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Episode #255
Bob Burg

Secrets To Unlock Endless Consulting Referrals

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Summary

Building relationship is key to bringing clients to your door. This principle will help maximize those clients who are also interested in what you sell, so when you leverage your relationships, you also generate ongoing sales opportunities. In this episode, Bob Burg, author of Endless Referrals, shares his secrets to unlock endless consulting referrals. By following a process of predictably achieving a result based on a logical “how-to” principle, Bob works his way up as a sales manager. He also explains what his books are about and their relation to sales. When Bob says, “All you can control is your action,” wait no more and tune in to this episode now as Bob unlocks the door of his secrets to endless referrals!

Welcome back to another episode of the show. I’m very excited to have Bob Burg joining us.

Bob, welcome.

Thanks. It’s great to be with you.

For those who may not be familiar with your work, you’re a speaker, author, and sales trainer. You’re also the Founder of Burg Communications, Inc. You’re probably best known for your book, The Go-Giver, which is one in The Go-Giver series. You’ve had many books sold that are well over 1 million copies. You’ve also been named one of the most influential leaders in the world by the American Management Association. It’s a real pleasure to have you on the show.

The pleasure is mine. The honor is mine too.

I want to get started going back in the day. Maybe there’s something that we can extract or pull out of you that people don’t know about. Before you even started speaking and writing the books, what were you doing? Take us back to Bob Burg back in the day. How did you spend your days? What were you doing before you got into the world of writing and speaking on the topic of sales and everything else?

I started out in broadcasting as a radio sportscaster and then a TV news guy. I wasn’t very good at that and graduated in sales. I floundered for a few months since I had no idea what I was doing and had no training at the company where I was at. About three months or so into it, I was in a bookstore and saw a couple of books on selling. It doesn’t seem like a big deal, but many years ago, that wasn’t something that you knew about. The books were by Tom Hopkins and Zig Ziglar, two of the real icons in the sales space. They taught me a methodology.

I personally define a system as the process of predictably achieving a goal based on a logical and specific set of how-to principles, and the key is predictability. If it’s been proven that by doing A, you’ll get the desired results of B, then you know that all you need to do is A. You’ll continue to do A, and eventually, you’ll get the results of B. That gave me a lift. I knew that there was no wheel I needed to invent or reinvent. It was already out there.

After a few years of that and eventually working my way up to sales manager of a company, I started sharing with others what was working for me. It morphed into a speaking business. I joined National Speakers Association so I could learn the business of speaking. That’s also where I met a couple of people who said, “You should get your book written.”

I said, “I don’t want to write a book.” They said, “You should probably do it anyway because it’s going to position you better. It’s going to make you more marketable. You’re going to get higher fees.” They listed off a few reasons, which all made sense, so I wrote a book called Endless Referrals. That was my first book that was back in the ‘90s.

CSP 255 | Consulting Referrals

 

I want to go back to that time when you were in radio or broadcasting. What was it that pulled you to sales from that? Oftentimes, people have invested a lot of time, energy, and studies into a specific domain or a specific industry and it can be hard to shift to something completely different. What was it that was going on inside of your own mind? What was the pull that got you into the whole world of sales?

I wanted to be a sportscaster. That’s what I started out doing on radio, but I applied for TV jobs in sports, and they weren’t there. I got an offer to do news. I thought, “I’ll do news for a while, and eventually, I’ll get my break and go into sports.” I got into news, but I wasn’t very good at it because I wasn’t a journalist. I could be a sportscaster and it would have been up my line, but I was a news guy. I wasn’t cut out for that. What was interesting was I got a chance to do some weekend sports on TV. Back to doing the news, the sports didn’t seem that big of a deal. I said, “This isn’t what I want to be doing,” so I found a job in sales.

Why sales? Why not go and become something else? Was there something specific that pulled you over to the world of sales?

No. It was a way to make some money at that time. It wasn’t like I was qualified to be an engineer somewhere.

Your definition of a system is being able to achieve a result predictably. You know that if you keep doing A, you’re going to get to B. Often, even when business owners are working on something and they believe they have a system or they’re following somebody else’s system that they’ve read about in a book or seen in a presentation, you get to this point between A and B where you’re doing a lot of A, but you’re not yet seeing B. How do you process it? How do you think about that from a mindset perspective?

Were you always very optimistic, knowing, “I’m going to keep pounding forward? I’m going to get that result. It’s going to happen because clearly, somebody says that it works for them.” Was there a shift over your career where that belief or that mindset changed for you? A lot of people get stuck in that middle, and then they don’t keep moving forward. They give up too early before reaching B.

I’ve morphed in my life. Back in my younger days, I had a lot more of a feeling that I had to be in control of the world. It was all up to me, which sounds like someone who’s confident, but it was a lack of confidence. It was a need to know what was going to happen, which we couldn’t. That hurt more than helped me, but I was so driven to get to where I wanted to be that I kept doing it anyway. I had all sorts of angst as I was in the process, but as I got older, I started realizing all you can control are your actions. You’ve got to do the best you can with what you can control.

I remember a great speaker and mentor of mine by the name of Bill Gove. He used to tell all his protégés, “You’re responsible to people, not for people.” What he meant is you’re responsible for doing what you are supposed to do to be prepared to give someone the opportunity to know your stuff and be able to answer the questions and ask the right questions. You’re responsible for people to show up that way, but you’re not ultimately responsible for their decisions. When we approach like that, we have a lot more emotional posture.

I define posture in one of two ways. You can say posture is when you care, but not that much. We could define it a little more professionally as saying it’s a lack of emotional attachment to a specific desire. What that means is we can prefer something to happen, and that’s very healthy to prefer a certain result, but we can’t attach ourselves to it.

As you get older, you will realize that all you can control are your actions. Click To Tweet

When we attach ourselves to it, we live in anxiety. We live in fear, frustration, and anger if we don’t get what we want. Even if we do get what we want and we’re attached, we still have that same fear that something’s going to go wrong. We still have that same anxiety that something’s going to mess up. When we have that emotional posture or lack of attachment, it allows us to do our job the best we can, without that stress and anxiety. What that does is it makes us more attractive to our potential customers and clients.

That’s a very powerful distinction. You mentioned the word drive. I’m wondering. As your career has developed and you have become more successful over time, have you noticed that your drive or level of drive changes? Here you are years later with over 1 million copies sold. Before you wrote The Go-Giver, I would imagine financially that where you are is different than where you were many years ago. Has your level of drive changed? If so, what do you think about that? You’re still creating and doing a lot of stuff. I’m interested in your perspective. What have you noticed about yourself as the years have gone on?

Personally, I’m much more interested in having fun at what I’m doing. For example, my business partner, Kathy Tagenel, and I have a Go-Giver online membership community. I plan to do that rest of my life because it’s so much fun. I love it. We love building it. We love the idea that we can hopefully build it to 1 million monthly active users, all doing business the Go-Giver way with a focus on giving value to others while being open to receiving an abundance. We think about what it is that can happen in that world. It’s fun.

Has that changed? Would you say that focus of where it’s more on fun, earlier in your career, was the focus more on financials, metrics, or some other place?

The financials were a lot more important than they are now, certainly, but I still loved what I did. I also did a lot of things back then that I didn’t like, but I had to do in order to have the results I wanted. For example, I’ve never been one that loved travel. As a speaker, you’re on the road. If I was one of the speaking engagements, I love that part.

I feel honored to have been able to do this for many years. I love the speaking aspect, but I never loved travel, being on a plane, and staying in hotels. I did it because that’s what I had to do if I wanted the results I wanted. Since I’m 64, I’ll take on ten of what I call on-a-plane-engagement a year. Usually, they need to be direct flights within this part of the country. It’s not always, but by and large, unless I really want to do that particular thing. I do enough so I can keep my hand in it and not be in an ivory tower type of thing. I still feel like I need to be out there, but I’m not going to be living on the road.

You’re done with the road warrior stuff. I got you. Let’s talk about The Go-Giver for a moment. That book, which brought your name to a lot more visibility in the marketplace, sold over 1 million copies. What do you think it was about that book that distinguished it and made it so successful? There are many books about sales. You said that back in the day, there weren’t as many.

It’s not that there weren’t many books about sales, although you are right. There weren’t as many. The whole personal development sales thing wasn’t as prevalent. You didn’t know about it unless you were in that game. Now, everybody knows there’s a thing like that even if they’re not involved.

Do you think it was the concept of the book or is it the way it was written being a fable-parable style? What made it so successful?

CSP 255 | Consulting Referrals

 

There were a few elements that helped a lot. The parable style is very helpful. It’s because it’s short and easy to read. I had a fantastic co-author by the name of John David Mann, who was the lead writer and storyteller. I’m a how-to guy. John is the person who made that pop. I also think that it was a message that people have wanted to hear for a while that you can have good intent, want to help others, do great things for your marketplace, and earn a lot of money. You can do great things, and still, despite doing all those great things, you can still make money. This was saying in order to bring in a sustainably healthy income and enjoy what you do, you’ve got to focus on adding value to the lives of others.

The reason why this hit is because, by and large, that’s how most entrepreneurs and salespeople feel, as human beings, we all have all sorts of elements of human nature. Some are good and some aren’t as good. One that is pretty good is that we do have a natural tendency to want to feel as though we’re bringing value to the world around us. We want to feel like we’re making a difference.

We want to be part of something bigger than just ourselves. As entrepreneurs and salespeople, we tend to do that through our work or business. That doesn’t mean we can’t be involved in other stuff. I’m saying that, by and large, we bring value to the world through our products and services. What this book was doing was giving them permission to be who they wanted to be.

Consultants have deep knowledge and much to share, yet they often hesitate to put their ideas and content out there prolifically. The biggest concern typically is, “I’m giving away too much,” or, “I’m giving away too much for free.” What’s your belief or mindset around giving prolifically in terms of content ideas? You do a lot of that with your articles, speaking, and books. What do you think about that?

It needs to be looked at when you create content, you can’t worry about people taking it. First of all, some people are going to, and that’s not good. I’m not somebody who’s going to say, “That’s fine.” If you studied for that wisdom or learned it through personal experience, that’s yours. People shouldn’t take it to repackage and use on their own, but the world is the world.

If you’re too worried about that, what’s going to happen is you’re never going to produce anything. You’re never going to create anything and then no one’s going to know who you are anyway. It’s the same thing. You have to create a lot of content and put it out there because that is the way that people will start to know who you are. That kind of marketing content marketing isn’t the only kind of marketing. We still have to be outbound. We have to make the calls. We must put ourselves in the position to meet the people our marketer can refer to us.

In terms of content creation, when you are creating value through your videos, your articles, and all the different things you’re doing, you got to let the thing about people stealing your stuff go. As far as whether you’re giving them too much information that they won’t need you, that’s another concern. The more good information you give them, the more they know that if they’re going to take it to that next level, they need you to work them through it. That’s something that I wouldn’t concern myself with that.

You and I may have spoken about this before. You said, “What if somebody is asking me for advice and counsel and I’m giving them this great information one-on-one?” My idea is eventually, they’re going to see, “I need to work with this person and pay them to do it,” but they don’t seem to be getting that. They come to you for another time and it’s not appropriate at this point. It’s what you need to be charging them, and you need to be prepared for that. You need to have what you’re going to say. You need to do it tactically and empathetically in a way that doesn’t embarrass the other person.

You’ll say, “I’m enjoying our conversations. It sounds as though you’re getting good value from this.” The person is like, “This is great.” You’re like, “This is what I do. I’m a consultant. If you’d like to have an ongoing professional relationship with me, I’d be honored to. Is that what you would like to do?” The person says, “Yeah. That would be great,” and you’re like, “Here’s how we go about it.” Being a go-giver does not, in any way, mean that you’re anybody’s doormat, martyr, or self-sacrificial. It simply means that you understand that when your focus is on providing immense value to others, that’s when you create that benevolent context for your success.

You're responsible to people to show up in any way, but you're not ultimately responsible for their decisions. Click To Tweet

Clearly, you are very prolific in everything that you put out. You mentioned that you work with a co-author. What is your process look like? It could be with an article, speech, or one of your books. How do you extract your ideas out of your mind? How do you put them to paper? Is there a specific process, system, or flow you follow that you find very helpful in getting your ideas out of your mind and into the world?

With The Go-Giver, those were all co-authored with John, but all my other books, which were how-to books, I authored myself. There are two different processes. The ones I work with John are easy because he’s great at what he does. This guy is a pure writer like Ted Williams is a pure hitter and Bobby Orr is a pure hockey player. It’s a joy.

What does that look like? A lot of people don’t necessarily feel that they themselves are writers or they could be good at writing. Having someone like your co-author and having someone that you could work with can help you to accelerate that process. If you could, at a high level, explain what that looks like, how did the two of you get a book out there?

It might be different there than if somebody was using a ghostwriter. With John and me, it’s our books together. It’s not like I’m giving him these ideas and he’s writing a story. We’re both working on it together. He’s got brilliant ideas with the stories as well. We get together and decide what it is that we want this to be about, the basic characters involved depending upon what topic it is, and depending on who has already written articles about all these things. We go back to these, take out all the good stuff, and then determine where it’s going to go. John writes the chapter and then we go back over it. We decipher every word and every letter. It gets put together that way.

Anybody who has an idea for a book can decide. If it’s a how-to book, I would first go with the title. That doesn’t mean that’s going to be the title, but that’s where you start, with a short, punchy title. Endless Referrals was my first one. It’s short and sweet, and the benefit was right in the title. The subtitle is usually a little bit longer and more explanatory. The subtitle was Network Your Everyday Contacts into Sales. Anybody going past it in the bookstore would know that this was their book if they wanted it.

I would then write an introduction. People are like, “Introduction? Isn’t that the boring thing we all skip through?” I remember reading a book called How to Read a Book by Mortimer Adler. He talked about if you read through an introduction, you’ll notice that somewhere in that introduction, the author will tell you why he or she wrote the book and what they want you to get out of it. I started doing that every time after. I love introductions because then I’m looking for exactly the premise of the book, why they wrote it, and what they want me to get out of it. Write the introduction first for yourself. When you write that introduction, you’re going to clarify to yourself and for yourself why you’re writing that book.

I would then go through the chapters, which is the table of contents. You don’t worry about it being perfect. It does not have to be. Put down the chapter ideas that you have. I would go back and then I’d write an introduction for each chapter. In one paragraph, write the introduction, what’s the chapter about, and what you want the reader to get out of the chapter. Then, go back and write your book. Do it a little bit each day or however you want to do it. Pretty soon, you will have a book. You can always hire an editor. You can hire a co-author to go through it or a ghostwriter to go through it. Whatever you want to do, there are all sorts of resources out there.

You mentioned the word perfect. You said, “It does not have to be perfect.” How do you feel about your books? Do you feel that your books are perfect? Do you still publish even when you feel like, “This is 80% or 90% there.” How far do you push it where at some point, it doesn’t make sense to continue to refine and improve it because it’ll take too much time and it may never get out there?

There’s always a point of diminishing returns when any additional work you do is not nearly the return that you would have by shipping and getting it out there.

CSP 255 | Consulting Referrals

 

Is there any specific way that you think about that or is it more a sense that you have based on where you’re at with the book?

It’s a sense when I’ve gotten to the point that I feel like anything else I’m going to do is going to have such a minimal effect.

I have a few more questions before we wrap up here. You wrote the book Endless Referrals. Given where we are with everything going on in the world, what would you suggest for those who do want to create endless referrals and have more referral business coming in more predictably? What would be a couple of suggestions in terms of steps, actions, or mindsets that they could adopt or start to implement?

When you have a client who feels great about you, knows you, likes you, and trusts you, that’s the client who’s most likely to refer you to others. I created what I call a Bridge Statement. A bridge in the physical world is a structure that transports you from one safe piece of land to another. The Bridge Statement or Bridge Phrase is a phrase that does the same thing. It takes you from where you are and where that person that knows, likes, and trusts you to another safe piece of land and you both feel very comfortable with the referral process.

It sounds something like this, “As more and more of my businesses are now through referrals and introductions, I find it helpful to partner with my clients such as you. Can we take a few quick minutes and run past the names of some other people I might also be able to help?” Your wording will be a little different depending on your style.

If your business isn’t referral-based, you might not feel comfortable saying, “As more and more of my businesses.” You might say, “As I’m in the process of expanding my referral business, I find it helpful to partner with my clients and friends such as you.” Eventually, it will be referral-based, and then you can easily say, “As more and more of my business are now through referrals and introductions.” What that statement does is help the other person to feel comfortable with the process. You’re like, “As more and more of my businesses are now through referrals and introductions, I find it helpful to partner with my clients and friends such as you.” Partner is an important keyword.

This next part of the phrase is very important. You’re like, “Can we take a few quick minutes and run past the names of some other people?” You might say of 1 or 2, a few people, or however you want to do it. That’s what I call fast language. In other words, you’re letting this busy person know it’s not going to take up a lot of their time. You’re like, “Some other people, I might also be able to help.” The reason I say might is because I always want to communicate that there’s an out or back door both for them and for anyone they refer me to. They never have to worry about myself or any of my team coming on inappropriately and trying to hard sell. We always want to give that out or back door.

Do you find the best practice to be that you would present some potential people that they could introduce you to? For a more effective process, are you asking some questions to help identify people they might know that you could help but don’t know who they are yet?

There are two ways to do this. For example, they say, “That would be fine,” you’ve got their buy-in to that. What you let them know is, “The type of person I’m looking for doesn’t have to be someone who does exactly what you’re doing but has some of those same qualities. They’re probably between 30 and 45 years old. They’ve got a growing business that they’re feeling is a little stuck. They’re maybe wanting to accelerate a little bit more. They probably do between $2 million and $6 million with 15 or 20 employees.” What you’ve done is you’ve given them the way to identify who that person would be.

Despite doing great things, you can still make money. Click To Tweet

I learned this from Tom Hopkins in that very first book I got. We’ll come back to your other question about suggesting certain people in a moment. Tom used to say that people mess up asking for referrals when they’d say, “Who do you know? Do you know anybody?” Who could? It’s too big of a world. We know 250 or 300 people. When you say, “Who do you know?” “Do you know anybody?” a collage of hundreds of people go past their mind. They can’t identify.

What Tom said is to very gently funnel down their world into small groups they can picture. You could say, “I know you are a golfer.” He says, “I love golf.” You know he’s a golfer because all he talks about is golf. He’s got pictures of it. You could say, “Do you play with different people or the same people?” He’s like, “It’s the same foursome every time. Harry Brown, Michael Cloud, Dr. Mary Ruwart, and I are out there every Sunday afternoon.”

He has named people. You can say, “Would Harry, Michael, or Dr. Mary would fit the profile of what we’re talking about?” That’s one. Another frame might be all of them, none of them, or one of them. It doesn’t matter. You’ve set him up to be able to come up with names, so he feels comfortable with the process. Maybe another frame might be his local civic club or organization. It might also be an association of people who does what he does. You can go through those depending on what you do.

Regarding your question about asking for specific people, sure, if there are people you know that you’d like to talk to and you think there might be a connection. For example, you see someone on LinkedIn and think, “That would be a great person I’d like to meet.” You work backward through their connections and find out that Dave knows this person.

You say, “I’m wondering. Do you know so-and-so?” You could even say something like, “I know you’re connected with so-and-so on LinkedIn, but that doesn’t always mean we know people personally. Do you have any kind of relationship with Dan Johnson or whoever the person might be?” He might say, “No,” but he might also say, “Yeah. I’ve gotten to know them. They’re nice.”

The way I would say it is this because we never want to put someone on the spot. I’d be like, “Would you feel comfortable with the idea of introducing me to them? I don’t want to, in any way, infringe upon your relationship, so if this is not something you feel comfortable doing, it’s understandable.” The more of an out you give someone to take that, the more they feel as though it’s not an issue because they know you respect the process enough to not make them look bad.

That is such an important point. I know we are coming up the time. I want to respect that. I want to thank you. You came onto one of our private client masterminds.

I enjoyed that very much.

I appreciate you coming on that and having you on the show here. I have one final, quick question for you and then I want to make sure that people can learn more about everything that you have going on. You love books. Aside from your books, which I certainly highly recommend, what are 1 or 2 books that you’ve read in the last couple of months that you loved and would recommend to others? It could be fiction or nonfiction.

CSP 255 | Consulting Referrals

 

That’s such a tough question because I’m constantly reading. I would say Adam Grant’s book, Think Again. I read that a few years ago. His book, Think Again, helps us to see where it’s such a great idea to question our beliefs and question whether we’re right. His book is one of the most important books I’ve ever read in my life. Another one is Trust & Inspire, Stephen M. R. Covey’s book. I finished that one a little while ago and I thought he did a wonderful job. It was a great follow-up to his classic, The Speed of Trust.

Where should we send people? What’s the one URL destination that we should send people to learn more about you, your work, and everything you have going on? 

As a general site, I’d say Burg.com. If people are interested in our Go-Giver online membership community, it would be TheGoGiverCommunity.com.

Thank you again so much for coming on. I appreciate you joining us.

It’s my pleasure. Thank you.

 

Important Links

 

About Bob Burg

CSP 255 | Consulting ReferralsBob Burg shares how a subtle shift in focus is not only a more uplifting and fulfilling way of conducting business but the most financially profitable way, as well. For 30 years he’s helped companies, sales leaders, and their teams to more effectively communicate their value, sell at higher prices with less resistance, and grow their businesses based on Endless Referrals.

Bob has regularly addressed audiences ranging in size from 50 to 16,000 — sharing the platform with notables including today’s top thought leaders, broadcast personalities, Olympic athletes and political leaders including a former United States President.

Although for years he was best known for his book Endless Referrals, it’s his business parable, The Go-Giver (coauthored with John David Mann) that captured the imagination of his readers.

The Go-Giver, a Wall Street Journal and BusinessWeek Bestseller, has sold over a million copies. Since its release it has consistently stayed in the Top 25 on Porchlight’s (formerly 800-CEO-READ) Business Book Bestsellers List. The book has been translated into 30 languages. It was rated #10 on Inc. Magazine’s list of the Most Motivational Books Ever Written, and was on HubSpot’s 20 Most Highly Rated Sales Books of All Time.

Bob is the author of a number of books on sales, marketing and influence, with total book sales approaching two million copies.

The American Management Association named Bob one of the 30 Most Influential Leaders and he was named one of the Top 200 Most Influential Authors in the World by Richtopia.

Bob is an advocate, supporter and defender of the Free Enterprise system, believing that the amount of money one makes is directly proportional to how many people they serve.

He is also an unapologetic animal fanatic and served on the Board of Directors of Furry Friends Adoption and Clinic in his town of Jupiter, Florida.

 

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