Bob Burg is the author of "Endless Referrals", a guide for sales and business people who want to develop a steady stream of incoming business leads and referrals. He's written a great book...I highly recommend it.
First, I ask Bob the obvious question:
"What's the top reason salespeople give for not working hard to get referrals?"
"The top “stated” reason(s) and the “actual” reason(s) are usually different. Just like in the sales process, where we know that there is the stated objection and the real objection (and, just like in that case, often the stated objection
is actually “believed” by the person stating it), often, the reason(s) salespeople give for not going after the referrals is different from the actual.
First, let’s look at several of the stated reasons (in these instances, right after they’ve completed a sale):
Time: “I was already there so long in order to make the sale, I couldn’t justify taking any more of their time.”
Image: “I didn’t want to look as though I needed more business. They should think I already have as much business as I want. You know, I didn’t want to look . . . desperate.”
Over-talk: “Hey, I knew I had the sale. I didn’t want to talk past it and cause them to rethink their decision.
Those are just a few of the stated reasons. However, in my opinion, the “real” reasons for not asking for referrals can be boiled down into two specifics:
- Fear
- Lack of knowledge (how to ask correctly)"
There's a second part to this point that Burg is making...we'll cover that in part two of his answer.
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