Beyond Referrals Read online

  SEVEN TIPS FOR MORE EFFECTIVE EVENTS

  Here are some guidelines or rules of thumb for you to follow as you host different types of events to solidify client loyalty and keep your pipeline of quality prospects filled:

  1. Party with a purpose. Be clear about your event. Is this event just for client appreciation? Or are you doing it to secure introductions? Be clear with yourself and then be clear with the people you invite.

  2. Smaller is usually better. The main purpose of these events is connection. You want to create quality connections with your clients and their guests. The bigger the event, the thinner the connections and the more diminished the effectiveness. The smaller the events, the better the connections. For example, keep dinners to 8 to 10 people. That’s how many people will fit around one table (and make it a round table). Wine tastings and cooking classes can be up to 16 to 18 people, because you can usually walk around. At sporting events, you’ll only connect with two people, unless you’re in a luxury suite or you host tailgating before or after the event. Whenever considering an event, consider the connections. Will the event facilitate or hinder good connections?

  3. Vary your events. Different clients like different things. Not everyone drinks wine or plays golf. Host a variety of events to attract the maximum number of clients and guests.

  4. Find unique and creative venues. Another way to ensure good attendance is to find events and venues your clients might not be able to take advantage of themselves, such as a dinner at a museum or art opening. One way to learn about creative venues is to ask your clients. Ask them about other events they’ve attended. Consider hiring a special events planner, especially for the first few events you host. These professionals will help you with creative ideas to make your events memorable, as well as help you avoid some major mistakes. Claire is a small business owner who did just that. She hired a special events planner and said, “Help me find something different, fun, and memorable.” The events planner helped Claire host a Wii party in the party room of an Irish pub. She had 24 people (a little big), but ended up with 5 new clients. Well worth her time and dollars.

  5. Call-mail-call invitation process. This is a tried-and-true way to ensure better attendance at your events. Call your clients to alert them to the event. Mail them a nice invitation. Then call them to confirm their attendance and their guests. You’ll always have higher attendance if you start out with a personal invitation, before mailing them an invitation. Personally, I think you should avoid e-mail invitations to business events. Keep e-mail invitations limited to your personal events.

  6. Maintain consistency. If you’ve not been in the habit of hosting events, don’t be surprised if the first few aren’t as successful as you’d like. It takes time for your clients to get used to doing such events, and it takes time for you to perfect your events. Consistency is the key.

  7. Follow up in 24 to 48 hours. This is probably the most important of these seven ideas. While the relationship magic might happen at the event, the results happen from the follow-up. Don’t expect to see any results from your events if you don’t follow up with the clients and their guests. After the event, call the clients and say something like:

  George, I was about to call Dennis and Theresa to see if they’d be willing to schedule an appointment. I thought I’d check in with you first. Did they enjoy themselves last night? Anything in the conversation that would preclude me from calling them? It seems that one of their great passions is the foundation they started. I may have some ideas for them in that area. Would you agree that’s their biggest interest or passion right now (aside from their children)?

  CELEBRATION EVENTS

  A celebration event is one in which you usually have a guest of honor—your client—and you are helping the client celebrate some milestone such as a:

  1. Birthday

  2. Wedding anniversary

  3. Business anniversary

  4. Retirement

  5. New venture or product launch

  For example, Joe is a successful financial advisor on Long Island (New York). When Joe’s clients are getting ready to retire, he offers to throw a party for them. The client is asked to invite up to 40 guests. Joe and his team invite everyone—so everyone being invited knows that Joe (the financial advisor) is hosting this event, not a coworker, neighbor, or the spouse. Joe averages seven new clients every time he hosts such an event.

  Joe didn’t start with a guest list of 40. He started much smaller and then built this up over time, finding that 40 was his optimal number. I suggest you start small as well. No need to overwhelm yourself or tax your budget until you find the formula that works.

  What if you had a client with a birthday coming up? Could you offer to take her and several of her colleagues to lunch to celebrate? Or suppose your client is bringing a new product or service to market. Perhaps you can help the client with a “launch party.”

  In all these cases, what happens is that the guests see the kind of relationship their friend or colleague has with you. This makes you a potentially attractive resource.

  I was working with a group of bankers in Red Bank, New Jersey. I brought up this idea of celebration events. One of the bankers, Julie, took it to heart. The following week she took a client and two of his colleagues from work for a little birthday lunch. One of the guests became interested in Julie’s work and ended up becoming a client, securing a $10 million loan for his business.

  PHILANTHROPIC AND COMMUNITY SERVICE EVENTS

  If you have a philanthropic or community service organization in which you are involved, you can get your clients to invite their friends to meet you, have some fun, and make a contribution to a worthy cause.

  Most of the events I listed in the previous tip can be used as events to help a charity or other nonprofit endeavor. In addition, you might consider a casino night, an adopt-a-highway program, or Habitat for Humanity. I know a financial advisor, Matt, who uses his participation in renovation and fund-raising for the Boys and Girls Clubs as a way to help a worthy cause, bond with his clients, and meet new prospects. Of course, he talks no business during these events. He just does good work and gets to know his “coworkers.” From this, he has “earned the right” to follow up with the participants to suggest himself as a possible resource for them.

  These events can be hosted by you or by the charitable organization. Another scenario would be for you to participate in any charitable events with which your clients are involved. As you get to know your clients, learn about what community interests they have. See if you can come as a guest to their events to help them with the good work that they do. You have to be very careful not to talk too much about your business. Just be genuinely friendly and curious. Remember the expression “to be interesting, be interested.” You’ll almost always end up with one or two people who would be happy to accept your business-related call later. The worst-case scenario is that you help a good organization do good work in your community.

  ACTION STEP

  If you’re not already active with philanthropic or community service organizations, pick one or two to join. Because you have to be very careful about coming on too strong with potential prospects at these events, I urge you to pick organizations whose work resonates with you. Join the organization because you feel the work it does is important and you’re happy to participate even if it never turns into any business for you. In this way, you’ll being doing important work and will be more disciplined about jumping potential prospects as soon as you meet them.

  MAXIMIZE BUSINESS AND CHARITY EVENTS

  To acquire more clients, you have to meet new people—all the time. Just like a good college sports program, your recruiting can never stop.

  In your efforts to meet more people, you probably find yourself going to different types of events from time to time. Some people do this willingly, excited about the new people they will meet. Others go to these events begrudgingly. Do you think your attitude going in can make a difference in your re
sults? You bet it can! Go to events openly and optimistically, and you’ll meet one or more great contacts for your business. What you focus on grows stronger in your life. Focus on meeting people and creating successful relationships, then that’s what will happen. Focus on being shy or pessimistic, and that’s what you’ll create as well.

  One way to improve your attitude going in—and your results coming out—is to come prepared to meet certain individuals. With most events, you can usually get an idea, if not a full list, of all the “players” in that organization (like the board of directors or the largest donors, for example). Then, use the Internet to prepare yourself to meet these folks.

  If you’re a little shy at events, do what I do. Work the registration table. You meet everyone coming to the event and then feel more confident walking up to people later.

  Put Google to Work

  Take that list of board of directors, top donors, and the like and Google them. See what you can learn about them. Then, when you meet them at the event, you can slowly direct the conversation to things that you know are important to them or that you have in common.

  Confidence

  Approaching strangers—especially high-level folks—takes confidence. The more you know about them before you even meet them, the more confident you’ll be, and therefore the more effective you’ll be.

  Follow Up

  There’s not much point in going to these events with an intention of meeting new people if you don’t follow up with those you meet. Personally, when I’m at events, I’m always looking for a way to connect with people after the event on a more personal level. I listen to what’s important to them. If I can make my first follow-up about value to them in a nonbusiness area, I always feel more confident, and it’s a great next reason for contact. It’s a sad fact that most people who go to events never follow up with the people they meet. Wasted time and missed opportunities!

  ACTION STEP

  The next time you are invited to an event of any type, see if you can find out who else will be there and try this exercise of doing a little research on some of the high-level folks. You’ll see how it gets you more excited about the event and how you’re able to approach these people with more confidence. And see if the organizer needs any help—at the registration table or otherwise. Then you adopt the attitude of a “host,” and it’s easier to approach strangers.

  EDUCATIONAL EVENTS

  One way to stay in touch with your clients—a way that brings ongoing value as well as lets you meet new prospects—is through educational events. The events can be totally related to the work you do or totally unrelated. For instance, financial advisors have many topics from which to choose for educational events, including retirement planning, risk management, tax-efficient investing, etc. Perhaps you have many topics related to your business as well. Whether you do or not, consider hosting other educational events that might be unrelated to your core business, such as identity theft protection, stress reduction, fitness, nutrition, wine appreciation, or chocolate appreciation.

  Just as with social events, call your clients to invite them to bring one or more guests, mail them an invitation, and then follow up later with a confirmation call. If you want your event to be successful—whatever type of event you’re hosting—call your clients! Don’t make the mistake of just mailing invitations to them, hoping enough people will reply and bring a guest. You will always increase attendance and increase the chances of your clients bringing a guest if you call them as part of the invitation process.

  Whom do you invite to your educational events? Certainly you want to invite your clients and their guests (and other prospects). But don’t forget about your strategic partners, COIs, and even some of your vendors.

  While one of the goals of your educational events is to provide value to all the attendees, another goal is to connect with as many people as possible. So think about adding some “social time” at the beginning or end of your educational event. Brian is a small business owner in Canada. He hosts four educational events each year. To make sure he connects well with the attendees, he looks for fun activities to add to his events. He uses a restaurant that has lawn bowling on the front lawn of the restaurant. He encourages his attendees to come early for a game or two. He has added chocolate tastings to the end of his events to encourage people to stick around so he can connect with them.

  Always follow up with your educational event attendees. See if they have any lingering questions. Set appointments when appropriate.

  Add Depth to Your Events

  Here’s an idea I got from a business consultant in California who uses events as part of his referral marketing efforts. Many of his events are more “facilitated discussions” than events. He teams up with “alliances” such as accountants, attorneys, and other business consultants with various specialties. Each of these folks brings four to five business owners to the event. At the event, one or more themes are presented and then discussed among all the attendees.

  This consultant happens to cater to small business owners. So perhaps that’s part of why these events work so well. This gentleman told me, “These small business owners—in a room with noncompetitors—really open up about their business and various challenges.”

  The meetings turn out to be very helpful to the attendees, and each one of the alliances who brought guests walks away with some viable prospects for their special expertise.

  I think the key to making this work is that all the attendees need to have enough in common so that the discussions pertain to most of the people most of the time. This concept can work with any sort of group with enough in common.

  AFFINITY-GROUP EVENTS

  An affinity group is any type of organization (some are more formal than others) where people meet to share some interest or activity in common. Examples of affinity groups are:

  1. Car owners clubs (Corvette, BMW, Porsche, etc.)

  2. Stamp or coin collectors

  3. Polo aficionados

  4. Motorcycle clubs

  5. Cycling (road or mountain) enthusiasts

  6. Cooking groups

  7. Investment clubs

  I’m sure you can think of a few more right off the top of your head.

  There are two main ways you can leverage these types of groups. As I mentioned earlier in this section, you can have your clients who belong to such organizations invite you to attend as their guest. In this way, you are being introduced to all the members, with your client telling them a little bit about the work you’ve done for him or her.

  Another way to leverage these groups is to sponsor some sort of social or educational event just for them. Now you’re meeting these folks in a way that you’re providing some value to them in the form of fun or education—or a little of both.

  TURN YOUR CLIENT PASSIONS INTO REFERRAL EVENTS

  One successful business owner recently told me, “We have a passion for helping our clients and knowing their passions as well. We are building events around the passions of our clients.” Brilliant!

  When your clients have a passion for something, they usually know others who share their passion. And they are usually interested in educating others about their passion. So there are at least two ways you can tap into this dynamic:

  1. Cohost an event with your client (you pay for it) where the client invites other enthusiasts to go deeper in their shared interest (or maybe people would come just because your client asked them to). Examples: Wine tasting, golf lessons, music, chocolate, hiking, community service project, to name a few.

  2. Host an event for your client and client’s guests where your client with a passion is there to actually teach others. If the client’s passion is for fly-fishing, for instance, it could be fly-fishing lessons. If the client is a high-caliber golfer, he or she can give a golf lesson. If a client has a passion for bourbon, then you could all get into a lot of trouble. (Okay, maybe not a bourbon party. But you get the idea.)

  This concept also holds true
for your passions. I know a financial advisor who is an Olympic-caliber skier. He hosts a ski event every year. And I have a client who “loves the horses.” His signature event is a yearly trip to the track.

  SECTION III

  GET MORE APPOINTMENTS

  Reach Your New Prospects and Begin the Conversation

  As you know, one of the main benefits of working from referrals is that every other aspect of the sales process is easier and more effective. Why? Because you’re meeting prospects at a high level of trust from the very beginning. In fact, with a good introduction, the trust is there before you even contact them.

  You have the referral. You’ve been introduced. Now you have to contact your new referral prospect. Contacting referral prospects that have been introduced is different from how you might contact prospects from a different lead source. The beauty of working from introductions is that the prospects are likely aware of who you are and why you are reaching out to them, and they have heard a few nice things about you and the work you do. Of course, the stronger the relationship between the referral source and the prospect, usually the more fluid and effective the whole process becomes.

  But we’re not done yet, are we? Now we need to reach out to the prospects to gain further interest and set an appointment. First appointments vary from industry to industry. Do you want to meet the prospects face-to-face? Will a phone appointment work to get you off to a great start? I rarely have face-to-face appointments with my prospects. Because I work with businesses all over the globe, 95 percent of my appointments take place over the phone or Skype.