Must Read: 3 Powerful persuasion secrets that will get you more referrals

There’s a new book on the market that is worth buying. It’s called YES! 50 Secrets from the Science of Persuasion by Noah Goldstein, Steve Martin and, my personal favorite, Robert Cialdini.

In Cialdini’s classic Influence, the Psychology of Persuasion, he wrote about the six universal principles of persuasion: reciprocation (feeling obligated to return favors done for us); authority (looking to experts for guidance); commitment/consistency (we like to appear consistent to our commitments and values); scarcity (the fewer the quantity, the more we want it); liking (the more we like others, the more we want to say yes to them) and social proof (looking to what others do to guide our behavior).

Four  scream in relevance to referrals:

Reciprocation – if you make it a habit to help people in as many (authentic) ways as you can, it is going to come back to you because those people will feel obligated to return the favour.
Authority – if you build some great referral partners and they recommend you to their clients, they will be taken seriously and you will be the beneficiary
Liking – the more people like you, the more they will refer you
Social proof – if people you respect recommend something, you are likely to follow their advice (more so than you’d like to think!)

Here are three powerful points I took from this brand new book:

1. The reason why helping other people is so highly recommended is because people feel obligated to return the favor!
Read this again!
Nobody has ever explained this to me before.

For the past six years I’ve listened to the likes of Zig Ziglar say: “You can get everything you want in life if you just help enough other people get what they want.” Recently Bob Burg wrote a book called the Go-Giver. The idea is virtually a cliché!

There were times when this drove me nuts as I thought to myself; “I can’t spend my time doling out free advice and helping others with their causes – I’ve got a business to run!” At times it sounded fluffy and new age. I felt like saying; “Yeah, easy for you to say, Mr. Millionaire International Speaker! I’ve got a growing relationship with my credit card company!”

I knew deep down it made some sense but taking the leap of faith was hard for me. Now I’ve read the psychology research, it makes sense.  The authors make it clear that it is innate to humans that we feel we must help someone in return provided the help they gave us was genuine and unconditional. (If we sense it’s a scheme of sorts, it won’t work.)

They note that when we need to persuade and influence others we mistakenly ask ourselves: ‘who can help me here?’ This approach rarely works - rather like saying: “I really need your help growing my business. Can you please please refer me to everyone you know?” No!

“We suggest it would be more productive to ask ourselves the question ‘whom can I help?’, knowing that the norm of reciprocation and the social obligation it confers on others will make future requests more effective.”

This is why it’s vital to use Step 2 of the 6 Step Referral Conversation and know what value you’ve brought to a client before asking them for referrals. Have you helped them enough to earn a referral?

Lastly, be smart about you who help and keep in mind that it may be a while before the favor is returned. I hate to sound calculating but you are growing a business, not a non-profit. Absolutely there are times to help others who are reaching out to you; mentoring others is incredibly rewarding. But you don’t have the time or money to randomly help everyone who knocks on your door. Does that person you’re helping know others who might make good clients for you?
Interestingly, this is where I find the universal principle of how much you like the other person makes a big difference!

2. There are five things to consider if you want a BIG return on your helping others:

a) “The more a person gives to us, the more obligated we feel to give in return.”
Is your light bulb on now?
b) A gift or favor is most persuasive
Three factors:

c) It needs to be seen by the recipient as significant or meaningful
A financial advisor friend of mine was telling me recently that she was disappointed by the lack of response she had gotten from subscribing some of her clients to National Geographic. She had wanted to send something of value that both spouses might like. Unfortunately, the magazine evidently did not mean enough to those who got it. That’s because:

d) It needs to be personalized
What are you most interested in? What would you remove from your mailbox and say: “Ooh, cool!”? What are your primary needs right now?

I was in England last week speaking to an organization about networking. Afterwards someone told me about some business that took four years to happen. But during that time she had met the needs of her prospect several times by recommending writers to her (which was her prospect’s primary need during this period).

e) Unexpected is best
This supports research done by Harvard psychologist Daniel Gilbert and by GALLUP. I cannot recommend this idea more highly. I have had tremendous success surprising people with small gifts. Remember: it has to be sincere!
Last year on two occasions sales managers who had brought me in to present to their teams stood up during this point in my seminar to explain to their sales people how me unexpectedly sending them books had ‘tipped’ their decision making process into bringing me in.

Who’s a big prospect of yours? What could you do that would be a happy surprise for them?

3. The ‘remarkable’ impact of a personalized, handwritten Post-It note!

You might be tempted to skip this point as something rather pointless. Read on to find out why I’m including it.
There’s a surprisingly interesting study described on how effective writing personalized messages on a Post-It note can be. A company asked its employees to fill out a survey which they sent along with a cover letter.
Group A got a personalized handwritten sticky note attached to the cover letter
Group B got a personalized handwritten note on the cover letter
Group C just got the cover letter
Group A: 75% filled out the survey
Group B: 48%
Group C: 36%
Another study was done where Group B got a blank Post It note and the results were almost the same (so it wasn’t the color of the note that made a difference).

Two conclusions:
a) “People do recognize the extra effort and personal touch that this requires, and they feel the need to reciprocate this personal touch by agreeing to the request.”
b) The responses given by those who got the personal note were more detailed and of a higher quality! The more personalized the note, the higher the response rate.

I intend to try this idea this week. Send out a useful article on a business topic and attach a note. If nothing else, it will build the relationships and HELP!
The next time you’re mailing something out, how can you personalize what you send and build more influence?

Who would appreciate this information too? Like you more? Maybe HELP you more (after you’ve helped them by sending them this?!)