People join various groups and associations for different reasons. If your primary purpose is to make quality connections and generate lots of closed referrals, these are four must-attend events for you.  1. Referral Tree This group has been around for 10 years and they do not advertise. You ...

The lessons learned while playing golf can be great for your professional life. Let’s look at a few examples. Reliable golfers add their next round to the calendar as soon as it is scheduled. If something is important to your business, it should be on your calendar. Relaxed golfers...

After managing many professional referral groups over the past 10 years, I have learned that not all referring partners are created equal. People typically fall into one of the following categories. The Givers: On the surface these people are great. They are addicted to the dopamine released ...

Strategic partnerships are the most powerful way to generate significant streams of referral business. To understand the concept, consider the analogy of the fisherman. His fish are to him, what your clients are to you.  Every day the fisherman goes to the mountain lake to catch some trout. If...

Most business owners agree that referrals are a great source of business. One of the best ways to generate referrals is by building mutually beneficial relationships with quality professionals. Consider this hypothetical case of a business owner who made a simple mistake. This is a common mis...

Your referral group is a local economy, much like the city you live in.  As money is introduced into your group’s economy by way of referrals, members should choose to keep the money circulating in the economy.  They do that by spending the money with other members, and continuing to...

Every hour you invest doing something has an opportunity cost.  Every hour you spend doing one thing means you are not doing something else.  What else could you have done with that hour, and what would have been the return on that hour invested?  If you could have been more productiv...

When you have an opportunity to refer business, what if you know more than one person who provides that service?  How do you know who you should refer the business to? Some professional referral groups require members keep referrals in the group.  At TBC, we have never mandated members re...

When people meet one-on-one to discuss business, both people are investing their time, and time is a limited resource. It is important that BOTH people receive value from the time they are investing.  There is nothing worse than meeting with someone who has a one way agenda, dominates the entir...

As a business owner, you need your marketing team to generate a positive return on the time and money you invest in them.  The higher the return on your investment, the more profitable you will be.  The more profitable you are, the more marketing people you can hire, and the cycle continue...