Building a Strategic Referral Network with Carrie Burgraff (Part 1&2)

We dive into the intricacies of building a referral network with Carrie Burgraff, Senior Business Consultant at Wide Awake Business. With over eight years of experience in sales teams and healthcare, Carrie shares valuable insights on identifying ideal clients, creating strategic account plans, and leveraging referral networks for business growth. Learn about the common pitfalls, actionable strategies for strengthening your referral network, and the importance of adding value in your connections. This episode is packed with practical advice for business owners looking to expand their client base through effective referral network management.

Five Action Items To Implement in Your Business Today:

1. Create a Strategic Account Plan: List 20-25 potential businesses to target as referral sources. Aim for 2-3 organizations of a particular type so you have diversity in your referral sources. It’s ok if you don’t have 25 at the beginning, just get started.

2. Conduct Pre-Meeting Research: Before reaching out to prospective referral sources, conduct thorough research on the individuals and organizations. Before meetings, prepare thoughtful questions and have defined next steps in mind to demonstrate professionalism and build rapport more effectively.

3. Qualify Referral Sources: Ensure that you understand if your target referral sources understand your services, see the value in them, interact regularly with your ideal clients, and the volume of potential clients.

4. Utilize Super Connectors: Find and connect with super connectors in your community or industry. These individuals have extensive networks and can introduce you to valuable referral sources, saving time and effort in identifying potential partners.

5. Set up a Tracking System: Set up a system that works for you to track and monitor your progress against your strategic account plan and the performance of your referral network.

Part 1 Transcript

Key Moments

00:45 Carrie's Journey into Sales

03:38 Understanding Referral Networks

06:03 Common Pitfalls in Building Referral Networks

13:41 Creating a Strategic Account Plan

[00:00:04] Ariadne: Welcome to the CareCraft podcast. I'm really excited to be joined today by Carrie Burgraff, who is the Senior Business Consultant at Wide Awake Business, where she works as an analyst, trainer and mentor with small to medium sized businesses, trying to grow their business. She has over eight years experience, specifically working with sales teams and individuals across home care, care management, hospice, and IT.

So we're really excited to have her on today because we are talking about building a referral network and pipeline and how that can really help expand your business. So, welcome, Carrie. How are you doing today?

[00:00:39] Carrie: Great. Thanks so much for having me. It's good. It's really fun to talk about

[00:00:42] Ariadne: I'm super excited to get your thoughts.

Before we jump into it, it's always so interesting to me to understand how individuals ended up specializing how they did. So can you share a bit about your journey and sales and really what's inspired you to focus on helping businesses improve their sales processes?

[00:01:01] Carrie: Sure, absolutely.

It's kind of funny. I think maybe I was meant to be in sales because apparently when I was like eight, I went around the neighborhood and sold my mother's hangers from her closet to my neighbor. So I think they were just nice and I bought them from me just because, you know, I was out there selling them.

But anyway I actually have a degree as a technical writer and another as a physician's assistant, and I specialized in geriatrics and I did that up until about eight years ago. And then I had an opportunity to work for a home care company. And since I knew the aging population, their medical conditions and challenges, well, that was a really nice bit because instead of sending people home, I was now receiving them home to help support them.

And I had seen a lot of what made them struggle. So that was a natural fit. So I've sold home care for a national company at the local franchise for six years. And during that time, there were ways that I had excelled so that they had asked me to start coaching their salespeople.

So I was coaching them first just like at conferences doing presentations and then by phone. And then during COVID, we, of course, we went to zoom and. At the end of the time I was there, I was going out with them in the field and coaching them in real time, which is very fun. And then got to a point where I had an opportunity to join Wide Awake Business.

And now I coach lots of different businesses, but particularly in the healthcare arena, as that's something I know the most about. And, and it's just fun because I think that in healthcare, I know when I came into selling home care, I was a clinician and being a clinician often means that you don't always feel comfortable with the idea of selling.

It's kind of an icky word because we really prefer to serve. And most of the clients I work with, I try to encourage them that I don't want you to become a sales person. I would like you to lean into your consultative abilities that you can come in and, and lend your expertise. But it's also something people should be paying for.

And if you're not bringing clients, you can have all the expertise in the world. But if you struggle to help them be able to say yes to what will be really good for them. If you can't do that, then it's hard to get clients. So I give them the tools to navigate it. And then ideally do the same thing with your referral sources where you can have conversations where they feel like it makes sense to bring you in to help some families.

[00:03:27] Ariadne: That mentality and just the approach to selling is really critical. And, and I really like how you phrased it around bringing those consultative skills and understanding what are their fears and helping them address those. But for today's conversation, want to really pick your brain on how to best make that referral network and turn it into a pipeline of future clients.

So can you explain what a referral network is and how that leads to a pipeline over time for future clients.

[00:03:57] Carrie: Sure, I would like to think that a lot of times we sort of count on people finding us. You know, through our, the work we've done on our website and our SEO and word of mouth. That's almost waiting for clients to come to us.

And that's kind of a, I look at it as a, as a 1 off. You're getting one client at a time, and they're coming to you. It's doesn't usually make a business successful just to let them come to you because they don't always know, especially if we're talking about geriatric care management, where a lot of people don't even know what that is.

So the idea that they come looking for you is probably not. Unless they're particularly evolved. So if we can create a network of people who understand what we do and who also see the value in what we do, and the probably the, the other pieces are that they see the people that we can help. They're in front of them in some way on a regular basis.

And that they believe that what we have to offer is a fit for what this person needs, then that's a natural instead of waiting for one person to come to you, this person might be seeing 10 of those people who might be able to use you. So it's a much greater yield. Like if you're going to invest your time and you know you want to grow your business and get more clients, you could focus on one person at a time, one client at a time.

If you can build a referral network, you have other people who are identifying. Your ideal clients and sending them to you. And that allows you actually, if you, if you're really efficient about building your network, it allows you to spend more time with your clients because instead of you going out, getting one at a time, they're sending multiples to you.

[00:05:43] Ariadne: It really gives you an economy of scale potentially, right? Where instead of having to invest in finding each individual client, you get more like groups of clients coming to you that maybe are already pre screened in some way, right? Of being a good candidate for your services if your network understands the work that you do.

So, from your experience, like, what are the common areas where businesses struggle as they're trying to build out this network.

[00:06:12] Carrie: First of all, I think that they don't always have a really clear vision of who their ideal client is because we may be sending a message to our referral partners that we help these people, but maybe they're sending us too many leads.

I remember working with one client who was like, Oh, I really like this company because they've sent me 119 leads. But when we looked at how many of those closed, only seven closed. And they only had gotten about 10, 000 out of those seven, whereas they had another one that had only sent them two, but they had gotten 40, 000.

So this business owner's thinking, well, I should be leaning toward the one that gave me the 119, but they're actually not very like vetted for you, right? They're not screened. So they're sending you leads that aren't helpful, helpful to you. And it actually wastes your time.

So one is, are we clear on who our ideal client is?

And then are we clear who sees them, our ideal referral source, who is actually seeing them, and are we educating them well enough so that they know who's a good fit for us?

So there are really three points to that. One is that they, they have too many targets. They're trying to meet so many people. They're thinking volume, like I'm going to go out and network. If they are willing to do that, they are thinking, Oh, I'm going to create 50 or a hundred referral sources.

I always, when I'm trying to explain this to someone who's trying to understand what referral networks should look like, this is like dating with the intent to create a serious relationship. And if you want a serious relationship, you're not dating a hundred people and you're not seeing them once. And then saying I want to have a serious relationship with you and then you never see him again and a lot of people approach it that way and they think well, they know what I do and they seem to like it so they're going to send me people and that that wouldn't work in dating and building a referral network is the same.

Another problem that they really do is that when they come in, they make it all about them. And just like in a date, if someone came in and said, here's all the things I want out of you in this relationship, and didn't ask about what you wanted out of it.

They wouldn't be very interested. Well, a lot of our referral sources, when we sit in front of them, we have these sort of monologues, and I train people to actually have dialogue that start with information about them and then work the questions toward how, what they're doing may be a fit for us. So that if there's, it's much more centered on them and ultimately you're qualifying them, which is to the point earlier is, are you sitting in front of someone realizing that this may not be someone who could refer to you?

And that you want to find that out as soon as possible. Because if they aren't, you need to spend your time somewhere else. Being a lot more targeted.

And the last is that we want to create value for those people that really are qualified that they are interested in a serious relationship. They do want to send people to you. We know that our competition's out there talking to them all the time. We need to offer value in a bigger way where we're looking for other needs that they have which is why building a big network is helpful you So that's a few things I say would be common pitfalls.

[00:09:27] Ariadne: Let's dive into those one at a time. So the first thing you were mentioning was the business themselves doesn't have a clear vision on their ideal client. So when that's kind of the root issue, what's your advice?

[00:09:42] Carrie: Sure, I think that if someone isn't sure who their ideal client is, they haven't really thought about it in that way, then I would take a look at your current clients and almost create an avatar. This person dresses this way drives this kind of car. This person has this much money to spend because when you think about care management, people have to have a certain amount of income to be able to afford bringing that in.

What does this person, the one who picks up the phone, the one you talk to on a regular basis when they're looking for help, what do they look like? Our clients, what do their families look like? Because there really is a demographic around who you serve. Now, if you're someone who's doing a lot of low income cases, then that's got a certain picture.

If what you do serves more families who have more disposable income, or at least income that they are willing to spend in this way. They have a different picture and it's not meant to be like, Oh, we're picky and we're, we're going to cut you off. It's reality is, is a business that tries to serve everyone often can't serve anyone because they're, they're trying to serve everyone.

And they can't survive that way. So getting a really clear thing in mind about who is your client.

[00:10:54] Ariadne: How do you go about maybe not even just articulating what that ideal client is, but really preparing to share that out to someone that you want to be a referral source?

[00:11:04] Carrie: I think the way you say this to referral sources is that you actually create stories around your clients because we could tell someone in bullet points, what we think someone is going to be like, Oh, we do this and this and this and this people don't remember bullet points.

They can't visualize them. But if I say, well, you know, recently. I got a call from a son whose mom had stage four lung cancer. He and his sister both live out of state. She has been put on hospice, and right now she's pretty functional, but we worry about whether is she still capable of thriving? Is she still eating well?

Is she losing weight? Is she taking her medications? Does her refrigerator have fresh food in it? If she's declining, are we going to be aware of it from a distance? And sometimes when we call her, she doesn't answer the phone and we don't know, is she lying on the floor or is she just not home or is she busy?

Is she talking to someone else? And that's a great fit for a care manager. And even picking out words, like it stressed the family out. They were really concerned about her. They couldn't, they weren't sure if she was okay. And it gave them a lot of peace of mind using those kinds of words. And the reason that's important is because then when they sit in front of the referral source, and they describe the family, like I'm sure you were imagining as we were talking, you could see the woman, you could see her maybe in her car, you were imagining her refrigerator her pillboxes, because of that, then when that referral source is sitting in front of someone who needs help, and they describe a picture of I'm worried about my parent, and we think these things could be happening, and we're really stressed, And, you know, getting some help would give us some peace of mind.

They literally in their bodies remember they have the image and they go, wait, I've seen that picture and it was that person and I need to send them to you so that they remember images much better than they remember bullet points. So I encourage someone to get clear on who their ideal client is and then tell the story of that client when they need a referral source.

And if you serve people in different ways, you have different services that you offer, you should have a story for each of those so that people can relate to it and keep adding to them. Especially if you end up bringing new people on your team. Having a file of stories, give someone stories before they have their own.

[00:13:24] Ariadne: That's really great advice. So in the situation that the organization, you know, does have that clear image, has put together some stories. You said the second kind of pitfall many people fall into is that they have too many targets that they're trying to create a relationship with. So is there a sweet spot, number one, for the number of targets that you would start out with?

[00:13:47] Carrie: I think generally speaking, and especially if we're talking to people who are either business owners or leaders, where they wear several hats. And I know in a lot of geriatric care management practices, you have an owner who's trying to lead a team who's also out trying to develop business and has their own clients.

So you can wear a lot of hats. And even if you don't, I think that I, I like to see 20, 25 or so, because when I think about, How I'm going to build my business and all the different tasks I have to do. I have five days in a week. And I have four weeks in a month. So it's 20 working days that we're pretty much guaranteed of each month.

If I have 20 targets and I want to make sure I'm dating them regularly, then I'm shooting for one a day. And I know that most people can hit one a day. And that means that I am getting in front of them on a regular basis. And creating the kind of relationship where they will be willing to prioritize me.

So I, I wouldn't go much beyond 30. Now, keeping in mind that your targets, you're spending 80 percent of your marketing time on this. You still have 20 percent of your time. If you're kind of budgeting your time out, you still have 20 percent where you can meet new people and maybe they're going to go into your plan and maybe you're going to deselect somebody because after you've had some meetings, it's like, yeah, like that 119.

yeah, it seemed like it was a good target. But the more we got into it. It doesn't feel like it's really yielding that much. So we're going to move someone else in who's a better target. And we're going to move that one out. So it really is very strategic. And it's why we call it a strategic account plan. And I developed those with my clients just because we want to help them focus on going deep in a company so that you're creating a relationship that will not be disrupted easily.

[00:15:31] Ariadne: Got it. And so you called it a strategic account plan. So how do you go about figuring out who those initial targets are on your strategic account plan?

[00:15:43] Carrie: So first, I think that just like when you invest your money, you don't put all your money in one place. You diversify it. You diversify your referral sources. So if you're a care manager, you may be looking at home care companies. You may be looking at concierge physicians. You may be looking at Hospice companies, you may be targeting hospitals. You might be looking at wealth managers and estate planning attorneys.

You're going to diversify this because we, if we didn't learn anything in COVID, we know this that certain places like a hospital that might send you a lot of business in COVID that got a lot quieter, right? Because you couldn't get in there.

It was a whole different dynamic. So you had to move to other sources perhaps. So diversifying it helps us get out of the volatility of where our leads can come from. And so I think that you're starting with diversifying, thinking about all the different areas you get your business from, and then targeting probably two or three in each of them that when you've done the research, and it is based on that demographic, are they sitting in front of my person? Do they think that person can afford me? Do they understand enough of what I do to know when to call me those sorts of things that you've qualified them once. And once you've gone through the qualifying process, and you may have to sit in front of a few people in each particular lane to see who's the best fit.

And then you just start. It's not perfect. It's not a science. You just start because most of the time people are like, well, I don't know if they're the right target. Well, if you're not having meetings, you'll never know to just start and you'll find out. And the longer you do it, the quicker you're going to see who's a fit or not.

For example, I took a client into a senior living community. And the, the trying to create a relationship was offering to come in and do a lot of stuff there. But before we got too far in, I asked the person, the admissions person, how many people are in your building who get help. And out of 150, it was 1.

So it's probably not your best target. There were probably other senior living communities who have a lot more options. So asking a few questions to find out how many people need help. Are they willing to get it? Do you have other partners? Because you're probably not the first person who walked in the door.

So just thinking through some of those things can be super helpful.

[00:18:05] Ariadne: That's a great point about qualifying the referral sources, both before you actually reach out to them, but then as you have those conversations with them to see who you want to keep on that list.

That's part one of our discussion with Carrie tune-in and four days for part two, as we continue the conversation. To learn how we can generate value in the conversations with potential referral network partners. As well as how to track and monitor the success of your referral network.

Part 2 Transcript

Key Moments

01:00 Pre-Meeting Planning and Research

04:36 Tracking and Managing Your Referral Network

06:52 Metrics for a Healthy Referral Network

09:00 Key Differentiators in Referral Success

12:05 Short-Term Strategies to Strengthen Referrals

[00:00:00] Ariadne: Welcome back to part two of our discussion with Carrie Burggraf, who's a Senior Business Consultant at Wide Awake Business. In part one, we were talking about building a referral network and pipeline. We covered the benefits of a referral network, the importance of defining your target client, and ensuring that you're targeting the right businesses that can refer you those clients. Now in part two, we're picking up with the discussion of how to drive value for your referral partners and tracking your referral network performance.

But going back to what you had mentioned was actually the third pitfall, which is all of the conversation ends up being about you and not about them and the value you can bring to them and their problems. How do you go about you know, building that empathy or kind of framing your own work in ways that really resonate for them. So you can keep those connections warm and build that relationship.

[00:01:00] Carrie: Sure. I actually start by doing a pre meeting plan because I see a lot of times where someone does do that networking meeting and they go in and they have that conversation about each other's businesses.

And at the end, they like shake hands and go their way and there's no next step. And I, so one, I always go into a meeting with in with what I want next steps to be. If this is a good meeting, if it does, if they do qualify as someone who can be in front of my person, I want to know, because I believe in building a roadmap because it's really hard to get to your destination.

If you don't have a map to get there. So I do a pre meeting plan. I researched that person and the company on LinkedIn and on their website. I might look at other people. They know that I know and talk to them a little bit about it. I start with some personal questions. Like I did one on a wealth manager who actually gone through the seminary.

And he was still an interim pastor and he had been in this business for 41 years. That's a really long time to be a wealth manager. So starting with, hey, I, you know, do you mind if I ask you some questions? I noticed that you went to the seminary, that you're an interim pastor. How does that impact your wealth management business?

That's very connecting. That builds a lot of rapport. And I think it's pretty interesting. It's fun to hear those things. So you start with a warmer approach. You get to know them personally. That helps. But then, as I go through the process of the meeting, I'm going to ask, like, tell me about your clients.

Is there anything that the bulk of them have something in common and I'm looking for someone who's seeing older adults, right? If I'm in this area of helping seniors, I'm looking for someone who's helping older adults. Well, then I want to know what's the way that you think you help them the most?

What does it look, what are their goals? Do they have common goals? And a lot of times you're going to hear them say that they have money that, that lasts through their whole lifetime, that they're healthy and are able to be at home. Right. And that's all in alignment with where we're going in terms of what I do.

Right. So we're kind of gearing these questions about like, well, when you see them struggle, what does it look like? Because I think that's one of the key questions people miss is we assume that the person we're sitting in front of, because we know what we do so well, we know exactly what it looks like.

And we might even have someone who calls us and says, I have a family who needs help. But the truth is the family said, I think we need this help. Right. Right. And so they said, I know someone who does it. We, we assume that they also recognize even if family doesn't know it, they might say, man, my mom or dad, they're really struggling.

We think they're going to say, oh, well, you should call my person because they recognize what the struggle looks like. And then what the answer is, we have to educate them with that. Like when the people who need me, this is what it looks like. This is how they look like when they come in the office. This is what their family is saying.

And then this is how we help them so that they can, you're creating a bridge from identifying the struggle to when you see it, you should call me. And it's funny. We do it so much that we assume everyone's got the same idea in their mind.

[00:04:10] Ariadne: That's a great call out. And it's really not just about the education at one point.

First off, I, you know, it's not possible maybe to deliver all this education in one meeting anyways. But also even if you did, you know, you would need refreshers and you would want to kind of stay top of mind over time. And so to do that, it also requires some level of tracking right around who you've been talking to when you talk to them, et cetera.

So what what does that look like? As far as like, effectively tracking your referral network and pipeline.

[00:04:43] Carrie: So, as we talked about, you do your research, you figure out who you want to target. And I create a strategic account plan to be on an Excel sheet. That's fine, and you put your businesses. Who the contact is, what kind of business it is.

Like phone number what part of the region they're in because that can help you with planning your visits. What their need is because different businesses have different needs And being aware of that and so that we're actually asking we're not making assumptions again I'm really big about I I believe every business should sit down and say what assumptions am I making?

About this referral source like they know what care management is or they know what home care is or whatever. What assumptions am I making about the family, and then asking the questions to find that out to make sure my assumptions are correct. And then like steps, what in, I like to do this quarterly, month one, and it may just be the initial meeting, first cup of coffee.

Month two, maybe it's, I come in and meet their team. Month three might be they, this person comes in and meets my team. But you're being very intentional about what the steps are. And then the tricky part, I've seen a lot of people create the plan. Then it's plugging it into the calendar. Now I used to put a whiteboard in my office with the 20 and I had posted notes and like yellow was month one, pink was month two, blue was month three.

As the month went on, as I did the tasks, I'd pull one down and put the next one up, this board should be changing colors through the month and I had this really obvious visual that told me whether I was working my plan or not. And the funny thing is it sounds sometimes maybe almost manipulative or too strategic, but the truth is we're trying to add value to these businesses and to their clients.

We know we can. I just want to be super purposeful and I know that almost everything in our lives that we want to accomplish something we have to get intentional to make sure we stay focused. So that's a way for me to stay focused on where I'm going.

[00:06:48] Ariadne: I love that system. It might be something I need to implement in my own office. Do you have metrics that you would use to judge if your referral network is healthy?

Or if it's like an area that you need to invest more in?

[00:07:02] Carrie: 1 is did they call? Did you call by them? 2 is are they sending you leads? 3 is are these leads closing are they a good fit that they actually went came through 4 would be that they're willing to, like, if you're how are you building value for them and then are they returning the value?

Because I see lots of people give a whole lot to try and build it, but they're not getting it back and and not being afraid to call that out. I think those are the main things, because it's like the whole point is, is this source, if I'm targeting them, are they actually sending people to me?

[00:07:39] Ariadne: Yeah.

[00:07:39] Carrie: So, that's super basic, but I think that that's what I'd be looking for is, are they sending me lead?

Do they get it? Do they have my people? And if they have my people, then it mean that when they send it to me that I can close them. And I'd also say the ideal referral source doesn't have 10 partners so that they're diluting. Like you're, you're going, it's one thing to be have someone be a referral source.

It's another thing totally to build a partnership where you're their main, Their top one or two ones that they work with that's ultimately my goal because it's kind of like we said that you know we're looking for a marriage right and so we're looking not to have them still dating everybody because then they're going to be wishy washy about it And I'd say the other piece that it's super important to do is that if you build a relationship in a business, we know how much people move around these days.

If you only have one person in that business, who knows about you and, and refers to you, you're really vulnerable to that person leaving. And the same thing is true on your side of the business. If you have someone building business for your company, and they're the only one who knows the referral source, then you're very vulnerable if your person leaves, because the relationships can be gone.

So it's very important to build a deep bench on both sides of the fence.

[00:09:00] Ariadne: What are some key differentiators you've seen between businesses that are good at getting referrals versus really great at getting referrals?

[00:09:09] Carrie: Sure. One is they make time to plan this. They plan their strategic account plan.

They put it in their calendar. They set aside days, you know, that they're doing this. It's either time each day or it's blocks of time in a day. They're very intentional. They are constantly tracking where they are. So they're regularly reviewing it and making sure they're on track. They, they have a goal of not just having meetings and not just having relationships, but creating partners.

So they're having deep conversations about how to add value for this company. And I've had companies that refer to me, not because what I sold was solving their problem, but that they're like, Oh, by the way, my son's getting married. You know, when I say, Hey, what's on your plate right now? Oh, my son's getting married in two months.

And, and we're looking for a custom suit. I know just the person I have a contact. My mom lives, you know, in another state, we're looking for help. I have connections there. Let me make that call. Whatever it is during COVID, I had an executive director of a senior living community who said to me when I checked in, what do you need?

Do you need PPE? Can I help you get anything like that? And he said, no, but we're sending so many meals to apartments every day, breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I need to go to containers. I'm like, I have a restaurant supply company. Let me connect you. Like, just solve their problems. If you do what you do well, and they know it.

The partnerships come from the people that you're just solving problems left and right, because I promise then you're the one they pick up the phone to call when they have a problem. And then the other your competition, if they come in, they can't compete with you because you're adding value beyond what you imagine.

So I think creativity and what it means to create value is really helpful in doing it differently or doing it great. I'd say the diversity, you know, making sure that you have diversity because when things happen like COVID and the market shifts that we are adjusting, we can adjust that if, if this source dries up or someone left and the person, the new person isn't supportive, you aren't, everything's not in one place.

And I think that a huge piece of it is getting out and continuing to network because you want to keep building your resource list so that when you do need the to go containers, you have the restaurant person. So this isn't the same. Those relationships aren't necessarily about your referral sources, but they're about building all your resources.

So that you can be that person. So continuing, and you know that you're going to, there are new people entering the business all the time who may be your, have your targets. So keeping your eye open for that. So that's that 80 percent focusing on your strategic plan. And then 20 percent is okay. I'm always out and about meeting people.

It just gives you a lot more versatility in doing that.

[00:12:05] Ariadne: What are some short term strategies that you would recommend, you know, this next week, 2 weeks that organizations could do to strengthen their referrals?

[00:12:16] Carrie: I would say make that strategic account plan, do the research, pick 20 businesses, create a plan And do it like make it for three months and just work that plan Just start and again, like i've told people when they go. Well, I don't know 20. I'm like fine pick five do something Right do something because something is 100 percent more than you were doing before in a lot of cases.

I'd say the second thing is utilize super connectors because if you think about okay, I can wait for my client.

That's a one off you I can meet the referral source, that may be a 10 off. You meet a super connector who, who has that humongous network. They're going to say to you, Hey, I know five people you should meet. And those could be your referral sources. They will plug you in so much faster. And even to a point where if I go to a networking event that I've never been to, I will walk in and say, who is the super connector in the room?

And they always know who that is. That person, everyone knows who it is. I go meet that person. I tell them what I do. I say, who should I meet in this room? They will spearhead this to the handful of people you should meet. You don't have to work your way through 30 people to find the three. Just get really efficient about it.

So I find a super connector. If you don't know what a super connector is, or you don't know who that is, find someone who's a marketer and say, if you had to pick out a super connector in the community, who is it? Especially in the senior community. Who is it? They're going to have a name because that's why they're the super connector.

Everyone knows who they are. And then I'd say the other thing is the pre meeting plan. Do some research before you go into that meeting so that you're coming in because I also think you brand yourself when you walk in. If you come in, you've done your research or organize your thoughtful questions. That you have some next steps in mind, you're actually branding yourself from the beginning, saying, I'm going to take care of your people.

I'm going to be prepared. I'm going to be professional and have a goal in mind. You literally brand yourself from the minute you start interacting. So, if you're late and you're not prepared and you're kind of goalless you kind of brand your business that way in the experience.

[00:14:27] Ariadne: That's really great advice. How can our listeners get in touch with you or learn more about your work?

[00:14:32] Carrie: I would love to talk to them. They can either find me on linkedin carrie burgraf b u r g g r a f carrie c a r r i e my they can text me three one four eight eight six zero one six six Or they can email me at Carrie at wide awake business. com.

[00:14:50] Ariadne: Awesome. Well, thank you so much, Carrie. I hope you have a wonderful rest of your day.

[00:14:55] Carrie: You too. Thanks so much for the time. Take care.