Networking - building your referral database

Building your networking database is an ongoing part of your business development project.

This is one of projects that is never completed. Your prospecting database is always changing, your current client list is always changing. Your past clients list is always changing.

What strategies do you have in place to help you develop and refine your database?
What processes do you have in place to review and refine marketing efforts?

This does not have to be a huge undertaking - in fact if you schedule regular reviews it will just be a matter of tweeking here and there.

As you review you should be asking some basic questions.

Is the wording of my messages the bet they can be?
Is the topic of my message the best it can be?
How can I say this a different way?
Am I gathering the correct information?
Do I have my lists organized in the best way.

Can you overthink these things? Yes - it is an easy thing to do. But you should setup a review process for these important questions at least every 3 - 6 months. The more you build and develop your lists and the more experience you gain marketing efforts using your lists the better you will understand how to improrve on your processes.

I hope this information helps, I always welcome comments and subscribers.
(photo courtesy of Dominik Gwarek (kikashi)

Referral marketing for mortgage, real estate, and financial services

What is referral marketing?

The simple answer is "Keeping in contact within your business and social network by keeping them informed about you and the services you can provide to them and their friends and associates."

Referral marketing can be as simple as handing everyone you come in contact with 3-4 business cards and asking them to pass them out to anyone they know or meet that they think can benefit from your services to a well organized market plan using a contact management application to send letters, emails and make phone calls on a regular basis to everyone that you can add to your referral list.

The more effort you put into your plan the more success you will achieve.

Even the simple strategy of handing out business cards can to refined to get better results.

What are you doing with the space on your cards? Over 90% of all business card only use 50% or less of the available space. The backs of the card are blank!

What could you put on the back of your card to gain more business?

Here are some ideas.

• List 5 reasons that someone would benefit from your service.
• Describe the types of services you can provide.
• Print recommendations from past clients.
• Itemize the information you need to help them.
  

Think about the risk /reward ratio.

It will cost you about 25% more to add content to the 2nd side of your cards but it will double the content.

Next look at your envelopes, are you wasting a lot of unused space?

I hope this information helps, I always welcome comments and subscribers.

Positioning and Personal Branding

An article I wrote about positioning and personal branding was published in March - 08 commercial edition of The Scotsman Guide. The article is entitled "What's Your Position?"

Because of a publishing agreement with the company I cannot repost the entire article. I can give you an overview of the subject of the article and prove a link to their website if you want to read the entire article.

The premise is a basic of personal marketing. Every service or product has a "position" in the mind of a consumer. Understanding that position is the first step towards building a personal brand for your position. An example would be to ask you to name 5 real estate moguls. The odds are pretty good that Donald Trump will be in your top 3 choices. Name the 5 top software gurus. Did you name Bill Gates or Steve Jobs? They are all great examples of positioning and personal branding.

If you want to read the full article please visit The Scotsman Guide's website.

I always welcome subscriber and comments.