Relationship 1: Casual Referral Partner

I have determined that there are at least 6 different business networking relationships people can leverage in a business-to-business selling environment. They are broken into two categories: individual and group relationships.

The difference between individual and group relationships is that the first is best suited to people who are individually responsible for finding, closing and delivering opportunities. The second is designed to help people work collaboratively to find, close and deliver larger deals.

The first of the 6 relationships is also the first of the individual relationships. It is called a casual referral partnership/relationship. This is the most common type of business networking relationship. Most Chambers of Commerce and leads groups as well as other networking venues strive to build these types of relationships.

While this is the most common type of relationship, it is also the least effective. Anyone you know can casually refer you leads – whether they have known you for years or just met you. The problem is they may not know your business sufficiently, so they may not give leads or referrals that are as qualified as other types of relationships might produce.

Many leads organizations, including B2B Power Exchange, cultivate these relationships, because they are a necessary way to provide the widest exposure possible. Most groups falter when they prevent multiple people from the same discipline from participating in the same group. Focusing on casual referrals is fine for transactional, retail types of business. But focusing strictly on casual referrers in a B2B environment limits the size of deals that could be harvested from a more collaborative approach to business development.

In reality, the casual referral relationship can be a stepping stone to find other like-minded business developers who can work with you to find bigger, better and larger numbers of deals than you can find on your own.