Networking VS Referral Marketing.

Networking is about meeting people. Referral marketing is about relationships. We need to turn our contacts into relationships.

So let’s look at Referral Marketing here.

Dr Ivan Misner, offers the following, and my experience is, this is right on the money.

A referral marketing plan involves relationships of many different kinds. Among the most important are those with your referral sources, with prospects these referral sources bring you and with customers you recruit from the prospects. These relationships don’t just spring up full-grown; they must be nurtured. As they grow, fed by mutual trust and shared benefits, they evolve through three phases: visibility, credibility and profitability.
We call this evolution the VCP Process.

Any successful relationship, whether a personal or a business relationship, is unique to every pair of individuals, and it evolves over time. It starts out tentative, fragile, full of unfulfilled possibilities and expectations. It grows stronger with experience and familiarity.

It matures into trust and commitment. The VCP Process describes the process of creation, growth and strengthening of business, professional and personal relationships; it is useful for assessing the status of a relationship and where it fits in the process of getting referrals. It can be used to nurture the growth of an effective and rewarding relationship with a prospective friend, client, co-worker, vendor, colleague or family member.

When fully realized, such a relationship is mutually rewarding and, thus, self-perpetuating.

This simple concept has made a bigger difference in more people’s networking efforts than any other single idea discussed by Dr Ivan Misner.

So what are you doing to work on mutually rewarding relationships? Are you nurturing or still waiting for things just to happen?

Next we will look at the V part of VCP

Happy Networking.

Glenn