Tuesday, March 04, 2008

Referral Marketing: Determination!

Yesterday, as the snow was beginning to melt in our 60+ degrees weather, I noticed the first signs of spring ... crocus popping through the soil! Then, as I looked closer, I noticed that they were pushing themselves up between some rocks that I had laid for a rock border. All of a sudden, it dawned on me that I had inadvertently covered up my tiny crocus bulbs with this rock border! As I picked up a few more rocks, there underneath were the tiny crocus, sprouting on their sides determined to seek sunlight under the edge of the rock! I was shocked to see that they had even sprouted ... that's determination.

Too many people that I meet lack the determination to stick with their referral marketing plan because it takes too much work or it takes too much time to develop the relationships. Many people join networking groups and then give up because they "didn't get anything out of it".

The foundation of referral marketing is relationships that grow stronger through reciprocity. Developing a referral network does take time and it certainly takes commitment and determination. It also takes WORK ... that's why it's called Net-WORK! If you don't give first, you can't really expect to get anything in return.

Don't allow yourself to become one of the statistics that drop out of a relationship or a networking group just as it's about to begin giving back to you. Try as you will to match the determination of my little crocus plants ... if you work at it ... the pay off will be worth it!

1 comment:

Becky Hooman said...

What a great analogy for this time of year! It's so easy to get tired of everything when we're ready for spring and we're seeing our worst weather of the year. Thanks for the reminder that persistence pays off!