Hello ladies and gentlemen. Mickey Griffith here with the Referral Institute in the North San Francisco Bay area, and what I’d like to talk with you about today is participation agreements. So we do lots of programs here at the Referral Institute. We do Target Market, Room Full of Referrals, all of these classes designed to get the most education we can to people so that they can improve their businesses. And part of our process, especially with our long-term program, the Certified Networker, we have participation agreements.
So we go through a process of creating agreements within the classroom environment so that our participants can all get the very most out of that education. So, whatever that looks like. If they need to make sure that nobody is eating noisy food in the middle of their training or having side conversations or maybe they need people to raise their hand before they ask a question. What are the participation agreements that they need in the classroom to create a safe learning environment? And it got me to thinking, what kind of participation agreements are we making with our clients, just one to one, for instance? What kind of participation agreements do you create with your clients so that you have a real clear understanding of what you’re going to do and what they’re going to get? And then beyond that, what about our referral sources? What kind of participation agreements are you creating with your referral sources that say “Here’s what I’m gonig to do in the relationship. What do you want to do in the relationship?”
Those participation agreements could create a real clear understanding of what this referral relationship’s going to look like. What can I expect? What can you expect? How are we going to handle things if they don’t go exactly as we want them to go? How often do you want to meet? How many referrals are you looking for this month? Those participation agreements can go a long way towards creating success in a long-term, fully-developed referral relationship. So my question for you is, what are your participation agreements? I’m Mickey Griffith, with the Referral Institute, and I’m wishing you great success in your referral relationships.