In April of 1953, Mickey Mantle had swung a bat all of his life before he gave birth to the “Tape Measure Home Run”, and a single ball flew 560 feet out of Senator Stadium. In 1966, Neil Armstrong had flown over 900 flights as a test pilot before he became NASA's first civilian astronaut to fly in space. In 2011, Steve Jobs had grown Apple Computer Corporation into the world’s most valuable company, even though just 11 years earlier the company was faced with bankruptcy. There are a thousand examples that transverse a thousand years of people “winning” in their careers. The question is, what enabled them to get to the point of winning? I think the answer is a “secret” they all knew.
Secrets are often shared amongst our closest confidants, people that can change our destiny. As sales representatives trying to get ahead, we often share secrets with each other to drive new opportunity and innovation in our sales processes.
The Lost Art of a referral is a secret I thought I would share with you! In exchange, I ask that you share a secret with the readers of this blog.
During a training session with Conceptual Selling by Miller Heiman, I learned the process of asking a customer for three referrals. We as sales representatives are pretty accustomed to this practice and most of us are asking via email, networking events, and over the phone for referrals every day.
Recently, I learned the secret of asking for referrals via LinkedIn. While you may think you know how to ask for referrals via LinkedIn, this specific process might be new to you. I recorded a video of my step-by-step process of scaling the referral module in LinkedIn to gain access to hundreds of decision makers. This process is accounting for one million dollars in opportunity in my pipeline right now, and I thought I would share it with you. BEST OF LUCK!
