Create Your Own Business Referral Network

Customers who come as referrals to your business are coming to you with a pre-set level of trust. They have been told by another individual whose opinion they trust that your business offers exactly what they are looking for. The only step required after receiving a referral customer is to make sure their trust in you is never misplaced. When creating your business referral network you should keep a few helpful tips and industry tricks in mind. 

Try it 

This might sound overly simplified but it is not. If you see an opportunity to expand your business network, give it a shot. Join committees, your local chamber of commerce, check out some seminars, and continually network yourself at every possible opportunity. You should soon find yourself with no shortage of business referral network possibilities. 

Associate with Beneficial Mentors 

If you know those who have experience with business referral networks it may be a valuable idea to seek out some mentoring from those individuals or businesses. Utilize your time with any mentors wisely by making notes each time you see a hiccup in your own business referral network programs or strategies and taking them to your next meeting with a mentor. 

Do it For Your Team 

Instill in your employees that the primary reason they should help with referrals is that when the team wins, they win. With struggling economies, increasing daily living costs and other elements that are killing businesses all over the globe, employees who seek out referrals are indeed, doing it for themselves, their team and overall, the business. 

Offer Charity Donation Options Among Your Employees 

Some of your team members may hesitate and feel concerned over the appearance of making referrals for reasons that may appear self-enriching. Offer your employees the option of choosing to donate their referral rewards to a local charity. Not only is this a community-based benefitting option, it also encourages those who may not have had interest in being an employee referrer previously. 

In Name Only 

Some of your employees may not have the time to do the research required to capture perfect referrals or to gather their contact information, addresses or other personal information. For those employees, be sure to offer an option where they can be considered for a smaller reward by simply providing the names of any they think may be qualified candidates for referrals. In many cases you will find that the top employees in your business are willing to work in this manner without any promise of reward for supplying those names. Hand these names over to your expert recruiters to follow-up and begin the process of selling. 

Be Patient 

Even if you are not new to a business, you are still a small fish in a big pond. Keeping that in mind will help you and your business move forward even when there are obvious setbacks in your network. Don't get discouraged and keep hammering away at your business referral network until you have perfected it to suit your needs and that of your company's.

 Christian Fea

Starting A Judgment Referral Company

There are two popular ways to start or run a judgment-related business. You can do everything yourself, or you can outsource some or all of a judgment business. There are many ways to learn how to recover judgments and run a conventional judgment recovery business. This article highlights an alternative idea for a judgment business, where you refer most or all incoming judgment leads to either a judgment broker or a nationwide collection agency.

An important part of any judgment business is finding potentially good judgment leads. There are not as many good judgments out there as there used to be. Usually, the easy ones are recovered by the creditors or their lawyers. This article is my opinion, and not legal advice. I am a judgment referral expert, and am not a lawyer. If you ever need any legal advice or a strategy to use, please contact a lawyer.

Judgment brokers, and possibly some collection agencies and others, pay referral fees for judgment leads you send to them. The choices are usually pennies per raw lead, or about 5% of what is eventually recovered in the future. Most people do better with 5% of what may be recovered in the future.

To increase the chances of a judgment lead paying off, you might try to get a copy of the judgment, and what is known about the debtor along with the judgment. That way, you will know the creditor is serious, and the creditor's judgment will be ready to be enforced.

You could create a nationwide judgment recovery referral business, using only marketing. If you only refer judgment leads, then no judgment recovery knowledge or skills are needed, you only need to use marketing. To do this, you start by finding a judgment broker or a good collection agency.

In this business model, you tell judgment owners you know the best company to recover their judgment. When the judgment debtors have assets, judgment owners do not have to assign their judgment, and can get their judgments recovered at the best rates. If the debtors are rich, judgment owners get the best possible rates. That should help sell many creditors.

Because you will know the best place to refer creditors to, you simply screen the creditor a bit, and gather information and refer their judgment lead. You should learn enough so that you will know what you are talking about, however when you do not enforce judgments, life is much cheaper and easier.

If you simply refer all incoming judgment leads, and owned no judgments, you could work in every State. You could help judgment owners worldwide, without learning much about judgment enforcement laws. For this to work, the following conditions must be true, to avoid complications, legal involvement, or appearing in court, at least not for any matters related to the judgment leads you refer:

1) You do not have ownership of any judgments.

2) You do not represent anyone else.

3) You do not try to enforce any judgments.

4) You do not contact any debtors.

5) You do not charge any money, or have any contracts with any creditors or debtors.

If you only refer judgments and follow the five conditions above, you could have a home-based judgment referral business. All you would need is a computer, a simple database or spreadsheet to keep records on, a backup solution, a phone with voicemail to catch missed calls, a fax (or a web-based fax solution, for example UnityFax.com), and a post office box (or the UPS store).

If you refer all incoming judgment leads, your job is marketing. The new way is the web, unfortunately everyone has discovered this, so it takes a lot of work or money to get noticed. I recommend making or getting a simple web site, if only to save you time explaining things. You could hire, or do your own web and SEO marketing, or just put up your web site. You could market by getting 1,000 business cards printed and dressing well, and handing them to people coming out of court, or to attorneys. Or, you could have no business cards at all, and use only the internet.

Even if you decide to start or run a judgment referral business, nothing stops you from learning how to recover judgments, and taking and enforcing certain judgments where the debtors are local to you.

Mark D Shapiro 

6 Points of a Successful Employee Referral Program

So you've heard that employee referrals are a great cost saver to any organization? Moreover it also reduces the time taken to fill a position which in turn makes sourcing a candidate simple for any recruiter. But is this task as easy as it sounds? 

An employee referral program is essentially using your employee's connections which may be their relatives, friends or acquaintances for a vacancy in the organization. So far so good but here are 6 important elements which need to be considered before rolling out an employee referral program. 

Before we get into the topic, let us understand that employee referral programs are an activity which can get long term benefits to any organization since it is getting an entire new culture of referrals for which employee participation is of utmost importance. 

Here are my 6 key elements for the creation of a successful referral scheme: 

1) Don't make it complex 

A simple plan is always more effective than a complicated one even if the latter is more rewarding. Moreover if people don’t understand something they will lose interest very quickly. The entire process should be well planned and kept as simple as possible so it does not tie up the valuable time and efforts of your recruiting team. It may also save a few dollars. 

2) A right Direction 

Employees are the driving force for the success of any referral program, so think carefully about how you will do this and what your incentive will be; some schemes offer vouchers, some offer movie tickets, some offer team nights out, some offer cold hard cash. Whatever it may be, it must grab people's attention and match your culture. 

3) Network is the key word 

Social media is the answer for low employee participation in a referral program. Try LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter.your employees will be hooked too. They should be encouraged to post new roles through their social and professional network platforms to maximize the reach for each of the vacancies posted. This habit of social recruiting should be encouraged positively and made an integral part of the company's culture, especially for all new employees. 

4) Visibility 

The culture of employee referrals will be integrated to the company culture but this will take time. It is very important for your referral program to gain full visibility for it to have a good start and making the employees understand the rules of engagement and potential rewards.Communication from the C-level, posting on the intranet, posters by the coffee machine, use whatever it takes to get the message out. Just do it. Then repeat. 

5) Shout it loud! 

If there has been a successful hire through referrals then make everyone knows about it. The employee that made the referral in the first place should be acknowledged. Reward management plays an integral part in the case of employee referral programs. This will inspire others too. 

6) Do not expect the impossible! 

Be patient and don't expect magic from your referral program. Have you heard of any company sourcing candidates only from employee referrals? 100 % referral hires? Even big brands globally use employee referrals as a single element of their overall multi-channeled recruitment strategy. 

So your referral program will be no different. It will take time to evolve and deliver. But in case there is something which is not working, change it.

 savio vadakkan