Synopsis

Frank de Raffele, US National Director for BNI, joins Dr. Misner on the podcast this week to talk about proactive referrals.

Most referrals are "reactive"---we make a referral if someone we're talking to happens to mention they need help and there's someone in your network who can help them.

With a proactive referral, you don't wait for the other person. You reach out to your contacts and ask whether they'd be interested in having a conversation with one of your referral partners.

What you need to make proactive referrals work

Here are the key ingredients for a successful proactive referral.

You need complete trust and confidence in both your referral partner and the potential prospect.You have to be there when they meet, to help facilitate the opening of the conversation by telling each person what's great about the other.Take the blinders off. Don't make judgments about members of your chapter based on their profession. You never know who they know.

If you want more information about Frank, you can go to FrankdeRaffele.com, BNIHudsonValley.com, or BNIamerica.com.

Complete Transcript of Episode 673

PriscillaHello everybody and welcome back to The Official BNI Podcast. I'm Priscilla Rice and I'm coming to you from Live Oak Recording Studio in Berkeley, California. And I'm joined on the phone today by the Founder and the Chief Visionary Officer of BNI, Dr. Ivan Misner. Hello, Ivan, how are you today?

Ivan I'm doing fantastic, Priscilla. Thank you. And, you know, at the end, you talk about Ivan's Inner Circle as the sponsor for this. I just wanted to let everyone know that our goal was to have a couple of dozen downloadable webinars and content on there within a year, and we actually have over 60. Yeah, that's right, 6-0. So check it out if you get a chance, Ivan's Inner Circle. It's a lot of content that is just available there. And I do a lot of Facebook Lives with very few people, just for the Inner Circle group. So check out the site when Priscilla mentions that later.Today, I am really excited to have back an old friend. I've known Frank for many years. We have Frank De Raffele, he is a New York Times bestselling author and he is the U.S. National Director for BNI. He oversees well over 100 BNI franchises around the United States and his focus is to help each region make every single member of BNI more successful in their referral processes, which is what we're going to be talking about today.

He's been involved in BNI for 28 years and this is his 25th anniversary of owning his own region, the mid-Hudson Valley area of New York. And Frank is a personal friend, and has co-written a book with me, Business Networking and Sex, Not What You Think, it is about how men and women network, we did that with Hazel Walker. And Frank and I are working on another book together now. So, Frank, it's great to have you back on to the BNI podcast again.

Frank Well, I'm excited to be here and I gotta tell you, the most exciting thing for me is, I know you're not gonna believe this, but my lucky number is 673. 

Ivan No. (laughing)

Frank Yeah, there you go.

Ivan I think you're making it up. Hey, at least you didn't get 666. 

Frank There you go. Great to be here, man. Thank you so much for having me on again.

Ivan Well, it's great to have you here. So, proactive referrals. So let's talk about that. How in the world are they different than like, you know, a referral?

Frank Well, you know, I think when we talk about most referrals, most are what we call reactive referrals. And what that means is I'm out during the week having regular everyday conversations, family conversations, friendship conversations, business conversations, stranger conversations, you know, just conversations with people. And when I'm in those conversations, I may find out through whatever they're telling me is going on in their life, that hey, I know somebody that can help this person out.