Do you want more support while you chase your dreams? Then looking for a champion might be the way to go. They can help you grow your business and facilitate valuable introductions. “Valuable introductions” might make you think of a referral source, but that’s not always the case.
Champions and Referral Sources
There is a difference between a champion and a referral source. A referral source is somebody that sends you opportunities when opportunities arise. They’re more opportunistic and only show up once in a while with potential clients.
A “champion” is someone who champions for you on your behalf, open doors for you, and they’re very intentional about it. You’re meeting regularly to open doors for each other in a consistent and committed way. Champions are more intentional about filling your pipeline with people that you want to meet with, which includes clients, but it can also be referral sources, mentors, and any other number of people.
Finding Your Next Champion
How do you find a champion? You need to be prepared, plan and understand who you need to meet with and why you need to meet with them. Then start with your COI’s (centers of influence) who know the people that you need to meet. One person might be able to refer you to multiple people. When you reach out to them, set up a 1-to-1 meeting. The purpose of that first meeting is to reconnect or get to know each other if it’s your first-time meeting. The second meeting gets more intentional. You’ll be working on understanding how each other operates and more details about who you need to know.
From there you set up a schedule of when you’re going to meet on an ongoing basis. Clay suggests meeting every four to six weeks if you want predictable results. Doing that deepens the level of trust between the two of you and it makes it easier to open up doors.
Watch the interview for more advice, engaging stories and more ways to find your next champion!
You can get my book here: “Idea Climbing: How to Create a Support System for Your Next Big Idea”
About the Guest
Clay Hicks is an entrepreneur with a portfolio of 5 different companies, an author, a speaker, and trainer on professional relationships. Clay Hicks founded his first company, H7 Network (in 2008), in the hopes of positively impacting the many under-served entrepreneurs and all sales professionals.
His vision is to globally revolutionize the way business professionals “Connect” first, “Serve” with purpose, and “Ask” of their peers. H7 Network, a Franchisor, is a national B2B networking platform, In person and Virtual, for professionals to create their own network and develop champions for their business.
His responsibility as the CEO is to innovate new programs, develop new markets internationally, training and development, implementing new processes for retention, business and relationship development overall. H7 Network currently has members in 41 states and 10 other countries.
Connect with Clay!
https://www.linkedin.com/in/claytonrhicks/
Clay’s scheduler https://calendly.com/clayhicks
