For most freelancers and solopreneurs, that’s a pipedream. It may not even make sense for the size of business that you want.
And, there’s no doubt that a team of people doing the sales and bringing in new business would have a huge impact on your bottom-line.
Fill Your Pipeline through Business Relationships
To bring yourself referrals and business opportunities, you can utilize your local business community. Even though referral sources will not always bring closed sales to you, they can fill your pipeline with quality prospects who are ready to do business with you.
So, what does building a sales force look like? Well, it’s similar to what we would do for relationship sales.
The following ten steps come from the GrowthEverywhere.com blog on building sales teams. And they can be applied to build your referral team.
10 Steps to Build Your Referral Sales Team
Step 1: Ask for help.
Who likes asking for help nowadays? Hardly anyone. Entrepreneurs are known for avoiding help as often as they can. If you aren’t asking for help, then you are just hoping that others will do things for you. But you have to remember that if people don’t ask for help, you wouldn’t have any clients to help, either.
Step 2: Do your research.
Most people are oblivious to the fact that there are extraordinary books out there to help build business relationships, develop sales pipeline, and also to create referral plans. A great book that I would highly recommend would be “The World’s Best Known Marketing Secret”, by Dr. Ivan Misner & Mike Macedonio, check it out!
Step 3: Have a good hiring process.
Would you walk into a room of candidates to hire and scream “You’re all hired, now get to work!” or would you rather hand-select each teammate and begin to train them on the best ways to make a good sale? Hiring is the same thing as finding your referral source, take them through a hiring process.
To receive a river of referrals, you must plan to give in return. This motivation needs to be double-sided. This means shared values, interests, and very clear expectations.
For those of you with employees, we need to remember that sometimes we have to let go in order to grow. The pruning process. Sometimes we create great relationships at work, but not all the time does it help your business move forward. We need to make sure that our employees are bringing us business and not taking away from time that could be improving the business. The question to ask yourself is, do you have a process to evaluate your relationship and know when to make that shift? If your answer is no, you’ll need steps 5 and 6.
Step 5: Have tracking tools.
Having 12 to 15 strong referral sources would be ideal and it means you need to know alot about these people. Networking doesn’t mean everything stays the same all the time, it changes. You must be capable of tracking your meetings and your promised tasks. Having this capacity to track it shows your organization and allows you to easily evaluate relationships.
Step 6: Use sales metrics.
Set a goal that is measurable, what gets measured gets done. At Asentiv, we use a giving activity tracking tool we call the “Networking Scorecard.” Using this tool to track your weekly networking activities, you can determine if the results are paying off. You’ll also know what areas are good to focus on to get even greater results.
Step 7: Plan a 4-month ramp up.
Creating a sales team takes training and that takes time. Add some time to gain experience and you are on your way to training a great sales force. Salespeople need to learn from the inside out of what they are selling and who they are selling to. This can take several months, and remember that productivity will be lower at this time.
It is no different from relationship sales. Your referral sources need time to develop trust with you, learn what makes a good referral for you, and integrate you into their own systems. Give it a chance, many business owners give up on relationships too soon. They return to direct prospecting because they don’t have a plan and strategies to find and equip their referral sources.
Step 8: Reward your people.
Salespeople work off commission and salary. When referring to business, your referral sources aren’t expecting to be paid. They are expecting to be recognized for their contribution to your business. Do you have a system for rewarding people? Start with a simple thank you card and work up to a complex reward using your network. Everyone likes to be acknowledged in some way, so find out what they would appreciate and show them some appreciation!
Step 9: Communicate frequently.
The boss knows how to motivate and encourage and sometimes that’s what a sales staff needs to see. The sales staff needs to be able to get the answers they need, so they don’t slow down the process. Business relationships also don’t work on cruise control. In practice, a true powerhouse team has regular and effective conversations about how to help each other and become most productive with their time.
Step 10: Go all out with sales training.
Invest in your sales training. The better trained your relationship sales staff, the more they will produce.
The same concept applies to relationship sales. You may have the best skills in referring, and your teammates need those skills, too. A great sales team feeds off of each other. Because without them, your teammates will be unable to meet your expectations.
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