This is Womens Leadership Success.com radio podcast, Episode number 6, “The Hidden Power of Social Networks,” with Dawn Lyons.

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Sabrina Braham: This is Sabrina Braham with WomensLeadershipSuccess.com. In this segment of Women’s Leadership Success Podcast we will be discussing the hidden power of social networks. Our guest today is Dawn Lyons, the franchise owner of BNI and the Referral Institute. Welcome, Dawn.

Dawn Lyons: Thank you, Sabrina.

Sabrina Braham: Dawn, can you tell us a little bit about your businesses?

Dawn Lyons: Absolutely. Currently we run and operate over 70 chapters of BNI, Business Network International, and that amounts to about 2,000 members. And those members basically meet on a regular basis in order to help each other generate more business by referral. And I also am a co-owner of the Referral Institute.

And both companies actually go hand-in-hand. The Referral Institute basically trains and coaches people on referral marketing and one of the places that we recommend they do their referral marketing at is within BNI. So the two companies go hand-in-hand and it makes life very easy.

Sabrina Braham: Fantastic. Well, I’d like you to tell us a little bit about what is networking?

Dawn Lyons: Great question. And it’s been very eye-opening over the past couple of years. I think that most business owners out there think that if they are running around town going to different mixers and functions that they feel like they are networking because you’re in activity mode, you’re doing something. What we’re trying to show people is that networking is really much more about the relationship and really going deep with the relationships because you’re much more likely to do something for someone else the closer you are to them and the more comfortable you feel with them.

So Dr. Misner, who is the founder of BNI as well as the senior partner in the Referral Institute, his definition of networking is more about when you are willing to help someone else with something that they need. And that may or may not be giving them referral business.

Sabrina Braham: That’s so interesting. I recently had a person that I barely knew ask me for help promoting her business. And what you’re saying is so different than that, right?

Dawn Lyons: Absolutely. First and foremost, do you know if you want to promote her business or not yet?

Sabrina Braham: No. I don’t really know her that well.

Dawn Lyons: Exactly. And so what we’ve got to do when we network is simply get to know people so that they feel more compelled to want to do things with us and/or help us in some way, shape or form.

Sabrina Braham: So what do we do to deepen our connections? What’s a good way to start that?

Dawn Lyons: Well, the number one thing — and again, networking is going to be different depending on if you’re a business owner, if you work for a company, whatever it may be — but the number one thing that you’ve got to do is you’ve got to build the relationship and you’ve got to build the trust, which means in our language — how we say it is “are you referable?”

And so as you’re building the relationship and the trust people are going to start to say, “Gosh, Sabrina’s always showing up early for our meetings together. I really like that.” Or, “She always shows up in a suit and she looks great and she’s very –” as far as maybe presentation skills “– she’s got a great presentation that she does.” And people start seeing you and they get visibility with you, they get credibility with you; and once you have credibility with someone then that’s when it typically moves into profitability.

Sabrina Braham: Talk about follow-up in terms of credibility.

Dawn Lyons: Follow-up is very, very key, especially in referral marketing. One of my favorite things about referral marketing is: “Referral marketing, you can’t do it alone.” In referral marketing you are always relying up on other people bringing you that referral business. So the number one thing you’ve got to do is acknowledge the fact when somebody does give you that referral business.

As far as follow-up goes, you had better make sure that you are contacting the referee, the person that was referred to you, as soon as possible; but the second step, which a lot of people in business miss, is call that person who referred you and say, “By the way, Sabrina, I wanted to let you know that I followed up with Joe. We have an appointment on Friday and everything looks great.”

And then, even after you have the appointment with Joe, call them back again and say, “You know what? I want to let you know this was the perfect referral for me.” Or in some cases you might have to say, “You know what? Sabrina, I just want to let you know that was an excellent job on getting me this referral. I want to let you know that Joe wasn’t quite right for me, so if we can talk about this I can share with you what happened and why it wasn’t quite right. But I want to let you know that I actually referred him to someone else.” Because what you always want to do is make the person giving you the referral, you always want to make them look good. So if I still took good care of your referral, that makes you look good and that’s so important in the follow-up process, just keeping people in the loop and making sure they know where you’re at within that referral process.

Sabrina Braham: I was even thinking of times someone has said to me, “I will get a piece of information for you or give you the name of someone that I think can help you,” and then I don’t get a call back.

Dawn Lyons: Right.

Sabrina Braham: So to me it’s so good when somebody actually comes back with the information, sends me the article, does the thing they said they were going to do.

Dawn Lyons: Absolutely. And that’s part of being referable. So now you’re much more likely to want to do something for those folks than the folks that don’t even let you know if the appointment went well or if the deal closed or anything. Because, don’t forget, when you are giving referrals you are doing work on behalf of someone else and trying to help them build their business; you want to be recognized for that time that you spend.

Sabrina Braham: Absolutely. Now, do to this, this takes time.

Dawn Lyons: Absolutely.

Sabrina Braham: Because people say to me, “I don’t really have time to do something like this.” But how does spending the time making the deeper connection, getting to know what the person’s business is, how does that actually make you more money in your business?

Dawn Lyons: Well, when you look at referral marketing what we try and teach people is that most of us business owners have been taught to go out there and get the client, right? We need to put food on our table, so what are we going to do? We’re going to go out, we’re going to find a client, we’re going to close a deal, and we’re going to be able to eat.

Sabrina Braham: Right.

Dawn Lyons: What we want to teach people is we want to make sure that they can understand the value of building a referral source. And a referral source is someone who is consistently bringing those clients to you, and the work that you have to do is you have to build the relationship. Once the relationship is built you need to maintain it and do the follow-up work. But can you see the value of having 6 or 10 referral sources that are simply sending you business instead of you having to go out and gather that business each and every day?

Sabrina Braham: So this is a very different mindset than going to, say, a Chamber meeting and running up and seeing how many cards you can give out and telling somebody they ought to send business to you.

Dawn Lyons: Absolutely.

Sabrina Braham: Very, very different.

Dawn Lyons: It is. And the tough part with mixers such as that is most people when they go to a mixer are — and again, this is in our language — they are direct selling. They are going up to people, introducing themselves, trying to figure out if that person needs their services or not. That is direct selling. That is not networking.

Sabrina Braham: That makes a lot of sense. Can you talk about Givers Gain?

Dawn Lyons: Yeah. Givers Gain is BNI’s corporate philosophy, meaning that the more that you’re giving to other people the more that you will gain from that. And Givers Gain is very prevalent in BNI and in any good networker’s vocabulary. Because again, any good networker knows that you have to give first before you gain back.

Sabrina Braham: Can you give some examples of ways that people might give to other people that would be useful?

Dawn Lyons: Yeah. A lot of times people think that, “I would really love to be doing more referral business with Sabrina, but I don’t know if I can get her business directly back.” A lot of times people think that you have to give referral business directly back in order to be in a referral relationship. Well, it may be the case that you, Sabrina, can give me business fairly easily but for whatever reason I’m not able to give business directly back to you.

So another way to be great at Givers Gain is find out what else you’re interested in. You may be interested in a specific charity and I could help you volunteer at different functions within that charity, or I could donate something on your behalf to that charity. And so there’s a lot of other ways to help people in their business or in their personal life. I could babysit for you and you might think that’s the best thing ever.

So there’s lots of other ways to give and too many times people get afraid of referral marketing because they don’t think they can give direct business back to the person.

Sabrina Braham: That’s a great tip, to look how you can be useful to them. And one of the things I’ve noticed is if I ask people, “How can I help you? Or how can I be useful to you in your business?” many times I’ll get answers like that that I wasn’t expecting.

Dawn Lyons: Exactly. I just had a gal recently, she said, “You know what? I’ve been trying for two weeks to get tickets to the baseball All Star game.” And I was actually able to do that for her. But she couldn’t do it on her own; it was something personal, but that was a way for me to give back to that.

Sabrina Braham: That’s incredible. That’s really incredible. One of the other areas people will say to me, “I’m just uncomfortable in social situations and I don’t know how to start a conversation or what to say to people.” And I’ve been around you enough to know that you’re fantastic at that, so I’d really love to hear some ideas you have.

Dawn Lyons: Sure. Actually, I was just doing a teleseminar the other night and in the book Masters of Networking — and that is one of Dr. Misner’s books — they actually give a list of about 10 questions that are real easy networking questions. Here’s a couple of my favorites. I usually want to ask somebody what they do and how long they’ve been in business and things of that nature.

One way to get someone to really talk about their business is ask them this question — and I love this question — “If you knew your business couldn’t fail, tell me what would it look like?”

Sabrina Braham: That’s a great question.

Dawn Lyons: Because now what happens is a person starts kind of giving you the vision of, “Wow, if I had no limitations, if I couldn’t fail, then I would want my business to look like this.” And they really begin to give you their vision and their goals.

Now, again, if you’re a great networker you can listen to that vision and those goals and see, “Gosh, how could I help this person gain those things?”

Sabrina Braham: That’s fantastic.

Dawn Lyons: So that’s one of my favorites. And then the other one is, “Can you tell me a little bit about what a great customer might look like for you?” Because as I’m networking tonight I may be able to meet some folks that could be a great client for you.

Sabrina Braham: I also like the question of, “What makes you different from your competition?”

Dawn Lyons: Yes, absolutely.

Sabrina Braham: That usually gets people really excited about what they’re doing. So, Dawn, what’s a success tip that you would give people to help them be successful at networking?

Dawn Lyons: To be successful at networking — I do believe that networking is a skill, so you definitely want to get coaching or training around networking and some specific strategies and tactics that you can utilize. But as far as becoming more successful — growing up we actually had a huge apple tree in our backyard with the tire swing and all of that. And one of the things I just remember my dad saying was, “You know what? If you’re green, you’re growing; and if you’re ripe, you’re rotten.”

Sabrina Braham: Ew.

Dawn Lyons: Yeah. So one of the things that I’ve always worked on is my own personal development. And so I believe that your income follows your personal development. And so, so many times a lot of us can get caught up on working just on our business, just on our business, and we’re so focused, and we’re hitting all our goals, but yet the income seems to stay a little stagnant. And so your income follows your personal development.

Sabrina Braham: Yeah. And I think our confidence follows that, too.

Dawn Lyons: Absolutely.

Sabrina Braham: So the more confident we are, the more confident we’re going to be.

Dawn Lyons: Uh-huh.

Sabrina Braham: Yeah, I love that one. Last thing I’d like to — well, actually, I have a couple more things. Tell me about showing gratitude. So someone gives you a referral, they give you some business, they get you an appointment with someone that you really want to meet, what’s a way to show appreciation to people?

Dawn Lyons: That is a great question. And in the Referral Institute we actually do training on how to reward your referral sources. And believe it or not, most people do not want much. They are looking for a simple thank you card, a thank you note, a small gift. Sometimes people think, “Oh, I’ll give a finder’s fee.” And believe it or not, money is not a motivating factor when you have people giving you business. They’re giving you business because they know you, like you, trust you, and know that you’re going to take great care of their friend or their clients. So money is not a motivating factor by any means, and sometimes it can almost be overwhelming for the person.

We actually do a program about behavioral styles and it’s called GEMS — Understanding GEMS. It’s four basic behavioral styles and the four different behavioral styles like to be rewarded in a different way. And so we share that with people at the training so that they understand how to get out there and reward their referral sources.

Sabrina Braham: What I hear you saying is, it’s important to somehow recognize that the person did something for you, show gratitude, by thank you card, a small present, by doing something that they would specifically like. Maybe they have a hobby or something that you know about.

Dawn Lyons: Yeah, exactly. For instance, one of my best referral sources loves baseball and so if I were to get Giants tickets or if I were to get a gift certificate to the Dugout, where she could go and get what she wanted, that would be a way that I personalize the gift. It doesn’t have to be $100 or $1000; it could be a $50 gift certificate. But because I know something personal about her, it makes it more special and more meaningful.

Sabrina Braham: That’s really good advice. And to finish, what’s a tip that you would give people in terms of reducing stress? What do you do when you feel kind of over the limit and you want to relax or cut down on your stress?

Dawn Lyons: Besides go on vacation? Besides going on vacation — I actually just learned this about three or four months ago from Elizabeth Misner, who is Dr. Misner’s wife, and she was speaking to a group of about 23-25 women and she said one of the things that we can do is to put extra time in our schedule. Now, at first most people would go, “Well, wait a second. I don’t even have any extra time in my schedule.” But what she called it was she called it “margins.”

And if you know you have to be at point A at 11:00 a.m. and then point B at 1:30, well, a lot of times we’ll just back our meetings right up until the time. And then we get stuck in traffic and what happens to that second appointment? We’re late and that become stressful. So instead of doing that, why not say, “Okay, my 1:30 meeting I’m going to be there by 1:00 and if I have a chance I can pull out a book and read for a half hour. I can make a couple phone calls,” whatever it might be.

But I have started to put these margins into my day so that I’m not just running from appointment to appointment and that alone has decreased a lot of stress.

Sabrina Braham: That is a fantastic idea. I love it.

I really, really appreciate you taking the time with us today, Dawn Lyons, and I look forward to talking to you again. Thank you so much.

Dawn Lyons: You’re welcome. Thank you, Sabrina.

Sabrina Braham: Okay. This is Sabrina Braham with WomensLeadershipSuccess.com. We’ll be talking to you again.

Thanks for listening today. I would like to know what topics or experts you would like to hear in future shows. Please help me by filling out the survey on WomensLeadershipSuccess.com by September 30th. And if you are one of the first 10, you will be eligible for an opportunity to win $500 in executive coaching with me.
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Thank you for joining your host, Sabrina Braham, on another Women’s Leadership podcast. If you have questions or comments you can e-mail her at Sabrina@SabrinaBraham.com. Since 1989 Sabrina and her team have helped hundreds of women managers, business leaders, and entrepreneurs with valuable trainings, articles, books, and executive coaching. For additional tips, interviews, and free access to “Great Leaders Today” mini-course, visit www.WomensLeadershipSuccess.com.