How Long Does It Take to Earn Referrals?
The simple answer is TIME, but like most simple answers, it’s not always EASY to achieve. It takes time to build the relationships you need to get the referrals you want. I’ve spoken to you about this before, when referring to V.C.P. (and acronym that stands for VISIBILITY, CREDIBILITY AND PROFITABILITY), and you’ve also probably seen this graph which shows how your credibility is directly linked to your profitability over time.
Once you put in the time to build the relationships and levels of trust, you will cross into a region where referrals and profitability will begin to increase exponentially.
If you’re thinking, “That sounds great, but how much time are we talking about here?,” then you’re not alone. Again, the simple answer is that the amount of time will vary from profession to profession. A florist will earn trust (and referrals) faster than a financial advisor, but this still doesn’t give any general benchmarks for those of us who are task and goal-oriented, so today I’m going to provide you with some new information that should help.
A study was published in 2018 by the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships. The study concluded that that it takes about 50 hours of interaction to move from being an acquaintance to becoming a casual friend. It takes a total of 90 hours to become what they called real friends, and a total of 200 hours to become close friends.
I know that seems like a lot, but let’s think about it. We all probably know, at least casually, 150 to 200 people. Do you get frequent referrals from all of those 150 to 200 people? I’ll bet that the most frequent and best referrals you receive come from a handful of referral sources that you are much closer to, or have spent more time with.
If you attend every Noon Networking meeting for a year, you will have spent about 50 hours (give or take) with everyone in the group. If you do frequent Member to Member meetings you are adding even more hours to those relationships.
Building a referral based business is all about building a powerful personal network. If your network is a mile wide and an inch deep, you will never get any kind of referrals that make a difference in your business. This means that you have to go deep in building a number of strong relationships.
When it comes to how long does it take to build a close relationship, it is somewhere between that 90 and 200 hours. When members hit that 90 hour mark, they almost always begin receiving more and more referrals. Based on an independent study published in 2012, when those same individuals cross the 200 mark, they generate an average of five times the number of referrals they did in the beginning.
When it comes to getting referrals from your network, confidence is a vital component. Not your confidence, but the confidence that your fellow member has in you. None of them want to risk their personal reputation by referring business to someone that they do not know, like and trust.
So even though you may have known many of your networkers for some time, until they have gained a certain level of confidence that referring contacts to you will not harm their reputation with their clients and friends, you are still a referral stranger unless you have hit that point.
Here is what you can do to gain perspective on your efforts and results that they are producing. Ask yourself the following four questions and keep asking them over and over until you have attained success and the answers become obvious. Here are the four questions:
- Am I being realistic about the time it will take in my profession to gain the critical level of confidence that I need?
- Am I regularly making stimulating educational presentations to my fellow networkers about the value that I provide to my clients?
- Am I doing business with others in my network so that I can give them dynamic testimonials and steer business to them so tthat they will return the favor?
- Am I meeting regularly with my networking colleagues to learn about their businesses so that I can confidently refer my contacts to them?
So if you are following these simple tactics and are asking yourself these questions, then you are well along the road to getting the referrals from others in the networks that you participate in.
Remember it takes time to build friendships – unless you are in kindergarten, then you can do it in about five minutes.
