We all like to do business with other professionals who go above and beyond the call of duty. This is especially true if the other business professional is, or seemingly is, willing to put the client's interests above their own. What these individuals have is the client's trust. Even if we do not cognitively recognize them as such, these individuals are our trusted advisors. Not only do we seek these individuals out, when they speak, we listen and we act upon their advice. This begs the question: are you your clients' trusted advisor? The answer to this question might surprise you.

One way to consider this question is to think about whether you regularly provide advice or help clients with issues that are outside the scope of your business? By "advice," I am not referring to providing clients with advice on topics which you are not qualified to speak. I am referring to helping clients find information or other professionals who are qualified to provide advice on the client's other business needs and following through to ensure that the client's needs are met.

Here is an example: Assume you are an estate planning attorney. Are you an attorney who is so technically proficient in estate planning that clients have to bring their accountants, insurance agents, and financial planners to meetings with you to help them understand what you are talking about? Or are you the attorney who takes the time to help the client understand how your advice fits with what the client's accountants, insurance agents, and financial planners are doing; who then meets with these other professionals to implement your advice; and who provides insights into the services provided by the other professionals?

The first type of attorney will often find that his clients often ignore his brilliant advice - opting to listen to their accountants, insurance agents, or financial planners. Worse yet, this type of attorney often does not understand why their clients fail to follow their advice. This can be frustrating for the attorney, especially when their clients' choices are obviously in error. These attorneys often do not realize that they are not the client's trusted advisor and that their advice has been supplanted by the advice provided by the client's trusted advisor.

The second type of attorney is the client's trusted advisor. In most cases, this attorney's clients will follow his advice even if it directly conflicts with the advice provided by the client's accountants, insurance agents, and financial planners and even if the client has a long standing relationship with these other professionals.

I give this example because, in contemporary American society, attorneys hold a special status in business transactions. They earn this right by having higher levels of education, and licensing requirements, and ethical obligations than most other business professionals. This example goes to show the all too common situation where even the special status accorded to attorneys is overcome by another person who exhibits - in a word - empathy for the client's needs.

The best way to exhibit empathy for client needs is to help clients find other professionals, to screen those professionals, and then to follow through with those professionals to see to it that the client needs are being met. Those of us who are able to do this will find that they are their clients' trusted advisors and, as a consequence, clients will begin to actively seek them out. While it sounds simple, actively working to become a trusted advisor can go a long way in making a business successful and it can prove to be a very effective business networking strategy.

Luckily, Passitto was created to harness the efficiencies created by the Internet to help make this process much easier for professionals. You can find out more about how Passitto can help you become a trusted advisor today by creating a free Passitto member account.

Labels: advisor, business, client, networking, passitto, referrals, trusted

Though the terms "business lead" and "business referral" are often used interchangeably, the two terms describe two separate business concepts. As it turns out, a lead is not a referral, but a referral can be a lead. This may sound like a riddle, but it is not. Let me explain.

A business lead is simply a hint or tip about a potential client or sale. With a lead, there is no connection or relationship between the lead and the person who acquires the lead. Leads are impersonal. Following up on leads requires a significant amount of energy in screening, qualifying, and closing the sale. In this sense, a lead is barely better than an uninvited call, visit, or mailing.

A business referral is more akin to a strong lead that is often accompanied by a recommendation from the referrer. Referrals are strong leads because they have already been screened and qualified by the person making the referral. This works because persons making a referral often have knowledge that makes them better able to judge the needs of the potential client and the products and services offered by third parties. Think of a real estate agent who is able to recommend an appropriate mortgage broker or a personal injury attorney who is able to recommend a specialist tax attorney.

Referrals are also considered to be strong leads because of the time in which they are made. Unlike regular leads, a referral is most often made at a time when the potential client is in need of a specific product or service. Referrals are fresh, live, and now. For example, a stock broker may refer a potential client to a Realtor, wedding planner, or other third party when the prospective client cashes out their investment accounts. The stock broker will do this at the time that the potential client has the money to spend and has indicated a need for a specific product or service.

Leads are particularly strong when the referrer tells the potential client to expect to hear from the third party. In these cases, much of the sales process will have already been completed before the third party even contacts the potential client. The potential client will be receptive to being contacted and, due to the anticipation of being contacted, be more apt to purchase the product or service.

Unlike mere leads, business referrals often involve recommendations. The recommendation may include a personal introduction of a third party or allowing the third party to mention the referrers name to the referral. These recommendations allow the referral to feel more comfortable with the third party. At this point, the referral is more akin to a closed sale. Indeed, in many cases the third party only needs to provide the product or service and collect their fee from the client.

There are quite a few websites and services that use the term "referral;" however, upon closer inspection, most of these websites and services are more aptly described by the term "lead." By applying this more precise term, it is easier to see the value of a website like Passitto.com. Passitto was designed to incorporate the benefits of referrals, as defined as strong leads plus recommendations.

With that said, let's test your knowledge. If I said "Passitto.com is the best source for you to obtain business referrals," would I be providing you, as the third party, with a lead or a referral? Of course, the answer is that I would be providing you with a lead to the best source of business referrals. If this is confusing, you might just sign up for Passitto and give it a try.

Labels: business, difference, leads, networking, referrals, sale

I'm happy to announce that Passitto has integrated with Facebook using their API. Members can now import their Facebook profile information into their Passitto profile in just a few quick steps. This new feature eliminates the hassle of having to re-enter the same profile information you have on Facebook into Passitto.

Some of the information members can import from Facebook includes education history, work history, interests as well as their Facebook profile picture.

We are working on integration with another big name in the business networking industry, more on that next week. For now we hope you all find the Facebook application useful.

Jeremy Bamford, CEO
Passitto.com

Labels: API, business, Facebook, networking, passitto, profile, transfer

When offering referrals on Passitto, one of the options available is requiring members to bid credits to express their interest in your referral. You always have the option of offering your referral without the use of credits, in which case other members simply let you know they are interested.

So when is it advantageous to require members to bid credits for your referral?

When exchanging referrals within a tight-knit group of business contacts, you may decide you won’t require those members to bid credits upon your referrals. One possible reason is you are probably acquaintances and familiar with these other members, and your incentive for providing these referrals is to receive reciprocal referrals in exchange. You know these people. You provide them referrals, they give them back to you, and everything is great. You gain some social capital in addition to reciprocal referrals.

In other situations, you may have a referral to offer, but members of your normal networking circle will be unable to service the potential client for whatever reason (too busy, don’t handle that type of work, etc.). The great thing about Passitto is that when you encounter this situation, you have the ability to offer the referral to all members of the Passitto community. The Passitto community is comprised of individuals representing all types of industries and professions.

The downside to offering referrals to members outside your networking circle is your incentive to provide the referral to begin with (which is to receive reciprocal referrals in exchange), is less likely to occur. This is the great thing about Passitto credits. You are not dependent upon the member to whom you provided a referral for a reciprocal referral. Rather you have obtained Passitto credits from this member for providing them a referral, and therefore can use those credits to obtain referrals of use to you, from any member of the community.

Think of Passitto credits as a way of keeping score of the number and value of referrals you offer and obtain. It also allows members to quantify how interested they are in your referral.

There are two ways to obtain credits:

Offer referrals on the Passitto Referral Exchange - Other members will be able to see your referral and let you know if they are interested. You can then review who is interested, and select one of those members as the winner (you can also decide not to select anyone if you feel they are not qualified). The credits the winner bid on your referral are then transferred into your account. You can now use those credits to bid upon referrals of interest to you.

Purchase credits - Some members may wish to bid upon referrals before they have generated any credits by posting referrals, or their credit balance is depleted. In this case you can simply purchase credits using any major credit card. $1 US dollar = 1 Passitto credit.

Passitto credits can also help stabilize the feast or famine business cycle experienced by many professionals, especially freelancers and small businesses.

When you are extremely busy, you are most likely turning down business opportunities due to lack of resources (i.e. not enough time). Lucky you, not a bad position to be in. Unfortunately in the future circumstances may change and you will be actively seeking work. You will be wishing that those potential clients were calling you now, not 4 months ago when you were buried in work.

Passitto is a great resource for this exact situation. When you are buried in work, you can refer other members on Passitto to these potential clients you cannot service. Doing so will allow you to build up a surplus of Passitto credits. When business quiets down in the future and you are seeking new business opportunities, you can utilize your surplus of credits to bid upon referrals of use to you.

We understand that some members will generate a surplus of credits that exceed their needs. In this case Passitto is happy to purchase the credits back from you. Credits are purchased back from members at a value of $1 US per 1 Passitto credit.

Hopefully this answers some of your questions. Feel free to email me with any questions.

Take care,

Jeremy Bamford, CEO
Passitto.com

Labels: business, credits, exchange, leads, networking, passitto, referral

I'm happy to announce that Passitto was released today in public beta. Passitto is a business networking and referral sharing website. We have many great features built into the site, and over the next few months you can expect to see almost weekly releases of new features and functionality.

First off you may be wondering "What makes Passitto any different from sites like LinkedIn?".

To answer that question, let me touch on how the concept of Passitto came to fruition.

Kreig Mitchell, co-founder of Passitto, was a practicing attorney in Boulder, Colorado. Specializing in tax law, he frequently encountered potential clients whom he could not service either due to the potential clients needing a specialist in law for an area he did not practice, or due to the fact he was already pushing a full schedule and did not have time to add additional clients.

At the time I was running Flatirons Internet, a small web development company also located in Boulder. Kreig scheduled a meeting with me to discuss the idea of creating a website platform that would allow attorneys to exchange referrals with each other in a private environment.

I was running into similar situations as Kreig with my web development business. On a daily basis I would have people call me up and inquire about my web development services. Most of the time I was also too busy to pick up any additional clients. Sometimes people would call up regarding SEO services, or programming a website in a language we didn't support.

The end result was me having to tell the person on the other end of the phone that I wouldn't be able to help them or pursue their project. "Ok, do you know anyone else that can help me?" was their usual response. Well, I do know quite a few different developers locally and nationally, but one of the reasons I was declining business was due to my schedule being packed. I like to refer work to my friends, but at the same time I didn't have time to contact the developers I know and see if:

1. If they are available to pickup the work
2. If they are available, are they even interested in what this potential client is seeking.

Kreig and I soon realized that although his concept was a great one for attorneys, why limit it to that particular profession? Almost all business professionals encounter situations where they cannot service a potential client either due to schedule conflicts or the needs of the client being outside their scope of work.

This was the birth of the idea for Passitto. We decided to create a business networking platform in which you can publish and broadcast potential referrals to other members. These other members can review the products or services the potential client is in need of, and if they are interested they can express their interest on Passitto.

You then have the ability to review who is interested in the referral, and by using certain features within Passitto such as profiles and feedback, can make an informed decision regarding to whom, if anybody, will get exclusive rights to the referral.

There is quite a bit more to Passitto then I will cover in a single blog entry, but we do utilize a unique credit based system on the site to help provide incentives for providing referrals on the site. I'll cover that in more detail soon.

In addition to the referral exchange system, we have added lots of other great features such as the ability to create groups, make a custom profile page to gain exposure for your services, contacts, networking and much more.

We decided to target Passitto to all types of industries, as the diversity of skills of its members is a key component to the success of the Passitto community. So regardless of what industry or business you are involved in, we encourage you to join Passitto. Membership is free, so you have nothing to lose.

I would really like to thank everyone involved in the creation of Passitto. Alex, the Senior Software Engineer on the project, has done a great job in creating a site we hope you will all enjoy, and will result in a mutually benefical environment for all members.

-Jeremy Bamford
CEO, Passitto

Labels: business, exchange, leads, linkedin, networking, passitto, referral

In a few weeks we will be releasing Passitto to the business community. Stay tuned for news and updates.

Labels: business, exchange, leads, networking, referral

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