I can’t tell you how sick and tired I am of seeing all these social media, seo, twitter, etc. experts that are infecting the places we call home. Some I try to give the benefit of the doubt and look what they have to offer but I am only letdown to see that they are schlepping information they pulled out of an O’Reilly or “For Dummies” book. I began thinking about what this means, thinking is this it, is this what this industry is going to become? False hope. Empty promises. These experts are essentially selling services to show you how to simply use, some try to show you how to game the people on them; and for that they should be shot. But it did make me think about what differentiates people from “experts” and the people who really know how to create real results.

You’re building your network; it’s growing but now what? How do you manage it? Is your network balanced enough? I’ll tell you I’ve always had a problem maintaining an acceptable balance in my network. Mainly because I see my network in three categories: Information, Support, and Referral. It’s tough work maintaining all three categories at the same time but it is worth it.

For a software company, one of my clients, they despise the ringing of the phone. They think their customers are completely and utterly mentally deficit of creating educated, technically sound decisions. And after speaking with a few of them I would agree to an extent. However, their contempt seemed a little unfounded.

They spoke of how their customers called in aflame with rage that their humble software was not working as promised, hoped for, expected, or acceptable to general technological standards every other software company holds true to. I felt like I was put into quite the predicament, on one hand I was there to perform a specific service for my client, and on the other hand their customer service people were being relentless by only providing the bare minimum and urging customers to call back another day so that they would not have to deal with that exploding problem today.

Most people think they know their business, I mean after all it is your business. But you might be surprised how time can disconnect us from our own business. Or maybe you know everything about your business but are you communicating it effectively. If you can’t tell your potential sources what you do effectively then how are they going to be able to send you the perfect referrals?

What relationships do you have that are not profitable? How do you know? Are you measuring, using some form of metrics to help you make these decisions? Many people will immediately default to the de facto standard of profitability – money. That is not the only metric to use, I suggest keeping track of referrals received and given. Of those referrals what was the outcome of them. How hard did you have to work to convert those referrals to customers? Sometimes these are better metrics to help you decide whether a relationship is worth continuing to pour energy into. A relationship that is yielding poor profitability may not be due to the referrer but to you not effectively communicating to the referrer what your business capabilities are. This more often seems to be the problem rather than simply a relationship does not make enough money from the referrer.