did you do it?” He looked slightly exasperated as if to say, “Weren’t you listening to anything I just said?”
Then he thought for a moment and told me about how he had been so poor in his early twenties that he would save money on cooking by heating his can of beans on the radiator overnight. Then one day as he looked around his bleak living space, he realized that he had no one else to blame but himself. It was no longer legitimate to blame parents or teachers. Everything he had in life was up to him.
Then he said to me, “If I had to just pinpoint one thing, I think we all have a responsibility scale inside us. And most people are probably at about a 6. And what I’ve learned is that you have to move yourself to a 10, take complete ownership of every area of your life, and refuse to blame anyone or anything else.”
Who’s responsible for your results? Your health? Your relationships? Your inner peace? Your income?
If you don’t like the results you’re getting, look at your actions. In many respects, this is a tough pill to swallow for most people, but it’s also very exciting and very empowering.
HOW MUCH RESPONSIBILITY DO YOU TAKE FOR YOUR REFERRAL BUSINESS?
Think about these questions as you assess your position on the responsibility scale. To score a 10 on this means you are answering yes to each of the questions and taking complete ownership of your results:
1. Do you always ask for your referrals? “Forgetting to ask” is excuse number one that people have for not asking. It is too convenient to “forget a lot” rather than to admit being uncomfortable and fearful. You have to take responsibility for the things you do that get in your own way, for your limiting beliefs, and for your courage.
Do a mini interview with others. Ask them what they think your strengths are, and ask them how they think you’re getting in your own way.
2. Do you follow your own agenda? Start using meeting agendas and putting something nonthreatening on them like “feedback” instead of “introductions,” from which you can pivot to other people that your client would like to help by recommending you. (For more on agendas, see Chapter 5.)
3. Do you ever take “I can’t think of anyone” for an answer? Everybody knows 200 people or more. Provided your client talks about the value you have brought (and actually gets specific—not just a nod of the head), it is your job to help your client think of someone. Most people like to help others. Ask better questions that help jog their memories. Show more confidence in yourself and bring home the point that you can help people your clients care about. Never accept it when someone suggests you contact others but do not use their name. Find out why or pursue a better referral. (For more on this, see Chapter 6.)
4. Do you have a script? If you have no concerns about asking, have you developed wording that works for you?
5. Do you plant the seeds about referrals with an expectations discussion? When you first meet prospects, this is your chance to explain how much they can expect from you. And it’s a chance for you to explain what you want from a client relationship in return. Assuming you have done a good job, it should not be unreasonable to request that clients consider endorsing you to others that they care about because you could probably help them too. (See Chapter 5 for more on this topic.)
6. Do you narrow down referral requests? How well do you identify specific referral requests? Can you word your request so that two to three people automatically come to mind when you ask? (See Chapter 6.)
7. Do you educate your clients? Have you developed materials or wording to educate your clients on what a quality referral for you would be? (See Chapter 6.)
8. Do you reassure your clients? How well do you reassure your clients about how you follow up and how you don’t expect them to know for sure whether the people they recommend have a need for what you do? (See Chapter 6.)
9. Do you coach your clients? Do you coach your clients on what to say to the people they recommend—most of them have no idea what to say! It’s your job to do this. (See Chapter 6.)
10. Do you keep control of the referral process? Do you make sure you always have the next step in the referral process so that you can keep control? (See Chapter 6.)
11. Do you have a great follow-up system … and use it? Do you have a follow-up system in place so you don’t drop the ball on names you do receive and have a means to thank your referral sources? (See Chapter 7.)
12. Have you developed and utilized centers of influence? Have you developed four to five great centers of influence as referral sources? Centers of influence are simply people who can open bigger and better doors for you. Some may be clients, other professionals, or even people in your own family.
Centers of influence are a topic worthy of their own book (one I may in fact write one day). My first suggestion to you is to focus on your strongest relationships that fit the above definition, keep pouring water in those wells, and use steps 3, 5, and 6 from the Six-Step Fearless Referral Conversation to make it easy for centers of influence to help you.
13. Do you plan ahead? Do you plan your weeks ahead of time to proactively schedule time to do these things? (See Chapter 7.)
14. Are you your own role model? Since there may not be anyone in your office who can serve as a great role model, take 100 percent responsibility for your referral business. If you’re not happy with it, only you can do something about it. No quick-fix leads program is going to transform your financial situation.
See what I mean? Getting to a 10 on the responsibility scale is not easy! We don’t like to admit we’ve made a mistake, done something wrong, or not taken complete responsibility. What we blame is in our self-talk and the excuses we give to others. The hope is that this will increase your own self-awareness and help you move toward that 10.
Use this book as your solution to getting referrals your way and developing your own personal system. You are responsible for developing a system that works for you because there is no one-size-fits-all when it comes to getting referrals.
GET COMFORTABLE GETTING UNCOMFORTABLE
Asking for referrals makes many salespeople feel uncomfortable. While this book has as many suggestions and solutions as can be imagined to get past that, the reality may well still be that you have to face some fear if you are going to succeed! There is no quick-fix alternative.
The only question is, how much do you want what you say you want? How motivated are you? Usually, getting out of our comfort zone means changing. Why don’t we like to change?
We get used to doing things a certain way and often resent interruptions to our “comfortable” status quo.
We get hardwired to act, think, and behave a specific—automated—way, in many instances without even realizing our reactions are not thought through.
Then, even worse, we say, “This is just the way I am!”
This is an enormously important point. When we grow up, we get used to thinking and feeling a certain way in different situations. Regardless of whether this is positive or negative, it becomes our norm. Because it is our norm—because we’ve gotten used to it—it also becomes comfortable—even when it is negative or ho-hum. You might want to read that again.
Negative or mediocre mindsets can be comfortable for some people. I was astonished when I realized this was true for me one weekend when I was making no serious attempt to get out of an uninspired mood. I realized that in my dim and distant past, feeling that way was something I was used to. I was alarmed because I had fooled myself into thinking I was completely past that. I had also fooled myself into believing that it was comfortable and therefore a good thing. Only the dull pain of a nagging negativity clued me into the realization of how unmotivated I was feeling.
When it comes to pursuing more referrals, it is vital therefore to understand that even though we are used to our feelings and our comfort zone, the likelihood is that it is not helping us grow our business and meet all the people we need to meet.
Doing something new can create anxiety and a crisis in confidence.
The best suggestion I can make is that you step out of your comfort zone a few small steps at a time. Remember, growth only happens outside your comfort zone.
Even though change is a fact of life, many of us resist it and are frustrated every time it happens. Yet (as I’m sure you’ve heard many times!), if you keep doing what you’ve been doing, you’ll keep getting what you’ve always gotten.
So first recognize what you are doing now that you (1) want to stop doing, (2) want to do less, (3) want to continue doing, (4) want to do more, and (5) want to start doing. By the time you’ve finished this book, you should have several things to add to item 3 and also be ready to spend less time on some other things that are comfortable but not getting you the referrals you want!
Second, once you recognize what you’re doing now, ask yourself what’s comfortable. Most of the time our habits and moods are a comfort zone for us, and we do not realize it. Think back to how alive (and, yes, how scared) you felt when you first started in business. Nothing was comfortable, right? Then you let that muscle get flabby and untested. This all relates to self-awareness.
Third, moving past this discomfort (starting a new habit) takes a great deal of effort early on. It’s a bit like the needs of a rocket. Most of the energy it uses is required at takeoff, and once it has taken off, it needs very little to do all the other remarkable things it needs to do. Similarly, as you launch some new habits that feel awkward, most of your effort will come at the start.
Ron was a client of mine for some time, and we were spinning our wheels until I told him that if he wanted to succeed in his business, he was going to have to face his fear of prospecting and people saying no. Once he decided to face this almost every day, he started to make great strides, setting up more appointments, coffees—asking for what he wanted! He changed his mindset into seeing prospecting as a new challenge that could be fun, almost a game. It wasn’t so easy that he felt this way all day long, but his new empowering mindset got him taking constructive action more and more consistently.
There are no secrets to success!
IDENTIFY YOUR OBSTACLES ABOUT ASKING FOR REFERRALS
Why don’t we take action after coming across a great idea?
About four years ago I went to a Wealth Expo in Chicago featuring Donald Trump and Robert Kiyosaki and was fortunate enough to see Tony Robbins there. He had 9,000 people jumping up and down, cheering loudly, and running up and hugging total strangers. I—yes, Mr. Reserved Englishman—was one of them. It sounds really farfetched, but I know that some of you reading this have had the same experience somewhere.
He pointed out that most people would do nothing with his “life-changing” information. He told everyone to take notes so they would remember what he had talked about. I looked around closely; maybe 1 in 20 attendees heeded his advice. Let me be clear: I was impressed that day. He hit on numerous vital issues.
But the other remarkable part was how quickly the energy level changed the minute it was over. As I walked out in this flood of 9,000, I could hear conversations on either side of me. Nobody was talking about what they were going to do next to improve their lives. All I could hear were people saying, “Yes it was good, but,” and finding a flaw in one of Robbins’s points, identifying reasons why his seminar had not “worked” for them. Once I left that auditorium, the atmosphere could not have been more different. There was nothing positive or inspiring about it: it was a feeding frenzy of get-rich-quick schemes and sales sharks.
So why is it that 98 percent of people do nothing after hearing a great idea—including after reading a book?
OBSTACLES
Why aren’t most people getting the referrals they want? I think there are four primary reasons:
1. Outdated ideas. The current concerns you have right now about asking for referrals get in your way; you need to see these from now on as simply old beliefs that aren’t true anymore. This is arguably the most important point I make in this entire book!
2. Lack of belief. You have to believe that you are capable of doing it and that generating referrals is a skill you can develop (see Chapter 1).
3. Low expectations. You have to believe (more and more) that you deserve referrals and expect them. If you don’t really believe this, you will become a self-fulfilling prophecy and not succeed. To change your beliefs, see Chapter 4.
4. Low self-image. Who you think you can become is the best indicator of who you will become. Where you see yourself in the future is crucial if you want to trend upward on whatever achievement scale that matters to you. If you don’t think much of yourself, you’re stacking the deck against the likelihood of success. One powerful solution to this is to start visualizing yourself having the lifestyle you want (more on this in Chapter 4).
Asking for what you want sounds so simple. Yet it is a real challenge for many because—unless finding the right wording is your only challenge—you have to confront your fear. Why are we afraid to ask?
Often it is:
1. Fear of looking pushy
2. Fear of looking needy
3. Fear of looking foolish
4. Fear of being rejected and hearing no
In Chapter 1, I wrote about the fixed versus the growth mindset, asking for a referral and fearing that it might not go that well. In other words, making a mistake—experiencing failure—is going to be very hard for you if you have more of a fixed mindset and believe that your ability is mostly fixed.
When it comes to asking for referrals, other common concerns are:
1. Fear of sounding cheesy or canned
2. Fear of spoiling a good relationship
3. Uncertainty about when to ask
4. Uncertainty about what to say
Do any of these resonate for you? Being aware of why you are fearful or apprehensive is a mandatory place to start—provided you don’t give it unnecessary validation. If you argue for your weakness, it’s yours.
While these are the most frequently mentioned, there are plenty of other irrational things some people tell themselves.
Sometimes people need to talk for a few minutes about referral-asking concerns before their own concern “pops” and they happen to mention something. Here are some things I’ve heard in the past:
“Well, for people to refer me, they need to have seen the work that I do for at least a couple of years.”
“If I get paid by doing business with them, I feel like I’ve been compensated and shouldn’t be asking for more.”
“I don’t want my clients to feel like they’re part-time salespeople for me.”
“I don’t like making my clients feel uncomfortable” (even though it is you who is really the uncomfortable one making others feel the same way).
Yet others have other concerns such as:
“I don’t want to lose the sale by asking them for something else.”
“I don’t know how to retreat if the person is unwilling to suggest anyone.”
And the most dangerous and unempowering: “If I just give great customer service, the referrals should come without me having to ask.”
SOLUTIONS
What are some ways to get over these fears so you can get more referrals?
IDENTIFY CONCERNS
First, you’ve got to identify the unhelpful concerns you have about asking. Make sure you have a clear understanding about why you don’t ask. Take a few minutes and answer this question, “What concerns do I have about asking for referrals?”
UNDERSTAND THAT YOUR “CONCERNS” ARE BELIEFS
Beliefs are powerful. Unhelpful ones must be changed for you to get positive results. Changing beliefs can be a meaty topic, and for most people this is not a simple undertaking. Yet if these unhelpful beliefs are not changed, you will not make progress.
KNOW THAT YOUR BELIEFS DETERMINE ALL RESULTS IN EVERY AREA OF YOUR LIFE
Your beliefs influence everything. They drive your feelings, they sway your actions, and they preview your results.
If your belief is “I think it’s pushy to ask,” then when you have a meeting, what are your feelings? With a belief like that, at the moment of opportunity you’ll most likely look inside and decide “I feel very uncomfortable asking for referrals today.”
If your belief that asking is “pushy” yields a feeling of discomfort, what action do you think you will follow?
You probably won’t ask.
What results do you get? Nothing positive. You generate no new business opportunity, and you have not reached out and offered to help others.
If you believe “Why on earth wouldn’t people want to recommend me?” your feelings are confident.
Feeling confident, you will ask for referrals if the meeting goes well; and if you keep asking, you’ll get results.
We will build on the relationship between beliefs and results in Chapter 6, and if you follow the steps detailed there (and believe in the process), you will get more and more referrals.
FOLLOW YOUR OWN EXAMPLE
Ask yourself, why do you refer other professionals to people you care about? That will reveal the qualities that really matter to you. When I do this with groups, the list is consistently short: honest, nice, competent, integrity and trust, punctual, good service, fair price, respectful, follows up promptly. Sometimes people add likeable, experienced, and sense of humor.
Now that you’ve asked yourself to identify the qualities you value and you’ve got them fresh in your mind (or even better, jotted down in the margins), look in the mirror. Do you fit that bill?
How do you match up? Look at that list like you’re looking in the mirror. If you feel confident that you are all these things, that’s great.
What this really means is facing the truth: You are good enough. You do deserve to get referrals from others.
BE A BETTER RESOURCE TO OTHERS
If you don’t refer much business to others, it’s time to change. I find there is a direct correlation between the amount of business we refer and the amount we receive. I admit that adding value to others is what matters most; referrals can play a key part in this. If you are untrusting by nature, I believe you subconsciously send the same message when asking for referrals. Reread the Rule of Reciprocation!
So how do you change your beliefs? Funny you should ask. Turn to Chapter 4 and let’s get started.