The FOUR Principles of Referability

Have you ever heard of Dan Sullivan, the president and co-founder of The Strategic Coach, based in Canada? His organization only coaches entrepreneurs who make six-figure incomes. Get it straight! If your organization do not make the six-figures income, then he refuses your business.  In his audio, entitled “How the Best Get Better,” Sullivan states there are four ways to increase your “referability”–i.e. your clients’ willingness to refer you and your services to others. He put an accent on clients but those principles can be used to be referred to a friend, a colleague, or a potential business partner.

Wouldn’t it be great to have your clients saying about you:” This is the man you are looking for…Call him”? To have team members or colleagues suggesting you for a job promotion? To have plenty of business through referrals?

Here are the 4 principles Sullivan shares:

1) Be on time. If you’re not punctual, people feel their time is not important to you. Show up on time-or early.

2) Do what you say. The world is full of people who give big talk and fail on their executions. Back up your statements with good follow through, and people will respect you and want to do business with you again.

3) Finish what you start. Think about this for a second: for a marathon event, how many people say they will sign up to run? Now, how many to come the day of the marathon? Now how many cross the final line? The truth is you have lot of people saying they will run, about the half of them actually do go and run that day, and about the forth or fifth that actually finish their run. If you finish what you start, people will recognize this and your reputation will precede you (in a good way).

4) Say please & thank you.   The little things can help you or hurt you. We’ve learned as we were little from our parents and now we are teaching it to our kids but how much of it we do ourselves to even help serve our own interests? Check the last email someone send you to ask you for a service and try to count they “please”  or “thank you”, you will be surprised. Do you think the “thank you” should come just once a requested service is asked?  You let me know!