Developing an Effective Vision Statement

If you have little or no experience with referral marketing, it would be a huge mistake to jump into action without preparing yourself. Getting people to pass you referrals is tantamount to achieving success with the referral-marketing process. To do so, they must know exactly what you do—what product or service you provide, how and under what conditions you provide them, how well you do it, and what sets you apart from your competition.

You have to communicate this information to your sources in a clear and concise manner. Obviously, you have to know the aforementioned yourself before you can effectively communicate it! It is important for entrepreneurs to have a clear vision for their businesses; you have to know what your motivation is, what your goals are and what you plan to accomplish with the businesses you start. Equally important is your ability to share that vision with others effectively in a well-thought-out vision statement. This is especially true when you are cultivating relationships that you want to result in business referrals.

Before you map out where you’re going to take your business with a referral marketing campaign, pause and get a clear picture of where your business stands today. Try to answer in simple terms, the following questions:

Why are you in business?
What do you sell?
Who are your customers?
How well do you compete?

Answering these questions for yourself will help you tell others what your business is about. This will make you more effective at implementing your comprehensive and systematic referral system.

How you communicate with others is very powerful. Lou Cassara talks about how important being clear with your purpose is. In From Selling to Serving, he states: “Your PVS (personal value statement) provides the opportunity for your clients, staff and family to market you effectively. You can build a distribution channel of people who can effectively communicate your value.”

It may seem to be a no-brainer; don’t we all know what we do for a living? Yes, of course, most of us do. But can you communicate it clearly and simply to your potential referral sources? When you try to do so, you may find that you’re not quite as clear on the facts as you thought you were. And if you can’t tell your potential referral sources what you do or what you sell in a way that motivates them to find prospects for you, how can they send you good referrals?

We are so accustomed to the ubiquitous question: “what do you do?” at mixers, business events, seminars, etc…, etc… that we hardly give a thought to how we are answering that question. It is not enough to simply tell your contacts what label you wear, for example, “I own and operate a sporting goods store.” In order to deepen the relationship, you must be able to talk about what you do in a way that, as Lou says, “communicates the magic of your vision expressed through your words.”
Here are four points to bear in mind when beginning to develop an effective vision statement about who you are and what you do that will result in attracting the kind of

business referrals you are currently dreaming of:

1. Be passionate about what you do. In order for others to feel the value you have to offer them and the people they are going to refer to you, they need to know beyond a shadow of a doubt that you are passionate about what you do. When that passion is lacking, or is not communicated to your referral sources, they will never be confident that you have what it takes to serve their referrals 110%. Look at who you are and what you do and determine what it is about that career that makes you passionate. Put your vision statement in the form of a cause. In the example above of “I own and operate a sporting goods store”, you might rephrase that to: “I provide what you need for sport and leisure, so that you can have the time of your life.”Phrasing your vision statement in terms that turns what you do into how passionate you are to help others’ dreams come true makes you more attractive to those referrals.

2. Be concise when sharing your vision statement. Your vision statement will only be effective when you can make it short and to the point. It should not be a lengthy, hard-to-remember paragraph. In Courageous Leadership, Bill Hybels advocates that a vision statement be of such a length that it can be written on a t-shirt. Strive for a statement that conveys your passion and your motivation for doing what you do in measured, powerful words. Take the time to work this out; include your staff when preparing your vision statement.

3. Share the ownership of the vision statement with your staff. It is amazing when you have a staff who catches the vision because you have created together. This just enhances the referral process. When you train your staff to think in terms of the vision statement and not simply what their roles in the day-to-day operations of the business are, they will also be attracting the type of business you want to draw into the venture. There are many things you can be doing to empower your staff to share your vision for the greater service and function of your business. Let them know, each and every one of them, how valuable to the success of your enterprise they all are. The more they can see and feel that they are part of the team that is bringing to life the vision of the company, the more effective they will be in cultivating referrals for the business.

4. Believe in what you are “visioning.” You may find, as you start the process of developing an effective vision statement for your company, you are not convinced that what you are doing holds any passion for you. A couple of friends of mine, Chris Attwood and Janet Bray Attwood, have developed a test you will find in their book entitled The Passion Test, that can help you determine just what it is that makes you passionate. Explore this in light of what business you are starting or find yourself still in after 20 years, and evaluate where it falls on the scale of things about which you are passionate. Maybe it’s time to rethink where you find yourself. Referrals will flow to you with so much more ease and consistency when you are able to really believe in the vision you cast in the marketplace as you network and grow the relationships necessary to build a word-of-mouth-based business.

What do I tell people about who I am and what I do? I am changing the way the world does business by teaching that givers gain. Write THAT on a t-shirt!