Referals and Networking

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Kevin Cole-NLPTrainingQuest.com on July 9, 2010 at 10:06pm

My main referrals come from past clients, my website, colleagues, and for the most part... presentations that I offer to groups.

**Note, I don't do "talks". I do presentations... The difference being the fact that I don't try and explain what hypnosis and NLP is. I just give people a number of undeniable and profound experiences of how I can help them and botta bing/botta boom, I've just gained a minimum of one new client, and or student... every time.

In this business, nothing beats giving live presentations.

That said, I also believe that if you're looking to mainly work with doctors and dentists, do exactly what Scott Sandland does. He's got it down pat when it comes to doctors/dentists.

If you want a steady flow of clients outside of that arena (for hypnotherapy/NLP, coaching, etc.) get yourself out there and give people an experience of what you can do for them. With meetup.com, there's no shortage of people to present to these days. Just make sure to offer a special deal on your services on the spot.

Oh, and in my experience (and this is just me), when it comes to lead groups ie BNI etc. , they just don't seem to pay off for hypnotherapists very well unless you have a very tight niche such as strictly smoking cessation and or weight loss. It can be done, but I've found it very time consuming and not the greatest ROI. Again, that's just my experience. There are some that pull it off...

Kevin

Permalink Reply by Antoine Pruyssers on July 10, 2010 at 5:56am

I've contacted physicians and drug-stores(which are very strongly regulated here), and get referrals from these.
Furthermore I get referrals from former clients, my website, hearsay and sites like facebook and more of that kind.
I have no idea what a "leads-group" is.

What I've learned is: Get out there, don't just sit behind your desk and wait for clients to come walking in! If you want something, you have to go get it anywhere and anyhow you can (within certain limit's off course)

I also organize edutainment-evenings what I've seen Bandler do (see: video) where I invite business-owners to show what I have to offer.

And every year I contact former clients, to check up on them, and ask them for referrals. (Thanx to Brian Tracy)

Permalink Reply by Michael Ellner on July 10, 2010 at 4:11pm

Hello James,


I have no experience in BNI-like organizations; I do know that my associate Mr. Alan Barsky finds his local BNI group to be a consistent source of clients.

==

Permalink Reply by Michael Ellner on July 10, 2010 at 4:18pm

Hi Kevin

I dig your semantic reframe and I believe that in NYC-speak "Talks" and "Presentations" are interchangeable terms - I think that every invitation that I've had to speak in NYC during the last 20 years asked if I wanted to give a "Talk" -- I habitually say yes and treat them each and every one of them as the most important presentation of my life --

My recent appearance on the "Living with RSD" show continues to generate clients... The feedback I am getting is that I hold the record for downloads of their show and people are downloading the show and playing it to help them develop their self-help skills and abilities. I am making MP3s of this "presentation" as a way to introduce myself to potential Radio shows and clients.... You can listen to the interview on my Member page it is audio #1

Hint for Developing Hypnosis Professionals: I highly recommend listening to the podcasts offered by group member Roger Moore. Roger is outstanding at bringing out the best of the people that he interviews. Modeling the interviewees his shows can help you develop your interviewing skills and abilities.

Michael E.

Kevin Cole-NLPTrainingQuest.com said:

My main referrals come from past clients, my website, colleagues, and for the most part... presentations that I offer to groups.
**Note, I don't do "talks". I do presentations... The difference being the fact that I don't try and explain what hypnosis and NLP is. I just give people a number of undeniable and profound experiences of how I can help them and botta bing/botta boom, I've just gained a minimum of one new client, and or student... every time.
In this business, nothing beats giving live presentations.

That said, I also believe that if you're looking to mainly work with doctors and dentists, do exactly what Scott Sandland does. He's got it down pat when it comes to doctors/dentists.

If you want a steady flow of clients outside of that arena (for hypnotherapy/NLP, coaching, etc.) get yourself out there and give people an experience of what you can do for them. With meetup.com, there's no shortage of people to present to these days. Just make sure to offer a special deal on your services on the spot.

Oh, and in my experience (and this is just me), when it comes to lead groups ie BNI etc. , they just don't seem to pay off for hypnotherapists very well unless you have a very tight niche such as strictly smoking cessation and or weight loss. It can be done, but I've found it very time consuming and not the greatest ROI. Again, that's just my experience. There are some that pull it off...

Kevin

Permalink Reply by James on July 10, 2010 at 6:50pm

Kevin, I'm sorry to hear about your bad experience in the groups.

Leads groups are 95% of my income I used them to triple my practice. They were so profitable I bought the franchise for the fastest growing referral organization in Denver Co. www.itakethelead.com so I'm really disappointed like to hear when other fellow hypnotist don't have at least a 10% to 20% increases in their practice when working with a group for at least a year.

Please let me know how the ball was dropped.
It is very important to me that referral and leads groups do not get a bad rap.

Here are a few questions I will ask you to answer about your experience so we can dispel the Myths that Leads groups don't work for hypnotist.

How many years did you stick with BMI?

What other leads groups did you try and for how long?

How many leads were you passing to other professionals a week?

How many members did you bring in to the group?

What officer roles to did hold?

You mentioned your ROI - What are 3 reasons you were not able to retain the referred clients you got from the groups?

How much time did you invest?

Please let us know.

Kevin Cole-NLPTrainingQuest.com said:

My main referrals come from past clients, my website, colleagues, and for the most part... presentations that I offer to groups.
**Note, I don't do "talks". I do presentations... The difference being the fact that I don't try and explain what hypnosis and NLP is. I just give people a number of undeniable and profound experiences of how I can help them and botta bing/botta boom, I've just gained a minimum of one new client, and or student... every time. In this business, nothing beats giving live presentations.
That said, I also believe that if you're looking to mainly work with doctors and dentists, do exactly what Scott Sandland does. He's got it down pat when it comes to doctors/dentists.

If you want a steady flow of clients outside of that arena (for hypnotherapy/NLP, coaching, etc.) get yourself out there and give people an experience of what you can do for them. With meetup.com, there's no shortage of people to present to these days. Just make sure to offer a special deal on your services on the spot.

Oh, and in my experience (and this is just me), when it comes to lead groups ie BNI etc. , they just don't seem to pay off for hypnotherapists very well unless you have a very tight niche such as strictly smoking cessation and or weight loss. It can be done, but I've found it very time consuming and not the greatest ROI. Again, that's just my experience. There are some that pull it off...

Kevin

Permalink Reply by James on July 10, 2010 at 7:09pm

Great answers, Keep it up the great work.


Here is what a leads group is.

A Leads Group or a referral group are groups of professionals who meet on a weekly to exchange qualified leads and build business alliances. There is only one person in each group from each profession, so there is no conflict of interest.A leads group is a group of any business professionals who meet once a week to exchange referrals.

Antoine Pruyssers said:

I've contacted physicians and drug-stores(which are very strongly regulated here), and get referrals from these.
Furthermore I get referrals from former clients, my website, hearsay and sites like facebook and more of that kind. I have no idea what a "leads-group" is.
What I've learned is: Get out there, don't just sit behind your desk and wait for clients to come walking in! If you want something, you have to go get it anywhere and anyhow you can (within certain limit's off course)

I also organize edutainment-evenings what I've seen Bandler do (see: video) where I invite business-owners to show what I have to offer.

And every year I contact former clients, to check up on them, and ask them for referrals. (Thanx to Brian Tracy)

Permalink Reply by James on July 10, 2010 at 7:54pm

Hi Michael,

This time I have to disagree with you.

You said:
"Talks" and "Presentations" are interchangeable terms.

Booking speakers I have found the difference.

I believe A Talk is a Presentation, Although a Presentation is not always a talk.

A Presentation is a performance of any kind, Most of the time we relate it to acting, singing, or a drama. It does not matter what happens as long as the majority of the attention is on the performance.

A "Talk" is a special type of performance that usually highlights a communication between the speaker and one or more persons. This type of performance is where open feedback is more encouraged than applause.

I might be wrong, but I would bet dollars to doughnuts that your talks are not a rehearsed performance instead an open communication between you and the listener, and that is why you are so downloaded

I would love to hear your feed back on this.

Michael Ellner said:

Hi Kevin

I dig your semantic reframe and I believe that in NYC-speak "Talks" and "Presentations" are interchangeable terms - I think that every invitation that I've had to speak in NYC during the last 20 years asked if I wanted to give a "Talk" -- I habitually say yes and treat them each and every one of them as the most important presentation of my life --

My recent appearance on the "Living with RSD" show continues to generate clients... The feedback I am getting is that I hold the record for downloads of their show and people are downloading the show and playing it to help them develop their self-help skills and abilities. I am making MP3s of this "presentation" as a way to introduce myself to potential Radio shows and clients.... You can listen to the interview on my Member page it is audio #1

Hint for Developing Hypnosis Professionals: I highly recommend listening to the podcasts offered by group member Roger Moore. Roger is outstanding at bringing out the best of the people that he interviews. Modeling the interviewees his shows can help you develop your interviewing skills and abilities.

Michael E.

Permalink Reply by Kevin Cole-NLPTrainingQuest.com on July 10, 2010 at 9:28pm

Hey James,

Fair questions...

And as you will see by my answers, no "ball was dropped". Far from it... The "ball" was thrown to many in my group. They just had challenges feeling comfortable talking to people about hypnosis... My answers will expand. Oh, and remember... This does not intended to give referall groups a bad rap. Far from it. I believe them to be extraordinary ROI for many. Just not for me...

Answers:

How many years did you stick with BMI? Actually wasn't BNI I was with. I don't think I was very clear about that. I was simply using them as an example because people are usually very familiar with them. I was actually with a group called ABRA for the longest.

What other leads groups did you try and for how long? A few others that were not as structured as ABRA or BNI.

How many leads were you passing to other professionals a week? from as little as 1 to as many as 5. A couple of times, I had no leads, so I just have a "testimonial" of someone in the group.

How many members did you bring in to the group? Quite a few actually... about 15 guests, if memory serves and 7 members (not including those that were brought on from other members that I "officially enrolled" as that was my job).

What officer roles to did hold? I was actually the group president as it was a start up group (hence why I directly brought so many)

You mentioned your ROI - What are 3 reasons you were not able to retain the referred clients you got from the groups? Who said I didn't retain the clients that were referred? Most of them I did (although there were only 5 in an entire year/half). 2 of them just weren't very good leads. They were actually the kind where they didn't ask permission to have me call them and that just made me look bad with the "Who gave you this number???" and it was more of a cold call than a lead. I'm very big on permission based marketing. **I wasn't too pleased about those, but it only happened twice.

How much time did you invest? As group president, I invested A LOT of time. Between organizing, meetings, and in between meetings (one/one coffee/lunch meetings with other members etc.), I'd say about 10 hours a week.

Many members in the group did quite well. Especially the accountant, insurance agents, and banker. They were considered "easy referrals". Had a couple of network marketers and they were pretty tough to refer to as well, but for different reasons.

My feedback from members regarding referrals for what I did was simply that they just didn't know how to explain what I do. My response was always, "Don't try to explain it... Let me do that. Just say "Hey, I know someone that can help you overcome that phobia and or anxiety in as little as one session, and of course I had my basic elevator pitch for them. (those were my niches I shared with the group to keep things simple for them, which I find is very important. When it comes to hypnosis, we MUST be specific if your going to get any leads at all)

So to clarify, I'm not against referral/lead groups. I actually took a tremendous amount of pride in my role as president and found that particular group to have a very high ROI for those that put in the time and brought in the leads. I just found that I could do considerably better with other avenues such as doing live presentations. The reason I stuck with it for as long as I did was because I don't like to give up on anything and I took pride in helping other members of the group succeed, but spending that much time getting so few clients, when I was (and still am) doing so well doing live presentations, well it just became obvious what the best decision was, for me.

Oh and the "talk/presentation" semantics, that's just my way of phrasing my personal "definition". Not exactly Websters...

Tomato/Tomoto, if you will...

Anyway, those were simply my experiences... Oh, and I almost forgot facebook. Facebook has been GREAT for me. As long as post 1 advertisement for every 10 to 15 regular and or educational posts, I find I get a lot of clients and students from it. Facebook is definitely a great resource....

Cheers,

Kevin

P.S. This was rather hastily typed as I just started teaching a 16 day intensive and am writing this after a rather lengthy day... Have a great night all...


James said:

Kevin, I'm sorry to hear about your bad experience in the groups.
Leads groups are 95% of my income I used them to triple my practice. They were so profitable I bought the franchise for the fastest growing referral organization in Denver Co. www.itakethelead.com so I'm really disappointed like to hear when other fellow hypnotist don't have at least a 10% to 20% increases in their practice when working with a group for at least a year.
Please let me know how the ball was dropped.
It is very important to me that referral and leads groups do not get a bad rap.

Here are a few questions I will ask you to answer about your experience so we can dispel the Myths that Leads groups don't work for hypnotist.

How many years did you stick with BMI?

What other leads groups did you try and for how long?

How many leads were you passing to other professionals a week?

How many members did you bring in to the group?

What officer roles to did hold?

You mentioned your ROI - What are 3 reasons you were not able to retain the referred clients you got from the groups?

How much time did you invest?

Please let us know.

Kevin Cole-NLPTrainingQuest.com said:

My main referrals come from past clients, my website, colleagues, and for the most part... presentations that I offer to groups.
**Note, I don't do "talks". I do presentations... The difference being the fact that I don't try and explain what hypnosis and NLP is. I just give people a number of undeniable and profound experiences of how I can help them and botta bing/botta boom, I've just gained a minimum of one new client, and or student... every time. In this business, nothing beats giving live presentations. That said, I also believe that if you're looking to mainly work with doctors and dentists, do exactly what Scott Sandland does. He's got it down pat when it comes to doctors/dentists.
If you want a steady flow of clients outside of that arena (for hypnotherapy/NLP, coaching, etc.) get yourself out there and give people an experience of what you can do for them. With meetup.com, there's no shortage of people to present to these days. Just make sure to offer a special deal on your services on the spot.

Oh, and in my experience (and this is just me), when it comes to lead groups ie BNI etc. , they just don't seem to pay off for hypnotherapists very well unless you have a very tight niche such as strictly smoking cessation and or weight loss. It can be done, but I've found it very time consuming and not the greatest ROI. Again, that's just my experience. There are some that pull it off...

Kevin

Permalink Reply by Michael Ellner on July 11, 2010 at 2:34am

Thanks James,

I appreciate your take on this and yes, my talks are interactive and not intended to be a performance as such --


James said:

Hi Michael,
This time I have to disagree with you.
You said:
"Talks" and "Presentations" are interchangeable terms.

Booking speakers I have found the difference.

I believe A Talk is a Presentation, Although a Presentation is not always a talk.

A Presentation is a performance of any kind, Most of the time we relate it to acting, singing, or a drama. It does not matter what happens as long as the majority of the attention is on the performance.

A "Talk" is a special type of performance that usually highlights a communication between the speaker and one or more persons. This type of performance is where open feedback is more encouraged than applause.

I might be wrong, but I would bet dollars to doughnuts that your talks are not a rehearsed performance instead an open communication between you and the listener, and that is why you are so downloaded

I would love to hear your feed back on this.

Michael Ellner said:

Hi Kevin

I dig your semantic reframe and I believe that in NYC-speak "Talks" and "Presentations" are interchangeable terms - I think that every invitation that I've had to speak in NYC during the last 20 years asked if I wanted to give a "Talk" -- I habitually say yes and treat them each and every one of them as the most important presentation of my life -- My recent appearance on the "Living with RSD" show continues to generate clients... The feedback I am getting is that I hold the record for downloads of their show and people are downloading the show and playing it to help them develop their self-help skills and abilities. I am making MP3s of this "presentation" as a way to introduce myself to potential Radio shows and clients.... You can listen to the interview on my Member page it is audio #1

Hint for Developing Hypnosis Professionals: I highly recommend listening to the podcasts offered by group member Roger Moore. Roger is outstanding at bringing out the best of the people that he interviews. Modeling the interviewees his shows can help you develop your interviewing skills and abilities.

Michael E.

Permalink Reply by James on July 11, 2010 at 3:02pm

Thank you so much, Leads groups and networking is not the easiest thing in the world, and getting the group to work in your favor is even harder.

You are right this group was not the place for you... although I am going to address these answers anyway, this way others can learn from this.

I have bolded responses below...

Let me know what you think

Kevin Cole-NLPTrainingQuest.com said:

Hey James,
Fair questions...
And as you will see by my answers, no "ball was dropped". Far from it... The "ball" was thrown to many in my group. They just had challenges feeling comfortable talking to people about hypnosis... My answers will expand. Oh, and remember... This does not intended to give referall groups a bad rap. Far from it. I believe them to be extraordinary ROI for many. Just not for me...

To dispel any and all myths about hypnosis to the people in my group I would Hypnotize (not therapy) the members for $50 per session or a trade, I would not do it for free so they could feel they received a value from there own money or service. Only after being a client they would learn how to refer me. Answers:

How many years did you stick with BMI? Actually wasn't BNI I was with. I don't think I was very clear about that. I was simply using them as an example because people are usually very familiar with them. I was actually with a group called ABRA for the longest.

Most ABRA groups are held every other week for 90 minutes to exchange referrals and market your business, for our industry we need to get in front of our leads group once a week; 2 weeks is to long to wait to remind the members about what we do.

What other leads groups did you try and for how long? A few others that were not as structured as ABRA or BNI.

The "Structure" is not as important as the people inside the group and it takes givers (this sounded like the ABRA group you were in was givers), When shopping for a group look for the givers "Birds of a feather flock together"
How many leads were you passing to other professionals a week? from as little as 1 to as many as 5. A couple of times, I had no leads, so I just have a "testimonial" of someone in the group.

Nice work you are a giver, although this is only half of the job. I see this happen more times than not a person gives does not teach the other members in the group how to refer.
How many members did you bring in to the group? Quite a few actually... about 15 guests, if memory serves and 7 members (not including those that were brought on from other members that I "officially enrolled" as that was my job).

WOW nice job, where did you find these member's? and What type professions did you seek out? When bringing a member or guest to a meeting it is very important that you bring the person that can help you since there is only one person per category you really want the right person that can help you. For example: if you brought in a Chiropractor are you inviting the Dr. who is more excited about holistic health or the Dr who more relies more on x-rays and machines. Remember there is only one spot open?
What officer roles to did hold? I was actually the group president as it was a start up group (hence why I directly brought so many)
This is the most beneficial position to have in the group all commutation is done though you, How many one on ones did you do a mth?
You mentioned your ROI - What are 3 reasons you were not able to retain the referred clients you got from the groups? Who said I didn't retain the clients that were referred? Most of them I did (although there were only 5 in an entire year/half). 2 of them just weren't very good leads. They were actually the kind where they didn't ask permission to have me call them and that just made me look bad with the "Who gave you this number???" and it was more of a cold call than a lead. I'm very big on permission based marketing. **I wasn't too pleased about those, but it only happened twice.

ROI: Let's brake this down you retained 3 clients in a year and a half the ABRA membership is 592.5. Now I don't know what you charged per sessions or how many session you had, lets use standard numbers to make it easy: if you retained 3 the clients for only 5 sessions and you charged $100 a session then the ROI is 150% In my book that is a great ROI


How much time did you invest? As group president, I invested A LOT of time. Between organizing, meetings, and in between meetings (one/one coffee/lunch meetings with other members etc.), I'd say about 10 hours a week.

10 hours is way to much time the max is 3 to 4.5 hours a week. Here is the breakdown: an hour to hour and a half for the meeting, one hour to meet with a member from the group, and one hour to meet with a guest that attended the meeting or to requite a new person you that you might want to bring to the meeting.

Many members in the group did quite well. Especially the accountant, insurance agents, and banker. They were considered "easy referrals". Had a couple of network marketers and they were pretty tough to refer to as well, but for different reasons.

You missed your opportunity the best thing about hypnosis is it can adapt to every lead it is just thinking outside of the box if you saw a referral going to an insurance agent you can push "Hypnosis for the Lead Foot" or the Smoking for the Health insurance agent, accountant are easy to get a referral from most of their clients would kill for time saving hypnosis and changing habits that are costing them $1,000 + almost every one of their clients have a lot of stress, The easiest of these 3 the banker push Hypnosis for overdrafts and over spending.
My feedback from members regarding referrals for what I did was simply that they just didn't know how to explain what I do. My response was always, "Don't try to explain it... Let me do that. Just say "Hey, I know someone that can help you overcome that phobia and or anxiety in as little as one session, and of course I had my basic elevator pitch for them. (those were my niches I shared with the group to keep things simple for them, which I find is very important. When it comes to hypnosis, we MUST be specific if your going to get any leads at all)
Testimonies Testimonies Testimonies Testimonies if you give them enough Testimonies they can remember and repeat you will have an endless supply of referals
So to clarify, I'm not against referral/lead groups. I actually took a tremendous amount of pride in my role as president and found that particular group to have a very high ROI for those that put in the time and brought in the leads. I just found that I could do considerably better with other avenues such as doing live presentations. The reason I stuck with it for as long as I did was because I don't like to give up on anything and I took pride in helping other members of the group succeed, but spending that much time getting so few clients, when I was (and still am) doing so well doing live presentations, well it just became obvious what the best decision was, for me.

Oh and the "talk/presentation" semantics, that's just my way of phrasing my personal "definition". Not exactly Websters...

Tomato/Tomoto, if you will...

Anyway, those were simply my experiences... Oh, and I almost forgot facebook. Facebook has been GREAT for me. As long as post 1 advertisement for every 10 to 15 regular and or educational posts, I find I get a lot of clients and students from it. Facebook is definitely a great resource....

Cheers,

Kevin

P.S. This was rather hastily typed as I just started teaching a 16 day intensive and am writing this after a rather lengthy day... Have a great night all...

Permalink Reply by Jessica Bergkvist on June 23, 2011 at 12:13am

Great topic! I would love to see more posts on this.

 

"Buddy referrals" are great. Every client knows someone who could benefit from hypnosis. I have found that it is important to let clients know that hypnosis works for more than smoking cessation, weight loss, etc... I have had many clients who have said things like "I had no idea that hypnosis worked for that..." The majority of my clients are referrals from other clients. It is wonderful when a new clients walks in expecting hypnosis to work for them because it worked for someone they know...

 

Speaking (and doing a group hypnosis demo) at groups and classes is another good way to get clients and referrals. I get at least one new client every time I do this. I usually choose groups run by therapists or other healers. People in these groups are usually open to learning about another healing modality.