11/14/2024-YES, I’d love to meet your friend

Your friends have friends who you don’t know, and this represents the best part of referral prospecting. Why wouldn’t you want to make a new business friend who is already tight with your BFF?

Who knows where Dale gets his stats, but his claim might nudge you to remember there is room in your game to ask for more referrals and intros.

You have a robust group of business friends, clients, former teammates…and current teammates willing to help. Put ’em to work.

There are two keys to referral prospecting:
1. Direct your friends with specific instructions.
2. Get ready to return the favor.

You spent a lot of time building a solid network… use it.

Bury your face in LinkedIn today and select five of your best friends who can help introduce you to their friends.

First, select five people BFFs you know will help you in an instant.

Next, send a note asking each of your BFFs to talk on the phone about "exchanging networking help." Email won’t cut it for this exercise because asking friends to intro you to their friends requires a lot of trust.

Further, you’ll need to qualify your friend’s relationship with their friend and you’ll want to guide your friend on how to frame the intro.

Now that you’re climbing out of your skin with excitement about prospecting, remember two things about leveraging your network:
1. Lead with a reciprocal offer of help – your friends will be more open to helping you if you gesture to help them.
2. Be prepared to guide your friend with specifics. Write a script they can send to their friend; they can edit it according to taste, but you’ll make it easier for them to help you.

Enlisting your friends to help you is another form of inside sales – you need to get your friends excited about your offering so they can feel engaged in connecting you to a new prospect. After briefly describing your value prop and reasons to reach their friend, your friend is more apt to steer you in the right direction. Sometimes, you might hear, "Oh, now that I know what you guys really do, you need to talk to Bob, not Cindy…."

Good. That’s how it works. Work it.

And, of course, you are offering your network and intro abilities back to your BFF as a reciprocal favor.

See how many rock stars you can name in this live version of this great song from the Rock n Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony!

And good luck getting "I get by with a little help from my friiiiiieeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeennnds" out of your head.

The great thing about network activation is the high you’ll feel reconnecting with your BFFs. And it’ll feel fulfilling scratching their back after they scratch yours.