This initiative may sound counter-productive at first, but I assure you, it can be extremely lucrative/beneficial.
The idea is for you to donate your time at someone else’s event, workshop, lecture, or seminar. How can this help you? Let me give you a couple of examples.
Let’s say you’re a financial advisor and you work with an accountant who is going to have a special lecture on tax planning. The accountant is hosting the lecture for his/her active, prospective and/or new clients. You offer to volunteer your time and provide a free value-added-service (i.e. Wealth Creation Assessment) to all of his/her attendees. This, in turn, adds more value to the event AND gives the accountant an opportunity to attract more people/referrals to his/her event.
The Accountant loves it because he gets to offer a value-added-service to his attendees and as a result, you have a chance to connect with AND provide all of the attendees with some sort of mini consultation. You have been granted direct access to what may be your new clients.
You are practically guaranteed to get new business from that effort for two reasons:
1. You get to provide valuable information at that meeting.
2. There is a fantastic, implied endorsement from that accountant because you are at his or her event and if you weren’t trustworthy or great at what you do – why would you be there?
If you are a doctor/specialist, you can attend another doctor’s health day, health workshop, or lecture, and you too get to provide your service(s)/information to all of the attendees. Again, the implied endorsement is there, you get to give away valuable information, and you’re practically guaranteed to generate new patients as a result of that effort. Think about how to donate your time to work with other professionals in your community.
Finally, this effort will help you solidify a stronger, more viable referral relationship with the professional you are helping. And that means more referrals for you for years to come!
To Your Success,
Dr. Len Schwartz