Summary: Synopsis A listener named David commented on an earlier episode to say, "Sometimes we feel obligated to engage with a bad referral from another BNI member even if the person isn't a good fit. How do you deal with this situation?" First, if you're giving a referral, remember that you're giving away a piece of your reputation. Giving a bad referral hurts your reputation. But if you do get a bad referral, ask yourself, What are you doing to educate people about who is a good referral for you? Be laser-specific. Memory hooks are not actually useful here. If you still get a bad referral, talk to the member who gave you the bad referral. What do you talk about? Ask whether they've called the person. If not, hand the referral slip back, and ask them to call the person. If you have a bad experience with the referral, bring it first to the other member, then the membership committee. Have you encountered a bad referral where the problem couldn't be resolved by following this advice? Let us know in the comments. Brought to you by Networking Now. Complete Transcript of BNI Podcast Episode 281 - Priscilla: Hello everyone and welcome back to The Official BNI Podcast brought to you by NetworkingNow.com, which is the leading site on the net for networking downloadables. I am Priscilla Rice, and I am coming to you from Live Oak Recording Studio in Berkeley, CA. I am joined on the phone today by the Founder and Chairman of BNI, Dr. Ivan Misner. Hello Ivan. How are you and where are you today? Ivan: Hi Priscilla. I am doing great. This week, I am at the BNI International Conference in Long Beach. This week, we have over 600 BNI Directors from all over the world. It is like going to a United Nations meeting. Priscilla: I know. I have been to it and it's really fun. It was very impressive. So, how are you going to help us out today? What is your topic? Ivan: Today, I want to talk about what you do when you get a bad referral? It comes from a BNI member named David, who under podcast 266 on pointers for giving good referrals, who said he'd really like to see a podcast that deals with being set up with a bad referral. He said that sometimes we feel obligated to engage with a bad referral even if it is not a good fit. So could you talk about what you do when you get a bad referral? That is what I am going to do today. First of all, for the person giving the referral, when you give a referral, you give a little bit of your reputation away, so when you are giving referrals, make sure to give good referrals because if you give a bad referral it hurts your reputation. If you give a good referral, it of course, helps your reputation. So let's start with the people giving referrals. You have to be cognizant of giving good referrals. Now that doesn't answer David's question. His question is what do you do if you get a bad referral. Let's talk about that. If you are the person getting a bad referral, first you have to think about what are you doing to educate people? I know this doesn't really answer David's question yet, but I am going to get there. You must clearly educate people about what a good referral is. No, really. You have to be certain that you are doing a good job explaining what is and isn't a good referral. It's really funny because every time I talk to people they say, âI get that. I understand it.â Nonsense. I have been to many meetings. People are doing a horrible job oftentimes in describing what it is that they do specifically and then they are surprised that people don't know how to give them a good referral. So you have to ask yourself if you are really doing as good of a job as you possibly can in explaining well how to give a good referral. Are you being laser specific? By the way, stop doing memory hooks. It is almost a complete waste of time in getting referrals. I know they are fun. I know I wrote a book about them. I wish I had never done that.
