Referral Reality Check

12/7/08

This week I was at a meeting when during the Referral Reality Check section the details of a referral from the previous week were read out and the recipient asked how things were progressing.

Nothing wrong with that. However, what followed really demonstrated the benefit of the part of any BNI meeting.

The member that had received the referral said that as yet nothing had happened – he had not been contacted. At this the member who had given the referral got defensive about it and said that the member concerned had already been contacted. The member said no he hadn’t! There then followed a couple of minutes of each member trying to prove their respective positions.

It turned out that the member who had received the referral had in fact been contacted!

What caused the confusion was that he didn’t know who was going to contact him and the person who did contact him (the member receives calls from a number of other sources) didn’t know who had recommended him.

In the end everything was fine and the referral proved to be good.

But this situation could so easily have been avoided had the referral slip given been completed fully in the first place! So, next time, and every time, you give a referral please ensure that you give every piece of information needed to make the referral complete in itself.

And, one last idea that I have found useful: when giving a contact a member's business card - write your name on it.