What to Do If You Get a Bad Referralstring(36) "What to Do If You Get a Bad Referral"
Today’s professionals know that building a network of strong relationships is important to receive good referrals for their business. However, sometimes we receive a referral that is just not that good. It may be that the referral needed something outside our scope of services or products. Sometimes they don’t need anything at all, or they weren’t expecting your call and don’t want to talk with you.
What does one do after receiving a bad referral? My experience is that clear, open, honest, and direct communication that is professional and polite is the only way to solve the problem. It is impossible to get to the heart of the situation without a conversation.
Three Tips for Dealing with a Bad Referral
- Always speak up when you get a bad referral and talk to the person who gave it to you. Tell them tactfully, but tell them! I’ve talked to many people who say, “Oh, I can’t tell someone that the referral they gave me was no good.”
My reply is, “You can’t afford not to tell them.” Be direct without apologies. Simply say, “This is what happened. I wanted to come to you before I just assumed it was a bad referral,” and then listen to what they have to say. You can listen to an example here. - Be positive and make sure they know it was the referral they gave that was bad, and not their effort. Let them know that you appreciate them thinking of you and your business. The best way to ensure that you don’t get bad referrals is to teach people what you consider to be a good referral. This is different for each person and varies widely among professions. You cannot assume that everyone in your networking group knows what kind of referral you are seeking. You need to be specific and clear about what constitutes a good referral for you and educate your referral partners.
- If that doesn’t work, go to your networking group’s membership committee. Don’t talk to other people in the group. It is extremely unhelpful when people talk about each other and not to each other first. Share your concerns with the membership committee. They may have received other complaints about that member giving bad referrals. A good membership committee of a chapter will have a conversation with them and take appropriate action as needed.
Bonus Tip: Track Your Referrals
An effective way to make sure you get good referrals is to monitor the referrals you receive. This can be helpful in several ways. It shows you how often you get referrals, who your referral sources are, the quality of the referral, the status of it, and how much money successfully closed referrals bring to your business. If you don’t know this information today, you may want to consider implementing a tracking system for monitoring your future networking efforts. Over the years, I have observed that people who use systems generate more business.
Referrals and Reputations
When you give a business referral, you give a little bit of your reputation away. So when you are giving referrals, make sure to give good ones. Talk to the potential customer about your networking partner and how they can possibly help them. Ask permission to have your friend call them before you share their phone number. If you give someone a bad referral it can seriously hurt your reputation in your networking group and in the business community. Of course, when you give a good referral, it helps your reputation.
For years I have said that one of the strengths of a BNI® networking group is that most of the members are friends. One of the potential weaknesses of a BNI group is that most of the members are friends. Accountability is key.
If you find yourself in a situation of getting a bad referral, follow the first tip above and talk to the member who gave that referral. You never know what might come out of that conversation.