Have you tried Centre of Influence marketing?

Graham McGregor is a Fame Marketing Expert. You can get his free marketing guide ‘The Fame and Fortune Marketing Solution’ at www.GrahamMcGregor.com.

OPINION: Many years ago I was selling motivational seminars to the business market.

I had one client who attended the seminar and loved it. Over the next few months he also personally paid for a dozen of his colleagues and friends to attend the same seminar.

This client was in charge of a large business and he continued to recommend this motivational seminar for several years to many of the people he knew.

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This one client was responsible for a huge amount of sales and repeat business for me.

He was a perfect example of what we call a Key Centre of Influence. (In other words, someone who can potentially influence a lot of other people about your products or services.)

In any business there are usually a number of key centres of influence who could potentially recommend you to many of the people they know.

If you are an accountant, a good centre of influence is often a legal professional. If you are a personal fitness trainer, a good centre of influence might be a local chiropractor. And so on.

So how can you get some of these key centres of influence to positively recommend your business? Just use two simple steps.

Step 1

Focus on adding value first before you ask to be recommended. Start by creating a list of 10-20 potential centres of influence for your business.

But when you make contact with these people, don’t ask them to recommend your business. Instead, add value in some way.

Example: Let’s say you are an accountant and would like to get recommended by a number of legal firms in your area. You might send them a short letter that says something like this:

“Hi John/Jane, we haven’t personally met, however I own a local accounting firm called XYZ Accountants.

“I meet regularly with a lot of interesting people and I may be able to refer a potential new legal client to you every so often. Can you send me half a dozen of your business cards and let me know what type of person you are looking for in an ideal new legal client?

“I’ve enclosed a prepaid envelope you can use to send me your business cards. In the meantime, here is a copy of a short article that I noticed recently. It’s about a legal practice that got a lot of new business with a novel marketing approach.

“I thought you might find this of interest. Kind regards. Your name.”

Notice how you are adding value first without asking for anything in return. This is a powerful way to begin a potential new business relationship.

Step 2

Stay in touch at least once a month and ‘add value’ each time you make contact. My favourite way of doing this is to send out something hardcopy each month by snail mail.

It could be:

• A positive article you noticed.
• Information that could be useful for the person you are sending it to.
• A short booklet or newsletter in hardcopy format.

Within six months of doing this you will notice that a number of these key centres of influence will start to ask for further information about what you do. And many of these centres of influence will start to give you referrals.

Keep in mind that developing a great relationship with key centres of influences doesn’t happen overnight. It takes time, patience and consistently adding value.

The good news is that once you have this great relationship, you could easily enjoy excellent referrals from each key centre of influence for a very long time.

Action exercise

Write down the names of 10-20 businesses that could potentially be a good centre of influence for your products and services. Make contact once a month with these businesses in a low-key way that adds high value.