Understanding the power of Referral Marketing as after sales marketing at its Best.

Business for Breakfast drives outstanding networking. With its 25 year pedigree since inception, and the latter 20 as a franchised body we are proud to be involved with leading the way with outstanding networking for individuals, businesses and local communities.

The methodology and approach to achieve this focuses on delivering networking as a skill rather than simply putting events on without structure, focus or facilitation – which goes a long way towards our client retention levels.

To support this and help support our members to go on the journey of growth we accompany them on - which is the pledge we offer our members and franchisees - as with most successful things we needed to systemise. One of the systems that we champion follows one laid out by U.S. Submarine Captain (retired) L. David Marquet’s systems on Leadership:

Empowerment -    We intend to develop and hone individuals networking prowess, to reach a point of comfort and aptitude where they are able to glean value from a situation of being around others, which follows the act of being valuable TO that situation by introducing their contacts and connections to solve problems. This mechanism forms the basis of them developing themselves as a Key Person of Influence (KPI) in their marketplace, as described by Daniel Priestley author of the fantastic book Key Person of Influence, where opportunity gravitates towards these ‘KPI’s’, instead of having to apply energy and excessive levels of time constantly hunting for opportunity which is less efficient.

Questions to consider:

1.       How many people do you speak and listen to on a regular basis either personally of professionally, and how often can you readily assist each person with something they are having a problem with by leaning on a connection of yours, or a piece of knowledge you’ve gleaned from a valuable connection or educational instance?

2.       How much of your pipeline was collected by someone coming back to you because you had previously helped them by introducing them to someone who could solve a problem they were facing?

3.       How many referral relationships (Congruent or vertical) do you have working currently, and how many opportunities do you receive from them?

Efficiency – It is our intention to deliver and facilitate networking that is viewed as enjoyable and productive which combats the issue of excessive time implementation.

One of the commodities faced by business professionals is the investment of time in any activity, especially networking, which if not deemed productive, quite often is qualified as too heavy an investment of time, by those that are weak at professional networking:

“Don’t wish it were easier, wish you were better”

Jim Rohn

BforB creates efficiencies with networking, partly by running face to face meetings, which whilst require more time than digital networking, reduce levels of the ‘stress’ hormone cortisol whilst boosting oxytocin, serotonin and dopamine which all convey a positive effect of ‘happiness’, ‘endorphins’ and ‘trust’ that humans get from physical contact with each other – handshaking etc.

In order to make your networking more ‘efficient’, we can create a percentage indication as we might when considering situations in the world of physics as a parallel system:

Efficiency =        100% x             Number of Qualified referrals returned at an average or desired value

                 Total time implemented (mins or networking sessions)  

This would give a simple value that can be monitored over time: what we measure we can improve, and can be calculated by recording simple metrics (as we do ion BforB) to monitor the growth (networking prowess) of our members throughout their growth journey.

Excellence – Business for Breakfast intends to stand apart in the industry as the leading private business referrals club of preference, not to be confused with the largest. This is done by everyone in the organisation understanding that networking allows us to promote each others business and contacts in a professional manner.

This does not necessarily involve a corporate or even ‘stiff’ or ‘regimented’ mode of operation, moreover an environment where attendees bring their personalities and engage in a friendly, respectful and productive manner where they want to bring their connections to so that they also can receive benefit, whether they elect to join the community or not.

By creating enjoyable environments, we facilitate engagement between attendees by breaking down tension and nerves created between individuals that (initially) may not have the confidence to network with other people.

We metric this by collecting feedback from our guests and members on a regular basis:

“ Very Informative and welcoming, great energy” Callum, Chester

“Very welcome and friendly group. Am seriously considering joining full time!” Richard, Bolton

“Friendly yet professional with a focus on doing business.” Anna, Stockport.     

This system empowers our members to engage in networking excellence in an efficient manner, something which benefits businesses, but sadly is not directly taught in schools and is a skill that we must not let go of as the world turns ever more towards the digital realm.

BforB Recommendations, Credit to Nigel Brookes, BforB UK CEO