Another speaker at the Referral Institute UK & Ireland Conference earlier this week was Mike Holman, Referral Institute Franchise owner and former Golf Professional. Mike entertained and educated us with the lessons to be learned from golf that can be applied to your referral marketing. In golf you generally have a specific target and play 9 or 18 holes accordingly. Unless you have a real vision for your business you cannot see & share the targets that will help you get there. Successful golf involves alignment, balance, timing and practice. It's the same in referral marketing. Your network needs to be aligned with what you do, the balance of giving and receiving needs to be right. In 'Are you stuck doing lots of networking with little reward?' yesterday I wrote about the relationship building that needs to be in place before the timing is right for profitable referrals.
Mike quoted Gary Player on the subject of practice when someone congratulated him on a lucky shot. Player agreed with the spectator and said "Yes and you know the more I practice the luckier I get!"
See this great video of Tiger Woods for someone who puts it all into practice on the golf course:
I played golf with a number of business owners & professionals yesterday. Afterwards the chat turned to work matters and I asked the owner of a software company where most of his new business came from. He said "Much of it comes from Golf. There are lots of golf events in our Industry. After spending an enjoyable 3 or 4 hours getting to really know someone on the golf course they often ask about business. That then leads to finding opportunities for each other".
It's the same as any successful business networking where it is important to build relationships first & the business follows later.
If you are still wondering whether Social Networks are relevant for your business then think about the amount of business generated as a result of the connections made socially.
