The Score Almost Nobody Passes

Monday you counted from memory and most of you got five. Wednesday you went and found the real number and a lot of you came back with forty or fifty, sorted into an A-List and a B-List with a note next to every name.

Good. That's more referral work than most people in your industry did all summer, and you did it in three days. Now here's the last score, and I'll tell you up front that almost everybody fails this one including me, for a long time.

Look at your list: of all those people, how many of them have you introduced to each other? Not how many have you called or texted, how many did you connect to somebody else on that same list, with nothing in it for you?

Most people's honest answer is zero.

That's the line between having a network and being a connector, and it's the single biggest thing separating the contractors and insurance agents and real estate agents who get referrals all year from the ones who chase them every January...and it is free. 

Because here's what actually happens when you introduce two people, you didn't ask anybody for anything, so nobody had to decide whether to help you. You just became the person who made something good happen for both of them. And now you're the first name they think of, not because you asked to be, but because you earned it in a way that has nothing to do with your own sales.

I've had introductions I made three years ago come back to me as business I never saw coming. Not from the two people I connected, but from somebody they told about me.

That's referral marketing working the way it's supposed to work. Business coming to you through people who already trust you, without you ever asking.

Your Challenge Before The Weekend: Open the list, find two people on it who should know each other, and you'll know it the second you see it, because you thought about it once already back in June and never did anything about it.

Send one message with both of them on it. Say why you thought they should meet and explain the reason based on their strengths.

Do one introduction today.

What The Three Scores From This Week Actually Told You

Score one said you can't name the people you met. Score two said you never followed up. Score three said you've never connected anybody to anybody.

If you failed all three, you didn't waste your summer, you just didn't have a system underneath it. There's a difference, and the difference is fixable.

THIS is the whole reason I built The Connector Blueprint, because I had the relationships and no shelves to put them on, and every fall I paid for it.

Fall starts in three weeks (I had to double-check that actually, seems like summer just started). The list you built this week is the raw material for it, but what happens next depends entirely on whether you work it or let it sit.

If you want to talk through what to actually do with your list, I keep fifteen minutes open for exactly that conversation. It's not a pitch and I'm not going to sell you anything on it. It's me looking at what you've got and telling you where I'd start:

https://calendly.com/livelocalteam/15-minute-marketing-analysis

Make the introduction first though. That one's free and it takes two minutes.

Who did you connect, and did they already know each other? Tell me in the comments, and tell me if it was as awkward as you thought it'd be. My guess is it wasn't.