At the BNI International Conference in Long Beach this past November, I had a great conversation with my business partner in the Referral Institute, Mike Macedonio (pictured to the right). 
He was explaining why he feels there are only a few criteria that must be met to make people referrable by him.
The first criterion is that the individual is must be an expert at what he or she does. He looks for people who have invested in learning their trade and continue to invest to master their trade. Do they specialize in a certain area? What achievements have they attained in their area of expertise?
Another one of Mike’s requirements is that the person is passionate about what he or she does. This, especially, makes a lot of sense to me because if you’re not passionate about what you do, how could you expect other people to get excited about working on your behalf?
Mike’s last criterion stipulates that the person he is referring understands and honors the referral process. More specifically, Mike wants to ensure that the person receiving the referral understands his or her number-one responsibility. To quote Mike, “The number-one responsibility when you receive a referral is to make the person who gave you the referral look great.” As long as the people Mike gives referrals to are doing this for him, Mike can remain confident that his reputation will be protected. It also compels him to continue giving these people referrals.
Mike’s list of qualifications that make a person referrable is short, yet very powerful. After discussing it, we both agreed that we should expect others to evaluate our referrability by these same criteria. Are we invested experts, and do we continue to invest in our trade? Are we passionate about what we do? Are we practicing what we preach? Do we make our referral sources look great? I’m glad to say that I’m confident we both do all of these things.
So what makes people referrable by you? I’m sure many of you have some great ideas in response to this. I’d love to hear them, so please feel free to leave a comment.
This entry was posted on Thursday, December 11th, 2008 at 6:00 am and is filed under Business, Collaboration, Connections, Emotional Intelligence, Giving, Ivan Misner, Networking, Networking Education, Networking Prep, Referral Institute, Referrals, Self Development, Social Capital. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.2 Responses to “What Does It Take for You to Refer Someone?”
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December 12th, 2008 at 12:49 pm
Great article! I will add this to my list. What I find helpful is to make time with my new referal partner and interview them. I go to their office take a tour with them. I let them tell me about their business and how it all works. I take notes during this visit. It helps me to be a better referal partner. I then tell them what I do so that they can be a good referal partner to me. The time spent is well worth it and very profitable.
December 16th, 2008 at 6:51 pm
Thank you! What a great reminder!! I am going to print these out for my students. If we care to take “ownership ” of our business, we will have to be an expert in our field. Put a heart into what we are doing make a difference, you have reminded me of these quotes that I had read:
“To get paid the best, you must be the best” – T. Harv Eker
“We are the instruments of our own performance, and to be effective, we need to recognize the importance of taking time regularly to sharpen the saw.”- Stephen R Covey
Cheers,
Chwen Lim(Sharon)