Your mom was right. Today, I'm going to share the five habits that get you more referrals for B2B sales, and they come right from what your mom taught you when you were a kid. You got to join me for this episode of The Inside BS Show.

Hi, my name is Dave Lorenzo, and today we're talking about five habits that are going to get you more referrals, and you're going to recognize these habits because they were the same things your mom taught you when you were growing up. Now, let's start off by why you want more referrals, right? Referrals are free business. It's free money.

You don't have to go out and knock on any doors. You don't have to go out and give presentations. Referrals are passive income that just comes to you.

So, why not do these five things every day, day in and day out, and accept the free money that comes with the referrals that they produce? All right, let's dive right into our content right now and talk about the first habit that's going to get you more referrals. These are actually three habits in one, and they come from Dan Sullivan. Dan Sullivan is the founder of Strategic Coach.

He's a guru for business owners, and Dan Sullivan teaches what he calls referability habits, and I like them so much, I share them with my clients, giving him complete attribution. Dan says that in order to get more referrals, you got to do three things. You got to show up on time, you got to say please and thank you, and you have to do what you say you are going to do.

Let's take a look at each of these really quickly. Showing up on time. It seems like a no-brainer, showing up and being on time.

I made a video a while ago called Never Trust People Who Are Late, and I still believe that to be true. You got to get wherever you're going a few minutes early or be on time every time because it talks to people, it says to people that you are a person of integrity. If you don't show up on time, it shows the person that you don't respect them enough to get there when you say you're going to be there.

So showing up on time, bare minimum. The second thing is say please and say thank you. If I go to a restaurant with you and the hostess sits you down at a table and you don't thank her for doing so.

The busboy fills your glass of water with water and you don't thank him for doing so. The waiter clears your plate and you don't thank her for doing so. It shows me that you don't have manners and if you don't treat the hostess, the busser, the waiter with respect and with dignity, then you may not treat my client with respect and dignity.

So say please and thank you. It demonstrates that you're going to treat people the way you'd like to be treated and you deserve those referrals. The final element of Dan Sullivan's referability habits are do what you say you're going to do.

Do what you say you're going to do. This is the essence of integrity. Do what you say you're going to do, no more and no less, so that you can be counted on.

You're reliable. You're a person of high integrity. That's what people are looking for when they refer you.

If I refer you my best client, I want to know that you're going to show up on time. I want to know that you're going to say please and thank you and I want to know that you're going to do exactly what you tell my best client you're going to do so that my client comes back to me and goes, Dave, thank you so much. That was a great referral.

The second thing that you need to do, the second habit that you need to follow, if you want to get more referrals, your mom taught you this. Come on. That's don't talk behind people's back.

I know it's easy to do and it's a way to make conversation, but when you gossip, when you talk about people who aren't in the room, when you talk behind people's back, it makes the other person, the person across from you, think, oh my gosh, I wonder what this person will say about me when I'm not there. If you defend people who are not in the room, if you refuse to participate in gossip, if you walk away when people start to talk about other people, or better yet, if you shut down the conversation when people start to say bad things about other people, folks will respect you and they'll trust you with their secrets and you'll get more referrals as a result. Habit number three is seek to understand others.

Seek to understand others. When people have a different opinion from you or if they have a different point of view and you ask them questions and you legitimately seek to understand how they form that point of view and you seek to figure out what in their background informed this opinion, you're going out of your way to be generous to that person. If you dismiss them as stupid or wrong just because they don't believe what you believe, you get to the same place.

It's just that everybody feels bad now. And if you don't feel bad, you should. So, if someone disagrees with you, seek to figure out where their opinion came from.

Seek to understand how they formed that opinion. You don't have to agree with them and maybe you do think they have some form of damage about them. Most people don't.

They just have a background that's different from yours and that's how their opinion was developed. They may not be correct, but you don't have to be mean or malicious. If you seek to understand, it will go a long way to getting referrals from people who disagree with you on some of the most challenging and contentious issues.

The fourth habit that will get you more referrals is having an external orientation. This means giving before you ever expect to receive. If you have an external orientation and you pass a referral to someone three times, it is almost impossible for them to ignore you and that person will surely look to pass a referral back to you.

This should be a hard and fast rule. Never ask for a referral before you pass a referral to another person. Now, look.

There are some people who it's almost impossible to find a referral for. The example that I give all the time is a workers' compensation attorney here in Miami, Florida has passed me a number of referrals and I just don't come across a lot of workers' compensation cases, but this attorney gets a lot of referrals from doctors. So whenever I meet a doctor, I introduce this attorney to the doctor so that he can get more referrals from him.

I want you to have the same generous external orientation. Pass referrals first, then ask for a referral in return. The fifth habit to get you more referrals for your B2B sales is treat people the same whether they're on the way up the ladder or they're on their way down the ladder.

Remember, and I'm sure your mother always told you this, the people you see who are going to be successful in the future are the same people who were once successful who will be on their way down. So if somebody's on the downswing now, they're going to be on the upswing again in the future. Treat those people who are having a rough time the same way you treat people who are doing really, really well.

Treat people on the way down the same way you treat people on the way up. These are the five habits that get you more referrals for B2B sales. Your mom was right.

If you want more great videos on referrals, there's another video on referrals filling in right below me right now. Click on that video. Watch that video on referrals right now.

I will see you in that video right now.