A Question of Trust : A Conversation with Vanessa Hall Part Two

This article originally appeared in The National Networker

Last month I introduced you to Vanessa Hall, the award-winning speaker and author of Trust in Business. Vanessa outlined her model for understanding the foundations of trust and what you need to do to maintain trust in business relationships and ensure it doesn't erode and destroy relationships.

In the second part of the interview I asked Vanessa to elaborate on the role of trust in referral relationships and how to approach referrals with trust in mind.

A: In my new book I’ve been talking about how a trusted introduction can help a salesperson reach their prospect far more easily than cold calling and trying to get past the ‘gatekeeper’. Clearly that’s valuable for the salesperson, but how can the person passing the referral protect the trust they have with the prospect?

V: One of the key things about referred trust that I talk about is understanding both the benefits but also the risks involved, so we have to be quite careful when we’re referring someone else to somebody with whom we have a trust relationship.  This is where my theory of situational trust comes in as well. One of the important things which a lot of people don’t do when they’re giving referrals is to understand in what situation or what context does their trust relationship with this person exist.

Often what happens, for example, is that I might know somebody through the fact that our kids play soccer together. There’s a trust relationship that’s been built around picking up kids, dropping them off, those sorts of things. There’s still a trust there, but it’s very specific to that particular situation. If I refer somebody into that person, somebody else with whom I have an element of trust, but they’re looking for a business type referral, the person who we’re referring them to trusts me more from a social context. If I’m not clear about who this person is that I’m referring them to and why I’m referring them you can actually open yourself up to some confusion.

In understanding the situational trust that exists between two people we can also begin to develop and understand the expectations that we have, and the expectations that the person referring into them might have as well. The process of referrals works much better when you acknowledge the trust relationship that you have and then communicate the context of that contact.

Often what people do is refer people and then leave the relationship up to them but I’ve been caught out a number of times.  Just giving a contact is not enough if we want to build trust. If we don’t frame it properly, not only is the relationship not bridged between this new person and the contact but it can also damage the relationship between that person and you – the person who’s giving the referral in the first place.

A: Framing is vital. I talk a lot about ‘qualified’ and ‘unqualified’ referrals, based on the relationship you have with someone. You may, for example, pass a ‘qualified’ referral to someone you have only just met, by making that clear to the prospect. Where you know and trust the person you are referring though, the referral is ‘unqualified’. You are clearly recommending their services, by saying for example, “talk to this person, they’re superb’. 

How much time do you spend following up the introductions you make to ensure both parties are working well together? 

V: I like to know and I always ask for feedback whenever I’ve given a referral because there are a number of referrals made and if one of them doesn’t work for some reason then I have to sit back and ask what’s happening in this process. Am I not connecting the right people or am I building up an expectation that’s not being delivered?  What’s actually going on?

If you never ask for that feedback you simply don’t know.  You just keep referring people and sometimes you can really end up wasting a lot of people’s time if you’ve not done it properly, so I certainly look for feedback.

Just going back to your point before about when you say, for instance, talk to this person, they’re superb, what can happen in making a statement like that is you can certainly build up an expectation but there’s also an implied promise.  I talk about the difference between implicit and explicit promises, there’s an implied promise – the minute you give somebody a referral, there’s a very good chance that this is going to turn into a business referral, which to me is the implied promise that can break down trust more quickly.

So in not being clear about that and making a simple statement like “this person’s fantastic” or “they’re a real go-getter” or “they’re really friendly” or whatever, you’ve made an implied promise and built up an expectation in that person’s mind about how their interaction might play out, and if it doesn’t play out exactly in the way they expect and the way they believe it was promised to them and it doesn’t meet their needs then their trust in you can break down very quickly.

It’s about respecting the trust that you have and I talk about handling it with care. I compare trust to an egg, it can break very easily so you need to handle that trust very carefully and respect it for what it is.
It’s a gift when people trust you.

A :  Would you introduce someone you’ve only just met to somebody who is a very important client of yours?

V: If I’ve got a very strong sense about the person, but again I’d make it very clear that I’ve only just met them, and I can’t vouch for them other than I’ve got a sense that they were nice, or the right sort of person, but yes I certainly do qualify it in your terms.

A:  Do you find yourself from holding back from introductions that you could make until you feel the trust is at the right level?

V: Yes definitely. I think to some extent it depends on the nature of the contacts. For example, the more work that I do in senior government levels and with people connected with the UN, a lot of people want to know the people who I know. I don’t believe it’s my place to just suddenly open the doors and pour all these people to them, so it’s also being clear about what’s the nature of the relationship between me and these other people and what are their expectations in terms of protecting that relationship too.

It’s a difficult one, because on the one hand you certainly want to help people and help their business to grow and networks continue to increase, and I love connecting people but there is an element of – you know – I’d really love to understand more about you as a person and what you are trying to achieve; what’s the goal?

And what are you expecting out of this connection as well, because I’ve seen it go terribly wrong in many situations

A: You talked about referred trust, you talked about situational trust, can you just explain the other types of trust in your model?

V: In the book I talk about blind trust. With blind trust we jump in, we don’t think about what we’re expecting, about what we need, and we don’t articulate that. And so what happens in a blind trust situation is we are often left quite disappointed and we often blame the other person. But we had a role to play in that by obviously not being clear about what we expected out of this relationship, this interaction and what we need? You should also ask can this person actually promise to deliver on those, are you trusting the right person for the outcome you are looking for?

I talk about sceptical trust, which is the opposite.  We’re very, very clear about our expectations and we want to get right down to the nitty gritty detail before we step into the trust relationship. Very, very clear about our expectations, very clear about our needs, We’ll only trust somebody who will 100% promise to meet those.
I talk about middle ground. There’s a balance between those two, both of them can work very well in some situations but both of them can be very detrimental so there’s a middle ground there. We have to articulate and be clear about our expectations and needs and be sure that the person we’re dealing with can make promises to deliver that.

We can’t go down to the nth degree and people can’t always promise every little detail and so there is a point where we have to step into the relationship but by understanding the model of trust we can also continue to communicate effectively as well.

CONNECTING IS NOT ENOUGH: The Anatomy of a Referral (Part Three)

This article originally appeared in The National Networker


You are surrounded by people who have frequent opportunities to refer you and who would be delighted to help you, yet you rarely, if ever, receive referrals from them. In the cases where they do make introductions they tend to be far from the connections you’ve been looking for.

Why should this be? Surely if you have a network of people who will help, your word of mouth marketing should be simple?

The problem is that attracting good quality referrals takes a strong degree of focus and planning. You do have the tools and resources at your disposal, but you have to understand how to use them. After reading the last two articles in this series you should by now have a clear idea of what you are looking for in a referral and who to turn to for help. Once you have inspired those people to want to help you, the next step is to educate them so that they understand how.


Out of the picture

We talked in Part One of this series about the quality of a true referral. The person referring you (your ‘champion’) has spoken about you to someone who may be in need of your services. That person is interested in hearing from you and is waiting for your call.

If your champion is going to be able to get the prospective client interested in hearing from you, they need to know enough about your business to make a strong case. They need to recognise that your prospect has a problem that you are able to solve and have a reasonable understanding of how you solve that issue and the benefits that result.

Remember, most of the time you will not be there when they have the conversation. You have to consider yourself to be out of the picture. If you are going to educate your champions effectively, you have to be able to pre-empt the conversations they will have with your prospects without you there.

Very often you may ask for referrals to people and explain why you want to meet them. This is despite the fact that those people have no interest in why you want to meet them at all. They don’t know you and have no buy-in to meeting your needs. Instead, they are focused on what they need and what they want.

If your champions are going to be able to get them to want to meet you, therefore, they need a message that will be relevant to that person. Identify what their problems are and provide evidence that you may be the person with the solution and they’ll be interested.


Simple, sticky and transferable

Armed with the knowledge that you need your champions to have conversations about you when you’re not around, the temptation may be strong to give them as much information as possible, so that they couldn’t possibly forget anything.

Whatever you do, avoid this temptation! The more you give people to remember, the more they’ll have to forget. Keep your message simple.

In a workshop I ran a few years ago I was developing a sixty-second referral presentation with an image consultant. As local elections were approaching, I suggested focusing her request on referrals to people in politics. After all, we are often told how important image is in making first impressions and if you want your political message heard it is important to ensure your appearance appeals to your target demographic.

We crafted a straightforward request based on an easy to understand premise. People listening to the message would think of people they knew in politics and feel comfortable approaching them on the image consultant’s behalf, with a strong message that would be easy to understand.

Unfortunately, when it came to testing the presentation on the group in the workshop, the image consultant succumbed to temptation. She didn’t want to leave any opportunity untapped, and, while asking for introductions to people involved in local politics, also asked for Entrepreneurs, Chief Executives, Sales Directors and any other possible client she could think of.

When tested, no-one in the group remembered anything specific about her presentation, particularly that she wanted to meet people involved in local politics.

Focus in on who you want to meet when you ask people for referrals. If you’re being specific in your request, you can paint a clear picture of the conversation that will follow. What is that person/organisation’s specific problem? How would you approach it? What will happen as a result? Stick to answering those questions, keeping everything very simple.

Have you worked with people with similar issues in the past? If so, share a story that answers the three questions listed above. People love to hear case studies; they bring your business to life and make it so much more understandable to those outside your industry.

As well as being simple, your message needs to stick in people’s minds and be easy for them to repeat to possible clients for you. The more convoluted your message, the harder it is for people to remember and to pass on accurately.


Tracking the results

Once you have the basics of a good referral strategy in place, take it to another level by including it in your business planning.

Set up a spreadsheet of your top introducers and make a note of who they know, how you are inspiring them and referrals they have promised or you have requested. As referrals come in, attribute them to the appropriate champion and track your follow up, make sure you stay on top of the game.

By keeping a note of all activity, you can keep your champions involved, letting them know how you are proceeding with the introductions they have passed and thanking them when they are successful. You should be just as focused on giving them feedback when they don’t work out, both to keep them informed and to help them understand how to pass successful referrals to you.

One advantage of tracking referral activity is the ability to see who your best referral sources are and what inspires them to refer you. You can then both make sure you keep them engaged and also replicate that behaviour with others.

Additionally, when someone stops referring you, it will be clear by looking at your spreadsheet. Where a referrals strategy doesn’t exist it might be months before you realise that you haven’t had a referral from or spoken to someone who had previously introduced you to a lot of new business. It can then often be embarrassing to go back to that person after a long period.

One of the exercises I ran when working with one of the major banks was to ask each delegate to make a list of people who had previously referred them but hadn’t done so for a while. I then asked them to call one person on that list and reignite the relationship.

Several of the delegates found that their previous champion had assumed that the delegate had left the bank or moved onto another job as they hadn’t heard from them for so long, and on more than one occasion they offered a new referral during that telephone call. How much business had been referred elsewhere in the meantime?

Another advantage of tracking your referrals behaviour is that it allows you to forecast the level of business coming in from future referrals. Once you have a system in place that consistently produces good quality referrals, it is easier to predict and guide future behaviour.

It’s all a long way from the manufacturing company I mentioned at the beginning of this series who track every source of new business other than referrals, and who had not seen a genuine referral in at least eighteen months. Having implemented an effective referral system, they can now look forward to a regular, predictable flow of referrals, spend time in meetings with champions rather than cold-calling unproductively, and see the business turn into a profitable concern once more.

When are you going to start?


If you’d like to get started with a free ten question survey to find out how effective your current referral strategy is and a ‘Referral Book’ spreadsheet to track referral activity, please email me at andy@lopata.co.uk

CONNECTING IS NOT ENOUGH: The Anatomy of a Referral (Part Two)

This article originally appeared in The National Networker

Referrals should be the backbone of the development strategy in many businesses, but few approach the key skill of asking for referrals with the necessary understanding of what they are asking for, who to ask and how to track results.

In The Anatomy of a Referral Part One I talked about a client of mine whose lack of the knowledge outlined above has had a severe impact on their bottom line. We looked at what a referral is, in comparison to other types of business information such as recommendations and leads. And we discussed the impact referrals can have on the way you work and the results you get from the activity of your sales team.

We now need to move on and investigate where referrals come from, before next month, moving on to how to educate the people who are going to refer you, to make it as easy as possible for them to make the connections you are looking for.


Who do you ask?

If you are going to build a strong referral strategy, you need to recognise who your Champions or Advocates are going to be.

To do this, you need a firm understanding of the principle of Six Degrees of Separation. This phrase, coined by social psychologist Stanley Milgram in the US in 1967, has caught the imagination of people across the World, leading to films and games with the same title. In short, the theory suggests that we are no more than five steps from anyone in the World.

For example, I recently wanted to source a signed Chicago Cubs jersey as a present for my cousin’s son. One of my contacts in the UK introduced me to his sister, who works in a senior position in the White House. In one simple introduction I was one step from the President of the United States!

You won’t necessarily want such high level connections, but if you have a clear idea of who is in your network and who they are connected to, it becomes much easier to recognise the routes you need to the connections you seek.

In another case, a participant on one of my workshops talked about me and introduced me to the father of one of the boys on the kids’ football team he coached. That father was the Sales Director for one of the World’s leading airlines.

Most companies who do have a referral strategy of any kind tend to focus on their existing clients, which is a sensible place to start. After all, there are two key elements that make people comfortable referring you. They need to have trust in both you and your product, and they need to understand your services and why people would want to talk to you. Who better to ask than your clients, people who hopefully have both of those elements in place?

Interestingly, however, the most popular time to ask a client for a referral is when they have just bought from you. At that stage I would argue that, although they have shown an element of trust by parting with money for your support, that trust is based on what you have told them, not on their personal experiences.

Surely the best time to ask for referrals is later on in your relationship, when they have witnessed the power of what you do and the impact on their business or life?

I discussed this point in a meeting with one company recently. They admitted that they asked new clients for referrals as a matter of course when they signed them up, but couldn’t recall a single instance of going back to those clients to ask again after delivery, or when their relationship had developed. As we discussed this they realised how nonsensical their current approach was.


Break out of narrow thinking

My concern is that most companies who focus on just asking their clients for referrals miss so many opportunities through such narrow thinking. They are not tapping into the support available from the people closest to them and with the greatest vested interest in their success.

During the workshop I ran with the manufacturing company I wrote about last month, the Managing Director suddenly realised that in the eighteen months he had worked for the company he had not recognised that a connection to a dream client was the person closest to him. As we talked about possible referral sources, he thought of his wife, who works in a senior position for a company who has the exact need for his company’s products.

Interestingly enough his wife had recognised the same opportunity at the same time. As he was talking about the possible connection in the workshop, she was talking to her colleagues about inviting him into the company to tell them more about what he could offer!

This wasn’t an unusual outcome from a workshop. On another occasion, a Deputy Regional Director for a major bank went out at the break and called his brother-in-law to ask for referrals. He had never asked before, or even thought of doing so, yet he walked back into the room with three promised introductions and the business relationship developed from there.

Why do we have such an obstacle about asking our family and friends for support? There is a reticence to cross the ‘line’ between personal and business lives. That is understandable but that line is becoming increasingly blurred as people make friends through their networks and realise the power of connecting people.

Besides, who decides where the line should be drawn and how thick it is? It’s absolutely right that you shouldn’t force your business problems on friends or family; I remember sitting stupefied through a friend’s flipchart Amway presentation when I was eighteen. But how would you feel if you found out that a friend’s business had folded and you could have helped; but they never asked?

A friend of mine recently found out what I do for a living, after knowing each other for fifteen years or more. We go to football together and never discussed work. It was only through becoming Facebook Friends that he started to see what my business is. He was mortified to realise that his firm had been working with one of my competitors for five years instead of with me!


The danger of pigeon-holing

In a coaching session last year with a web designer, we talked about the different people who could possibly refer him. One key place to start is with people who understand your business well (remember the importance of trust and understanding discussed above) and who are talking to similar customers about similar issues.
I asked my client if he used a printing company in his business and whether that printer regularly visits his office and chats with the team when he is there. As expected, the answer was yes on all counts.

I then asked where the printer would go when he wasn’t with my client or at his own premises. Of course he wasn’t just visiting one client; he was out and about going to deliver to a number of companies and getting to know their business and their challenges. Not only that but he was surely in a great position to refer a web designer as he would be talking to clients about their marketing and about changes in their business which required new print work. Such changes would often impact on their web strategy too.

So, had the web designer ever asked the printer for help with introductions and referrals? Of course not! Not only had he never had the discussion, the printer had just had a new website done and hadn’t invited my client to tender.

The reason for this was quite simple, the printer saw the designer as a client and the designer saw the printer as a supplier. These pigeon-holed positions dictated the conversations they had and the way they thought of each other. Yet surely the printer had a vested interest in supporting the web designer and helping his business grow. After all, the more successful the designer, the more work the printer would get and, hopefully, the more punctually the printer would pay his bills!

You are surrounded by a network of people who can help you. But if you are like most people, you are pigeon-holing them into particular relationships. Understanding how to develop a network of Champions starts with unraveling those relationships and recognizing that they all potentially have a network which could support you.

Look to friends and family, industry peers, clients, suppliers and social groups for people who could potentially refer you. Identify who has the greatest levels of trust in you, who wants to refer you the most, who understands your business and can recognise opportunities for you and who mixes in the right circles, talking about the right subjects giving them the opportunities to refer.

Make life easy for yourself and draw up a list of five or ten people drawn from all of these groups. People who you think may either be motivated to or positioned to refer you. You can then focus on building the levels of trust and understanding, working out the connections they have in their network and building these people into your team of Champions. Start with this group before adding to it.

In next month’s article we’ll take this group and look at how you educate those people so that they find it easy to make connections for you and become effective sources of new business for you. In the meantime, think about what you need to do to inspire them to want to do so and how you can help them first.

CONNECTING IS NOT ENOUGH: When Week is Strong

This article originally appeared in The National Networker

How often do you interact personally with your customers? Whether it’s working directly with them, speaking to them on the phone, visiting their offices. If you’re not in regular direct contact there’s a good chance it’s impacting on your ability to either upsell to them or to inspire them to refer you.

A couple of weeks ago I Chaired The Retail Conference in London. One of the speakers was Hamish Paton, the Commercial Director of Brighthouse Stores.

Despite having a presence across the UK, Brighthouse may not be a name you recognise. You won’t find a Brighthouse in the main shopping centres or streets of any of our major cities. Instead, their stores are situated in the suburbs, within three miles and easy access of their main customer base.

Location genuinely is vital for Brighthouse, because their customers need to visit them every week. In a business model more common to the US than the UK, Brighthouse customers purchase products and pay for them on a weekly basis over a period of time, normally three years, without the need for credit checks.

With the theme of the Conference being responsiveness and adaptability, it was no surprise when one of the questions directed at Hamish after his presentation was whether Brighthouse had considered changing their model with the times, bringing in monthly payment by Direct Debit or internet purchase.

Russell’s response was very interesting. Brighthouse had considered such moves but had dismissed them for two reasons.

The first is that the Direct Debit/Monthly payment market is very different and one where Brighthouse don’t necessarily understand the customers and their needs as well as they do their established market. They currently service a much needed niche and feel that it is better to build on their expertise than try to dilute it through diversification.

Secondly, Hamish sees tremendous value in the weekly connection with their customers.

“Our staff are counselors”, Hamish told the Conference. “They get to know their customers well and if someone misses a payment, the first thing they will do is work with them to get them back on track.

“If someone doesn’t turn up one week we will call them to find out what the problem is and see how they can be helped. That personal relationship is absolutely vital and we wouldn’t be able to provide the same service, or enjoy the same interaction, if people paid automatically through Direct Debit.”

After Hamish’s response, I asked him how much of Brighthouse’s business comes through up selling to existing customers. The answer was an astonishing 80%, a particularly impressive statistic when you consider that Brighthouse advertise on prime time television, including a sponsor slot on the Australian soap opera Home and Away.

Equally revealing was Hamish’s response to my next question. Despite their advertising strategy, 40% of Brighthouse’s new business comes through referral from existing customers.

With retail having a very transactional business model, many retailers will be much less dependent on direct referrals from customers than other industries. I asked the audience how many of them could boast a similar or greater rate of referrals from the existing customer base. Not one person raised their hand.

Yet Brighthouse have a strong focus on winning those referrals, and the opportunity to both ask their customers and remind them of the request. They operate an incentive scheme which rewards both the customer making the referral and the new customer signing up with them. That incentive scheme is featured on in-store promotions and in the pack that new customers receive, but it is the weekly meetings that make the difference.

“When customers make their payment each week, our team take the time and speak to them,” Hamish said. “We try to engage them as much as possible; we call it ‘till talk’. We train our staff to have a conversation with our customers rather than just process a transaction.

“One of the really unusual things about our business is that the customers and staff know each other by first name and greet each other outside the shop as well. We have a coffee machine in store and sometimes people just come in for a chat.

“Our staff are genuinely members of the local community, and there are very few places on the high street where you can walk in and expect people to know your name.”

The growth of internet solutions, remote banking and autoresponders has moved businesses away from our customers in recent years. We increasingly find ways to provide solutions without the personal touch. While there are very strong commercial arguments for developing such a strategy, are we in danger of losing the personal touch?

Surely the less we see and speak to our clients the weaker the bond between us becomes. That can impact a business not just in terms of reduced customer loyalty and the ability to sell more to them, but it also reduces the opportunity to ask them to refer us to others. Among the conversations Brighthouse staff have with their customers, they will regularly remind them of their referral incentive scheme and ask for their help.

It’s the relationship that makes that possible, and for Brighthouse that’s built through weekly contact with their customers. How many of us can say the same?