Filling a Need

Relationships are based on need fulfillment. Recent research by Dr. Sue Johnson, distinguished research professor at Alliant University in San Diego, California, and professor of clinical psychology at the University of Ottawa, Canada, has shown that couples that last fulfill one another’s basic needs for attachment including closeness, security, and connection. Similarly, in business there are two parallel streams of needs that you need to fill.

1. Emotional and intellectual needs. People need to be able to like you, feel comfortable with you, and trust you. They need to feel that you are smart—not necessarily in an academic way, but in a very practical way. They need to feel that you know what you’re doing.

2. Bottom-line business needs. Relationships that produce referrals and bottom-line results are most highly valued.

The only way to ascertain someone’s needs is to ask questions and listen to the answers. Just as you don’t want to assume who the decision maker is, you don’t want to assume that you know what someone’s true needs are.

Discovering the needs of your referral partner

My client Marjorie, a psychologist, told me that she frequently met with potential referral partners but nothing ever came of the meetings. In talking with her, I realized that she was mistakenly making the assumption that the people she met with were looking for more clients. She would talk about how she could refer to them and expect them to become engaged and interested, but in reality this rarely happened. Marjorie had done the difficult work of getting meetings with successful professionals. For the most part, these people had more clients and patients than they could handle. They did not want referrals. The idea of more clients stressed them out. When Marjorie learned to ask questions about their work and what their goals were, she found some fascinating things: Many people were looking to scale back their businesses. Others were looking to make a switch and work with different types of clients. Others didn’t want to make any changes with their business but needed excellent referral sources for their clients. When Marjorie asked and listened to what people really needed, she was able to better connect with other professionals and help them meet their business goals.

Questions that you can ask to discover the needs of your referral partners include:

• In what direction are you heading with your business?

• What is your favorite type of client to work with?

• With what type of client do you work best?

• Is there anything that you’re looking to change in your work?

• What are your current goals?

• What’s the next chapter for your business?

If you find that someone doesn’t have any needs in their business, then they are unlikely to be a potential referral partner.

Look for similarities and differences

Similarities are typically the foundation for personal relationships. People become friends over bonding about being a new mom, passion for a sports team, living on the same block, and so on. In professional relationships, things work differently. You need to have broad-based similarities but specific differences. Broad similarities include your philosophy or approach, background, or types of clients. There needs to be a fundamental match in values. For example, my closest business partners tend to be like me in the value we place on research-based approaches. For example, my colleague and friend, author of The Psychology of Influence, Kevin Hogan and I tend to be anti-guru (“This is what worked for me so it’s what you should do”) and pro-science (“This is what the research shows to work”). As such, I greatly enjoy collaborating with him—plus he is ridiculously smart and great at describing science in real-world language, something I am trying to learn. What important values guide your work? Who else shares such values?

Specific differences include factors such as the type of service or product you offer, your geographical location, and so on. Without these differences, there is no need for you because the other person does that same thing in the same way with the same people. One of my clients, Sarah, a business coach, told me that her best joint venture partners were also business coaches who were quite similar to her. The difference was the types of services that they offered. Sarah did intensive one-on-one work with clients while her business partners offered groups, workshops, and live trainings.

Start with your own needs

When looking for potential referral partners, people often think, “Who can refer to me?” Why not turn this process around and instead ask, “Who do I need to refer to?” Consider the types of professionals that your clients ask you for referrals for and the types of professionals that you recommend your clients meet with.

This approach is powerful because:

• It is less intimidating and more enjoyable to approach someone from the perspective of how you can help them rather than how they can help you. Because it tends to be nerve-wracking to initiate new business connections, it is important to consider what reduces the anxiety in the process. If you’re coming from the place of needing a referral source or other resource for your clients, you are likely to feel more comfortable and less anxious.

• It is genuine and authentic when you have a true need. Building your professional database is one of the most important things you can do. Put some thought into who you need to be in your list of contacts and why. Don’t simply think of who you want to meet and then tell them that you’d like them to be in your database. This will feel and come across as lacking authenticity and sincerity.

• You may not know their needs. As we’ve discussed, we cannot always assume what another professional needs. When you begin from the place of what you need for your clients, you begin with what is known, and it serves as a great opening to then learn more about what the other person needs.

Let’s say that you’re a personal trainer building a large private practice. In thinking about who your clients may need, you come up with:

• Registered dieticians and nutritionists

• Weight loss coaches and consultants

• Sports medicine and rehabilitation physicians

• Physical therapists

• Massage therapists

• Acupuncture and acupressure specialists

• Image consultants, hairdressers, and others in the beauty industry

You can use this list of needs to fill in the skeleton of your professional database and then start finding the professionals to file under each category.

Consider who needs you

Keep close track of the source of your referrals. Record the type of person who referred you as well as the individual’s name and contact information. For example, the personal trainer may have three categories of referral sources:

• Past clients

• Nutritionists

• Weight loss coaches

He would then look for trends. He may choose to add on to the professions who refer the most. Or he may choose to focus on adding new types of professionals who he does not yet have connections with. Either approach is valid. Collecting and analyzing the data of your referral sources enables you to come up with the strategy that works best for you.