Referral Marketing: Establishing Value

Yesterday, I hosted a luncheon for my Referral Institute Graduates. Every month, I host this event for grads as a value added opportunity for them to network with each other, practice their education, and learn something of value to them.

This year, I've made the commitment to feature a Graduate Guest Speaker at each luncheon. Yesterday's speaker was Dave Zang, principle with Partners Through People. Dave's expertise is sales training and assessments. The unique twist from PTP is that they first address the hidden attitudes deep within you before teaching you the sales process. They believe that if you learn a process and still have underlying attitudes that get in your way, you can't be successful ... and I fully agree. Trust me ... we ALL have attitudes that get in our way ... most of them are so deep within us that we don't even recognize that we have them!

Dave taught us that the number one mistake in sales is not building value! If you fail to build value in yourself and your product/service, you will most likely hear the dreaded "I need to think about it". "I need to think about it" is code for "this is not the right solution for me", "I have no real need for this", "I probably can live fine without this", or "this is not in my budget".

If you're successful at establishing value, the customer can't live with you ... and they certainly can't imagine any reason to think about it any further. All of a sudden, you become a "must have".

How well do you establish value? How well do you communicate your value to your referral sources? How well can your referral sources establish your value?