A Referral System That Gets Results:
Eight Great Ways to Get Started Building Yours
Referrals from clients who like and trust you can exponentially grow your business. Successful businessman Paul G. Krasnow explains how to create a system that keeps them consistently rolling in.
Edwards, CO (May 2018)—Everyone loves referrals. They're inexpensive, fast, and easy. No need to chase down and convince a promising lead when a satisfied client is handing him or her to you on the proverbial silver platter. Quite often, they're lucrative: New clients are willing to pay you a little more if you've been vetted by a colleague they trust. For that same reason—the built-in trust—they're more open to your guidance once they've become your client. All of this adds up to a more fun and rewarding way to do business.
So how can you get to the point where referrals are flowing in consistently? Successful businessman and author Paul G. Krasnow says there are two main ingredients. One, build deeply connected, trust-based, authentic relationships with your clients. (NOTE: See attached tipsheet) And two, create a system that perpetually yields new referral-based business.
"When your existing clients trust you and feel cared for, referrals will follow," says Krasnow, author of The Success Code: A Guide for Achieving Your Personal Best in Business and Life (J & K Publishing, 2018, ISBN: 978-0-692-99241-8, $24.95). "But don't just wait for referrals to come to you. Get proactive about cultivating them in other ways. Once you've got a strong system in place, your new referrals will continue to fuel more new referrals."
Krasnow built his own thriving business on the power of referrals. Following early success in the clothing industry, he experienced a financially devastating bankruptcy that forced him to rebuild his life from scratch. He went on to join Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Company, where he created an impressive financial portfolio and won multiple "Top Agent" awards. Referrals from satisfied clients kept new business rolling in.
"My average client would purchase seven contracts from me and in turn would refer me to the folks they respect and like, either through their personal and social networks or their business contacts," says Krasnow. "I also gained a great number of referrals by way of the countless charities to which I donated money and time."
You, too, can help your business flourish by harnessing the power of referrals. Krasnow offers the following tips for building a referral system that gets results every time.
Identify untapped clients in your network. Take a moment to identify contacts in your business, social, or family networks who may be potential clients themselves or know of new potential clients. Chances are, there are many contacts in your network who could be contacted and converted into clients.
Attend every single industry event you can. Make a list on a quarterly basis of industry events you could attend in order to keep up with competing businesses, stay on top of trends, and become aware of new client markets.
Schedule meetings with former clients to get referrals. When do you ask for referrals? At the end of a transaction, after the client has had the opportunity to see the work you have done and you've established a solid relationship of trust. Who are your former clients? Schedule a meeting with them now.
Take full advantage of online networking sites like LinkedIn. Keep your profile active and up-to-date. Make sure your business also has an active and well-curated Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter account with interesting thought leader-style blogs, podcasts, and articles.
Connect with other professionals outside of your industry. High-powered professionals need and want to hire other high-powered professionals such as doctors, lawyers, venture capitalists, and CEOs of various companies. Take a look at ways you can connect with these professionals outside of your industry and reach out to them.
Create your own face-to-face networking events for your online contacts. Establish relationships with organizations and businesses and organize events where you can offer your expertise. You can capture your social media networks, along with all of your other potential connections, by holding a mixer or open house, or offering a free presentation where you can talk one-on-one with many prospective clients. Make sure to include Facebook friends, people you've never met, and friends of clients in your invitation.
Help charities and non-profits. Donate your time and money to charities, share your expertise on boards of directors, attend galas, mixers, and other charity social events. Your involvement with charity work will enrich your professional and personal relationships and indirectly expand your reach of potential clients.
Cultivate your personal life to expand your referral pool. If you only stay in your office working, it limits your exposure to new clients. But getting active and involved in your local community opens you up to meeting others who might be looking for your services. So join a local religious organization, a common interest group, a gym, a country club, or an amateur sports league, and build your network while having fun and enjoying your life.
"If you are looking to grow your brand exponentially, referrals are crucial," concludes Krasnow. "You get to efficiently expand your network, while working with and getting to know people who already trust and like you. The best part is, having a robust stream of referrals is confirmation that you are doing something right."
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Twelve Ways to Build Better Client Relationships
Excerpted from The Success Code: A Guide for Achieving Your Personal Best in Business and Life (J & K Publishing, 2018, ISBN: 978-0-692-99241-8, $24.95).
Deeply connected, trust-based, and authentic client relationships are hard to come by and clients know it. Successful businessman Paul G. Krasnow, author of The Success Code: A Guide for Achieving Your Personal Best in Business and Life (J & K Publishing, 2018, ISBN: 978-0-692-99241-8, $24.95), says when you know how to create these relationships with your clients, you'll win their loyalty, earn referrals, and enjoy repeat business for life.
Keep reading to learn how to foster superior client satisfaction and loyalty with these relationship-building habits that will keep them coming back again and again.
First, commit to a personal code of integrity and live it each day. Integrity should be a core value that steers all of your client interactions. This means committing to being honest and working hard with their best interests in mind.
Give them peace of mind. Develop a system that works for you to proactively give clients the highest level of service at all times. Whether it is having a perfectly tweaked project management system in place in your business or having a very clear communication system, always respond to your clients in a timely manner and provide expert answers to all of their questions.
Build trust by keeping your promises. Remember to keep your word and to deliver without fail. This approach will not only impress and delight them, but it will allow them to trust you with more business in the future. Building client trust makes you a winner every time.
Be honest about what your services can deliver. Don't oversell or overpromise the results you offer. Manage your clients' expectations so they won't be disappointed. But whenever possible, do put them in touch with others who can help them.
Don't sell your customers products they don't need. Be upfront about products that would be a waste of their hard-earned money. This tip is part of a larger philosophy of moving away from seeing a client as an immediate sale and moving toward building a long-term relationship.
Deliver consistent service. Clients come to expect what they have experienced with your services in the past. Align yourself with a clearly defined mission, set of goals, and level of commitment and ensure that clients receive the same level of care by delivering consistently high-quality service, time and time again.
Be authentic with clients. "Authenticity, by definition, can't be faked," says Krasnow. "Your customers will know if you are being friendly just to make a sale. But genuine interactions allow people into your life by sharing your personality and getting to know the real you. Friendliness goes a long way."
Find thoughtful ways to show you care. "Just showing up for your clients because you genuinely care about them is a sure way to solidify your connection with them," says Krasnow. "So send out birthday cards. Make a donation to a charity in your client's name. Get to know each of your clients and show genuine interest in their lives."
Check in even when you have nothing to sell them. Reach out to your clients from time to time and check in to see how they are doing. Take them to lunch, meet up for a game of golf, ask them about the outcome of an important family event. These are opportune times to find out if there is anything you could be doing even better to make them happier than they already are.
Don't forget about your existing clients, even when your business is booming with new ones. Clients can tell when they're on the back burner. Krasnow urges you to consciously devote time to touching base with your loyal long-term clients—especially when new customers are banging down your door.
Resist going on autopilot. Even if you have your sales technique down pat, find a way to actively engage with every client. Clients can sense if you're phoning it in.
Apologize if you make a mistake and fix the problem immediately. In most cases, customers aren't interested in holding grudges—they want to forgive and forget. The best way to smooth things over when you've messed up is to make a heartfelt apology and then make it right.
"You are far more in control of your brand's growth than you give yourself credit for," concludes Krasnow. "That's why it's so important to take true ownership of the connection you build with your clients. You'll be amazed how much your deeper commitment to them will pay off in the long run."
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About the Author:
Paul G. Krasnow is the author of The Success Code: A Guide for Achieving Your Personal Best in Business and Life. He is a financial representative at Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Company, where he has been a top producer for 40 years. Early in his career, Paul suffered a financially devastating bankruptcy with a line of clothing stores he owned, but went on to join Northwestern Mutual, where he has created an impressive financial portfolio and a strong network of clients, many of whom have become lifelong friends. Paul regularly speaks for multiple life associations in the U.S. and has given seminars for law firms and CPA firms in the Southern California area.
For more information, please visit www.paulgkrasnow.com.
About the Book:
The Success Code: A Guide for Achieving Your Personal Best in Business and Life (J & K Publishing, 2018, ISBN: 978-0-692-99241-8, $24.95) is available from Amazon.
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MLK Jr.’s Hearse And A Mission
To Save History
Many people like the idea of owning a piece of history. On occasion they get the opportunity.
It could be a letter written by Theodore Roosevelt. It could be a check signed by Shoeless Joe Jackson. It could be packaged space food that an Apollo astronaut took to the moon and back.
In short, museums aren’t the only ones that gather the artifacts and documents that help tell our nation’s story. Items of cultural or historical interest often end up in private hands, tucked away in storage or in someone’s personal library.
But that raises a question: Do some artifacts hold such significance that they should be available for everyone to see rather than closeted away from public view?
“Sometimes an item does emerge that seems like it’s much too important a piece of history for it to end up in a private collection,” says Gary Zimet, whose memorabilia business Moments in Time specializes in rare letters, manuscripts and other historic artifacts.
Zimet encountered one such item recently, the 1966 Cadillac Superior Coach hearse that 50 years ago was used for Martin Luther King Jr.’s first funeral service in Memphis. After the service, the hearse carried King’s body to the Memphis airport to be flown back to Atlanta and laid to rest.
The hearse’s owner, who prefers to remain anonymous, wants to sell it, but not just to anyone, Zimet says.
“He discussed with me the idea of selling the vehicle to a corporation or philanthropist who would be willing to donate it rather than keep it hidden away privately,” he says.
The asking price: $2.5 million.
The goal is for the hearse to end up in a museum, preferably the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis, or the National African-American Museum at the Smithsonian.
A website, www.PreservingTheDream.com, has been established where people can learn more about the hearse and the role it played in the nation’s history.
King died at the hands of an assassin in Memphis in 1968, and this year marked the 50th anniversary of his death. On the day he died, the hearse transported King’s body from St. Joseph Hospital to the R.S. Lewis and Sons Funeral Home.
The hearse had been in storage for about 40 years before it was obtained from the original owner, Memphis Cadillac Superior Coach dealer Zane Smith. Five years ago it was restored to its original condition.
Zimet says the hearse needs to be preserved for posterity for several reasons, including:
“The owner wants to sell it, but he also wants it to be seen by the rest of the world,” Zimet says. “His concern is that the hearse ends up in a respectful home.”
About Gary Zimet
Gary Zimet is president of Moments in Time, which deals in rare original autographs, historical documents and other artifacts. Among the items he has sold over the years were a letter from President Jimmy Carter to his brother Billy, a letter from Martin Luther King Jr. to Rosa Parks, and Abraham Lincoln’s signature on a copy of the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
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Hemp, Inc. Hits Milestone: Completes Harvest of its 2017 Two Hundred-Acre Kenaf Crop
Spring Hope, North Carolina, April 26, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Hemp, Inc. (OTC PINK: HEMP), a global leader in the industrial hemp industry with the largest multipurpose industrial hemp processing facility in the western hemisphere, announced today that the Company’s wholly-owned subsidiary Industrial Hemp Manufacturing, LLC (IHM) has finished harvesting 200 acres of North Carolina-grown kenaf, planted just last year. The approximate 2 million pounds of harvested kenaf will be used to create Hemp, Inc.’s proprietary natural absorbent and Loss Circulation Material (LCM) products for the oil and gas well drilling industries.
Kenaf (hibiscus cannabinus, a cousin of hemp) is a non-wood fiber plant that has been likened to okra and cotton and typically grows 12 to 18 feet tall in a six-month growing season. The kenaf was grown by IHM’s strategic growing partner John Finch Farms in Spring Hope, North Carolina and will be processed at Hemp, Inc.’s 85,000 square foot manufacturing facility in Spring Hope, North Carolina.
The harvested kenaf will be used in the manufacturing of Spill-Be-Gone™, an oil spill cleanup product, and DrillWall™, a Loss Circulation Material (LCM). “LCM” is a term for substances added to drilling fluids when drilling fluids are being lost to the formations downhole. Notably, Spill-Be-Gone™ was one of the products used to help clean up wildlife during the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill.
“Our first kenaf crop of 150 acres planted in 2015, in North Carolina, was harvested in 2016. That was a milestone. Now we’ve just hit another milestone with this 200-acre kenaf harvest. The process was long but well worth the time to ensure a high-quality harvest,” said Hemp, Inc. CEO Bruce Perlowin. Hemp, Inc. announced earlier this year that it had completed its first purchase orders for Spill-Be-Gone™, DrillWall™ and other products.
“This harvested kenaf will support the production of our environmentally-friendly products that provide a nontoxic solution to cleaning up spills and absorbing various materials,” said David Schmitt, COO of Hemp, Inc.’s wholly owned subsidiary, Industrial Hemp Manufacturing, LLC. “We are also proud to work with local farmers in order to meet the growing demand in the oil and gas well drilling industries for high quality, consistent, safe products.”
The hemp planting season in the state of North Carolina last year was delayed. According to Perlowin, the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) took eight months to give the state its hemp growing permit which caused farmers across the state to either plant their crop late or not at all. Due to this unfortunate delay by the DEA, Hemp, Inc. only planted 550 acres of hemp last year. The late planting negatively affected the number of acres executives believed would yield a much more successful crop, for all the North Carolina farmers.
This year, however, will be a game-changer for Hemp, Inc. and North Carolina’s farmers. “We are already gearing up to potentially plant up to 25,000 acres of hemp this year as we continue to ramp up operations and expand our footprint in the market. As the tobacco crop continues to become a less reliable source of revenue for farmers, we are proud to empower small and medium size farms by introducing kenaf and most recently hemp into their crop rotation.”
ABOUT HEMP, INC.
With a deep-rooted social and environmental mission at its core, Hemp, Inc. seeks to build a business constituency for the American small farmer, the American veteran, and other groups experiencing the ever-increasing disparity between tapering income and soaring expenses. As a leader in the industrial hemp industry with ownership of the largest commercial multi-purpose industrial hemp processing facility in North America, Hemp, Inc. believes there can be tangible benefits reaped from adhering to a corporate social responsibility plan.
HEMP, INC.'S "TRIPLE BOTTOM LINE"
With a deep-rooted social and environmental mission at its core, Hemp, Inc. seeks to build a business constituency for the American small farmer, the American veteran, and other groups experiencing the ever-increasing disparity between tapering income and soaring expenses. As a leader in the industrial hemp industry with ownership of the largest commercial multi-purpose industrial hemp processing facility in North America, Hemp, Inc. believes there can be tangible benefits reaped from adhering to a corporate social responsibility plan. Thus, Hemp, Inc.'s "Triple Bottom Line" approach serves as an important tool in balancing meeting business objectives and the needs of society and environment at the same time.
SOCIAL NETWORKS
http://www.twitter.com/hempinc (Twitter)
http://www.facebook.com/hempinc (Facebook)
https://www.facebook.com/KingOfPot (Bruce Perlowin's Facebook Page)
https://www.facebook.com/TheHempUniversity/ (The Hemp University's Facebook Page)
SUBSCRIBE TO HEMP, INC.'S VIDEO UPDATES
"Hemp, Inc. Presents" is capturing the historic, monumental re-creation of the hemp decorticator today as America begins to evolve into a cleaner, green, eco-friendly sustainable environment. What many see as the next American Industrial Revolution is actually the Industrial Hemp Revolution. Watch as Hemp, Inc., the No. 1 leader in the industrial hemp industry, engages its shareholders and the public through each step in bringing back the hemp decorticator as described in the "Freedom Leaf Magazine" article "The Return of the Hemp Decorticator" by Steve Bloom.
"Hemp, Inc. Presents" is accessible 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, by visiting www.hempinc.com. To subscribe to the "Hemp, Inc. Presents" YouTube channel, be sure to click the subscribe button.
UPCOMING INTERNATIONAL AND DOMESTIC EVENTS
Across the globe, the hemp industry is rising to astronomical levels. In the wake of the hemp industry projected to grow 700% and hit $1.8 billion by 2020, there has been more education and networking within the industry. That means more events and conferences, thus, Hemp, Inc. has started compiling an ongoing list of upcoming hemp events around the world. Check out the listing of international and domestic events here.
FORWARD-LOOKING DISCLAIMER AND DISCLOSURES
This press release may contain certain forward-looking statements and information, as defined within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 and is subject to the Safe Harbor created by those sections. This material contains statements about expected future events and/or financial results that are forward-looking in nature and subject to risks and uncertainties. Such forward-looking statements by definition involve risks, uncertainties.
Hemp, Inc.
855-436-7688
ir@hempinc.com
Source: Hemp, Inc.
© 2018 GlobeNewswire, Inc.
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MILK PRODUCTION, DISPOSITION, AND INCOME – 2017 SUMMARY
UNITED STATES HIGHLIGHTS
Milk production increased 1.4 percent in 2017 to 215 billion pounds. The rate per cow, at 22,941 pounds, was 163 pounds above 2016. The annual average number of milk cows on farms was 9.39 million head, up 67,000 head from 2016.
Cash receipts from marketings of milk during 2017 totaled $37.9 billion, 9.8 percent higher than 2016. Producer returns averaged $17.69 per hundredweight, 8.3 percent above 2016. Marketings totaled 214.5 billion pounds, 1.5 percent above 2016. Marketings include whole milk sold to plants and dealers and milk sold directly to consumers.
An estimated 979 million pounds of milk were used on farms where produced, 1.4 percent less than 2016. Calves were fed 91 percent of this milk, with the remainder consumed in producer households.
For a full copy of the Milk Production, Disposition, and Income report please visit www.nass.usda.gov. For state specific questions please contact:
Arizona – Dave DeWalt 1-800-645-7286 Colorado – William R. Meyer 1-800-392-3202 Montana – Eric Sommer 1-800-835-2612 New Mexico – Longino Bustillos 1-800-530-8810 Utah – John Hilton 1-800-747-8522 Wyoming – Rhonda Brandt 1-800-892-1660
