How Reaching a Critical Point of Trust with a Customer Matters for Your Success ?
Even if you've only been in business for a limited time, you will surely have already noticed that a percentage of prospects, recommendations and other matters, comes from your professional network. Actually, if you are a small business owner, whatever the sector or field of activity, a significant portion of your business probably doesn't come from marketing and advertising (online or offline), but relationships that constitute your network. A BNI.com survey of some 4,000 respondents worldwide found that more than 73% of businesses say they get most of their business through “networking and referrals.”. This is a compelling statistic, and one of the most important reasons why networking is nothing less than an existential question. However, remarkable fact (and according to this same survey), 87% of respondents said they had never taken a college course on networking or word-of-mouth marketing- ear ! Most People Get Business Through Networking, but most have never learned how to do it. And this dynamic is largely independent of age : far too many business students are almost completely unaware of how crucial networking will be to their future success.
The process of building a powerful personal network relies on a handful of fundamental principles (the four “Cs”) : Skill, Credibility, Clarity and Connectivity.
See the recommendation confidence curve shown in the graph, which helps illustrate a key aspect of the networking process, the process of recommendations received over time. It should make sense that initially these occur gradually. After all, there is little or no chance that someone will recommend you if they don’t know anything about you ; it is not logical to expect anything else. However, everything starts to change when a threshold called the “confidence point” (represented by the X on the graph) is reached. Trust is built when people recognize your competence in what you do. This point represents a key threshold that, once reached, radically changes the curve. As you can see, when the members of your network have complete trust in you, recommendations start to flow in greater proportions. The recommendation confidence curve assumes, as a corollary, that when people don't trust you, in your company or in your service, the result is a removal of recommendations. And even if you get some, there is a reasonable probability that these are people who are just blindly trying your product or service and not telling everyone about you.
Once the confidence threshold is reached, recommendations jump.
They not only increase in quantity, but also in quality — not customers who are just testing you with little information, but people who have been recommended to you with confidence —, which can lead to even more quality recommendations. This evolution happens when you are clear about who you are and what you do, while developing and improving connectivity within the community. These two qualities, associated with competence and credibility, become force multipliers. In summary, if you have established trust within your network, you can expect a constant stream of high-quality recommendations. Keep in mind that it is essential that others have confidence in you. Actually, it can make the difference between a business that struggles or fails and one that thrives. The “4 Cs” are designed to help you earn referrals with every handshake, because each of them increases the speed with which others will trust you. Applied with precision, each of these has the potential to accelerate the speed at which you reach that confidence threshold, and increase more dramatically once it is reached — further affecting quality, the quantity, the importance and consistency of the recommendations.
You want to know more ? SO, why not come and take part in one of our business meetings ? The entire BNI Réunion and BNI Maurice team is dedicated to the success and economic development of local businesses : this is the heart of our mission ! Contact us, we will be delighted to welcome you as visitors.
For over twenty years, during their professional careers, Sylvie & Annick Miquel supports entrepreneurs, teams, heads of private or public bodies. As BNI Executive Directors in Reunion, BNI National Directors in Mauritius, and as a John Maxwell Certified Coach, they want to help entrepreneurs, their families and communities. One of the primordial notions which is at the center of their mission : “Help as many entrepreneurs and liberal professions as possible to develop their sales, thanks to our structured approach, positive and incentivizing marketing through recommendations”.
