Referral Clubs big attraction

In a world that has radically changed for small businesses succeeding in today’s economy, the role of relationship building and referral giving is at an all time high.

Ask any small business owner today how they meet people best and undoubtedly they will state that they always meet people best through recommendation.

But go on to ask if they have all the referral business they can handle and that answer is almost always no.

So what’s the paradox you ask?

It’s simple. People are so pre-occupied with building their own business, it’s becomes difficult to take the time to help others.

But that doesn’t make any sense. In fact, from my understanding of people, and the trends I’m seeing in the small business community, the desire for success hasn’t change. What’s changing is simply the way we get there.

People are coming together today to help one another get ahead.

And what’s exciting is that structured referral programs enter the picture in a big way..

In a structured fun, fast moving agenda, businesses can meet weekly for the sole purpose of getting to know one another and with intention of passing qualified referrals to one another.

In fact, a great running referral system can easily provide the following benefits to anyone in business.

Here is what you can expect to receive as benefits from a structured referral giving program:

1. A Lead Generating System – This comes as a result of members inviting guests weekly to experience the group. Not everyone becomes a member. But everyone can easily become a good beginning for a relationship that will never end.

2. Business Building System – A business building system is a predictable and reliable approach with a structured agenda to provide business to one another. Simply said, it’s a part of the agenda at every meeting in which referrals are given to all in attendance. It’s an experience you don’t want to miss.


3. Relationship Building System – If were going to think long term, and want to build a business that succeeds, we have to go after the relationship. It’s too often that people in business are looking for leads and not understanding the real value of building relationships. Think about it.

How easy is in to get referrals with people you don’t know? That’s right. It’s not easy. What great about referrals groups is that they meet weekly with the clear intention of building relationships. And from my experience, if you can get up to six interactions with anyone, and at the same time provide mutually beneficial experiences, it’s likely you’ll have the beginning of a relationship that will never end. That’s why weekly referral is catching on like fire.

While Gold Star Referral Clubs are not the only referral clubs around, after spending 30+ years around the world of networking, Gold Star is the latest and what I feel the greatest and most improved system for building business around.

I liked their system so much; I decided to become one of their national director’s.

To learn more about Gold Star as a business building system, visit - https://www.goldstardirectors.com/index.asp
to become one of our director's, or simply to discuss the world of people connecting with people, I’m easily reachable at – rs@ronsukenick.com or by phone – 317-216-8210.

Use Your Outer Eye And Your Inner Ear

From Ron Sukenick

I've been reading some of the sales training materials from Dr. Ramon Avila of Ball State University. He's got a list of Do's and Don't's for salespeople, and prominent among the Don't's is this: "Don't have a wandering eye." As a business coach for so many years, I'd put that one at the top of my list for anyone who wants to go beyond networking and create effective and long-lasting relationships. Here's what I mean:

A couple of decades ago, when formal networking was growing in popularity, we considered it a "no-no" to spend too much time at a networking meeting with just a few individuals. We wanted to be efficient, so, what we'd do is, while speaking to one person, we'd be scanning the room to see what contact to make next. We listened just long enough to the other person's remarks to rank them as useful to us or a waste of our time, and we never maintained full eye contact with anyone for very long. Not only weren't we listening very intently, it was worse than that - our contact knew we weren't listening very intently! There was no real connection - we didn't give one a chance to get started!

Now, don't get me wrong. I'm still the same Ron Sukenick who for almost thirty years has been promoting networking. In fact, I've had the privilege of being recognized as a national expert on networking. But business never stays the same, and so networking needs to change along with it.

I'm no physiologist, but now that I've resolved to go beyond networking and use and teach the 15 relationship strategies I talk about in my book (see The Power Is In The Connection), I'd swear there's a pipeline between our eyes and our inner ears. When we really look at another person, focusing all our attention on them, not scanning the room, not looking away, it actually opens up our "inner ears", so we can listen purposefully and honestly mean it when we say to that person, "Tell me more".

"Stop, look, and listen." - remember that one from grade school? I realize now that this is excellent advice, not only for school children, but for every business person who wants to travel "into the beyond" of networking.

The Good And Bad In "Bounce"

From Ron Sukenick

Close to thirty years of working as a business coach - I'll tell you, that experience has gone a long way in helping me discover more about myself and other people. Then, when I studied under Dr. Robert Rohm and incorporated the Ultimate Discovery System into my work, that really helped my understanding of how relationships can be nurtured.

It's funny - there are two things about relationships that I've always known, but now I understand them a lot better. In a way, each of these two things relates to the word "bounce".

A friend shared with me a saying her grandmother used to repeat to her: "Laugh, and the world laughs with you; cry, and you cry alone." The first thing that came to my mind when I heard this saying was the four personality styles in the DISC personality profile (which so many corporations use to form effective teams). You see, even though each personality style has its strengths, and even though each person has value, it's a lot easier to do business with any person with an "upbeat" attitude. "Upbeat", you'd have to agree, always attracts more friends and more business than "downbeat"! Call it the "bounce factor". "Bounce" doesn't have to mean extroverted and life-of-the-party; in fact it can take the form of quiet optimism and openness to accept new ideas. Whatever form it takes, people like doing business with people who've got "bounce"!

Now that I've made reading and writing blogs a greater part of my business repertoire, I've become aware of a different meaning for the word "bounce". This meaning's more technical and not nearly so positive. When online searchers click onto a website or a blog post, but don't find the information they want, they leave quickly. A high "bounce rate" is not something you want for your blog or your website, because it means you've failed to engage readers' interest and attention.

When I started thinking about all this "bounce" stuff, I realized it all ties in with the concepts I teach about going beyond networking to NetBeing. When we're meeting another person, as I explained in "The Three Magic Words of Beyond Networking", too often we rush through the encounter. We're so intent on seeing if we can benefit, we take things too seriously and lose the upbeat "bounce" quality that would draw that person to us. Then, because we're too anxious to exhange information and leads, we forget to listen three times as much as we talk. That's why, I realize, traditional networking has such a high "bounce rate".

We really want more than this for ourselves, don't we? And we can have more, if we keep that positive "bounce" in our attitude, and take the time to connect and reduce our "bounce rate"!

Slow Down To Be In The "Right Now" in Business Encounters

From Ron Sukenick

Going beyond traditional networking to the kind of interactions that start relationships takes a lot. Thing is, though, a lot all at one time won't do the trick. As I teach in my business coaching and in my Relationship Strategies courses, the purpose for setting a system in place is so you can make a habit of doing a lot of little things. Whatever business you're in, you do business with other people. And, just as the Kitty Kallen song says, and as I've pointed out before in my Beyond Networking blogs, when you're dealing with people, little things mean a lot.

As a business coach, I know business is constantly changing. I make an effort, no matter where I am and no matter what I'm reading, to pick up ideas on making relationships better. A couple of Sunday's ago, A "Cathy" comic strip reminded me of one of the saddest aspects of interaction that I see, which is being in too much of a hurry in our encounters with others.

Cathy and Irving have been visiting Cathy's parents for the holidays, and now it's time for them to leave. Cathy's mom says, "You're leaving so soon? Here, take the lists of things we didn't have a chance to do. Take the clippings of all the special places we ran out of time to visit, the family videos we didn't have a chance to watch." The visit had gone by and somehow these meaningful little things hadn't gotten done.

Every time we attend a networking meeting, every time we encounter a colleague or a customer, we're given a little "slice" of a chance to go beyond an encounter and create a relationship. Too often, though, we rush past these opportunities. We talk a little, we listen a little, we exchange business cards or even leads. But somehow, we don't take enough time or pay enough attention, and all of sudden, the opportunity to truly connect has slipped away. You leave the networking meeting with a little bit of an empty feeling. You worked at networking, but, somehow, networking didn't work for you!

Next time, don't hurry by a precious opportunity to connect. Be "in the now" and get it right with the person who is there with you right now!

Take A Tip From Meeting Planners To Go Beyond Networking

From Ron Sukenick

To go beyond networking, I've found, we need to go beyond what's expected in the normal course of establishing business contacts. The value of good business relationships has never been higher. Good relationships bring business to you, bad ones drive business away. The concept is simple; putting it into practice beginning with the very first interaction is simple, too, but we need to work at it.

Dr. Ramon Avila, professor of sales and marketing at Ball State University, teaches that the WOW factor in sales means not just fulfilling, but exceeding customers' expectations. That's exactly what I believe we need to do to go beyond networking - we need to exceed expectations.

I read a wonderful article in Professional Speaker magazine, titled "Inside the Mind of Meeting Planners". As I was reading the article, I realized that the expectations meeting planners have of professional speakers are the same things business people should be doing in building strong business relationships.

Here are just a few of the things Corbin Ball Associates, meeting technology professionals, said they expect of the speakers they hire:

Absolute reliability.
Absolute integrity.
Quick responses (to e-mail and phone messages)
Be very clear about billing - no surprises!
No prima donnas, please. Be easy to deal with.

Aren't these exactly the qualities you'd look for in someone when you're beginning a business relationship? Be all these things and then - go beyond and exceed expectations!

If You're Listening WIth Purpose, Believe Them The First Time

From Ron Sukenick


Poet Maya Angelou said, "If someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time". People show us who they are all the time, I've come to realize, even when they don't know they're doing it! But, as I said in More Interactions To Start Relationships, it's still up to us to notice and to give importance to the precious things we're seeing and hearing from other human beings.

When Oprah Winfrey quoted Maya Angelou in the graduation address she gave at Wellesley College, she used Maya's words to warn young women to stay away from "men situations" in which they are mistreated or lied to, rather than hanging on to a belief those men would change and come to treat them better in the future.

From my vantage point as a business coach, that line of poetry by Angelou has a broader and more positive meaning. When we meet a new business contact, and we are "in the moment" with that person, asking open-ended questions and saying "Tell me more!" , then listening purposefully to truly understand that person's perspective, that someone will, in fact, "show us who they are". Because we've gone beyond traditional networking towards NetBeing, we will have created the beginnings of a relationship.

In my Relationship Strategies Institute I teach how, using the DISC behavior model, we can notice four basic behavior patterns people tend to use. We each tend to use one style as our "fall-back", a way of behaving that feels most comfortable. This is what I meant when I said that people show us who they are even when they don't know they're doing it. As you become familiar with different behavior styles, you can use the model as a tool for communicating with other people in language that makes them most comfortable and most open to developing a relationship with you.

I've learned people want to be known and valued for who they really are. That's exactly why, after teaching effective networking for so many years, I've come to see that nowadays, real, profit-generating networking requires going beyond that. We need more strategy, more connectedness, and more trust. I think that's what Maya Angelou was really talking about - being open to really "seeing" and accepting others. If we listen with purpose and with true interest to people we meet, they will show us who they are. We'll be able to believe them the first time, and they, in turn, will be able to believe us!

Little Things Mean A Lot

From the desk of Ron Sukenick

Even if you're too young to remember the hit song popular in the '50's, "Little Things Mean A Lot", the advice in that title will never go out of style for business relationships.

My work involves teaching a set of attitudes and actions that foster meaningful connections between people. In going beyond networking to build connections, paying attention to details is absolutely crucial.

In the song, a woman is telling her romantic partner what little gestures he can perform that would hold a lot of meaning to her. "Blow me a kiss from across the room", Kitty Kallen sings. "Give me your arm as we cross the street…Send me the warmth of a secret smile", she adds.

I would never presume to offer advice on love, but I can see some powerful parallels between the business followup system I teach in my Relationship Strategies courses and in my book and the lyrics of this Kitty Kallen blockbuster hit song. That's because, whatever kind of business we're in, we do business with people, and to people, little things mean a lot. For example, in my earlier blog, Interactions That Start Relationships, I suggest one little thing you can do as you're preparing to leave a networking event, recommending that you make one last round to say a special goodbye to each person you met for the first time.

You see, I believe that, before we can go beyond traditional networking, we need to set a system in place, a process for getting to Connection. In each part of that process, it will be the little things that make all the difference, those crucial extra touches that give clues to others that they are important to us.

Dr. Ramon Avila, who teaches sales at Ball State University, talks about the Six Silent Questions people think (but don't ask) when they meet us. After determining if we are competent and dependable, our new business contact is asking him/herself a question about us: Does this person understand my issues and challenges? The reassurance you provide is in the details. What little things help make each step of your followup process more personalized?

Here's my Beyond Networking challenge to each of you reading this blog as together we begin moving our business "into the beyond" in 2009: Take a moment right NOW and come up with three little things you can do to make a big difference in your business relationships. Email those to me at rsukenick@indy.rr.com. Watch out, world - we're going into the Beyond!