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

We're happy to announce we have been selected to participate in Microsoft's new BizSpark program.

This is a great new program offered by Microsoft to new high-potential start-ups. We have a ton of great ideas for Passitto, and how it can generate more opportunities for you and your business. Our involvement in this program will make those ideas easier to bring to reality.

For more information, view the news release on the Passitto website.

Labels: bizspark, business networking, exchange, leads, microsoft, passitto, referral

Business networking has multiple meanings. The term "business networking" is often thought of in the context of finding a job.

There are a number of websites that focus exclusively on this market. We have all seen these websites. These websites generally allow members to post their public profiles. Headhunters and other employment staffing companies then use this public information to scout out and solicit prospective clients. This is a valid form of business networking that can be carried out on the Internet, but it is only one form of networking.

Business networking also describes the process of finding clients or sales opportunities. The efficiencies created by the Internet have made it possible to conduct this type of networking on a mass scale, yet there are very few websites that allow users to carry out this type of networking online.

Passitto provides an example of a website that focuses on this client and sale-oriented networking. Using Passitto, members can send and receive referrals and make connections and join groups. The purpose of the site is to allow users to interact with the aim of expanding their referral opportunities.

This type of business networking is crucial for business owners and salesmen. It is also crucial for rank and file employees. Given the current uncertainties in the economy, businesses are often calling on all employees to help bring in business opportunities. Bringing in business is the only means for employees to obtain job security, as employers are much less likely to cut employees who are making the business money.

Labels: business networking, exchange, job security, passitto, referrals

It is a generally understood that if you want to make a sale you have to go directly to the source. This begs the question, who is the "source?"

The term "source" often refers to the decision maker. With regard to business transactions, one might be surprised to learn that the end consumer is often not the decision maker. Identifying the decision maker is one of the first steps to effective business marketing.

Let me give you an example. Let's say that you sell life insurance. You understand that there are many consumers out there who need your product. You also understand that very few of these consumers actually reach out to initiate the sales process as they do not fully recognize that they need your product. Your clients consist primarily of high net worth individuals, business professionals, and small business owners. You know that these would-be clients are already working with attorneys, investment advisors, accountants, property and casualty insurance agents, professional bankers, and others. So who is the decision maker?

You may be inclined to say that the net worth individuals, business professionals, and small business owners who pay your fees are the decision makers. After all, they are the ones who buy your products. More importantly, they are the ones who pay for your products. These individuals usually are not the decision makers.

In most cases, the other professionals who work with the end consumers are the decision makers. This includes the attorneys, investment advisors, accountants, property and casualty insurance agents, professional bankers who are currently working with your would-be clients. These are the individuals who understand that the end user needs your product, they understand that your product costs money, and, hopefully, they understand the benefits of helping their clients buy your product from you. A business referral to you from one of these advisors typically results in sales, as the end user will typically accept the advisor's decision.

Having identified the decision maker for your product, you can now design marketing activities to increase the chances that you interact with these decision makers. This may include attending professional education or training meetings, volunteering for trade groups, authoring business articles, deploying targeted advertising in trade publications, participating in a leads group, or other similar activities. This makes business marketing a numbers game that can be refined over time to produce results. Unfortunately, this is a time consuming and costly process.

This is where Passitto comes in. Passitto aims to be the place where likeminded advisers who work with your would-be clients go do find you. Why would they do this? It's simple. They do this for the same reason that you do this. They want your referrals. Think about it. When you sell a life insurance policy, you are probably going to learn that your clients need legal, investment, real estate, and other insurance services or products. Given Pasitto's unique credit-based auction system, if you refer these clients to other professionals using Passitto you will increase the chances that you will receive incoming business referrals from other advisors. It is that simple. The more you send, the more you receive. This is the same principal that works offline, but using Passitto, it is more efficient and can be deployed on a mass scale. In this sense, the "source" of business is actually Passitto.

Labels: business, decision, exchange, leads groups, maker, marketing, passitto, referrals, source

Do your business referral sources only send you local clients who have very general needs or have you developed business referral sources that send you clients who are dispersed geographically and who have very specific needs? To help think about these questions, let's digress to consider the movie rental business for a minute.

Have you tried to find an old movie that you enjoyed? If so, you may have started your search by visiting a few of your local movie rental business. You probably discovered that these businesses only carry old movies that are popular among the masses and, unfortunately, the movie you want to see is not popular as you would have guessed.

the movie rental business standpoint, this makes sense. These businesses have a limited amount of shelf space. In the local market, there will probably be more consumers who would rent popular movies. This precludes these local businesses from carrying less popular movies.

This dynamic changes if the movie rental business makes its sales nationally using a warehouse for storage and the mail or the internet to rent the movies. These national businesses will have a much larger supply of shelf space (or warehouse space). They will also have access to more consumers. This larger population of consumers will probably include others who share your eccentric taste in movies. Thus, these businesses are able to carry less popular movies.

Indeed, national movie rental businesses may find that a majority of their business comes from renting these less popular movies. This phenomenon has been described using the term "long tail." For example, Chris Anderson applied the term to business strategy in his book entitled The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More.

As applied, the term describes the relationship between popular and less popular products. The idea is that the broader consumer base will include more consumers who want less popular products, and there may be more of these consumers than the few consumers who want more popular products.

Here is an example. With our local versus national movie rental businesses, assume the local business carries 100 movies that can be classified as being popular. Also assume that the national business carries an additional 10,000 movies that can be classified as being less popular movies. All things being equal, the national business will fare much better than the local business if both businesses rent 10 percent of their inventory. Of course, the national business will fare even better if clients like you are willing to pay more to rent rare movies to satisfy their eccentric movie tastes.

This business model helps to define the how a business referral network might operate. On the one hand, a business referral network may operate like the local movie rental business. It may provide your business with local clients who have very general needs and who are willing to pay regular business rates for these more popular goods and services. On the other hand, a business referral network may operate like the national movie rental business. It may provide your business with clients who are dispersed geographically, who have very specific needs, and who are willing to pay higher rates for these goods and services.

This concept is at the heart of the value that Passitto provides to its users. Passitto can help you expand your business referral network and do so in a way that fits with your particular business model.

Unlike other referral systems, Passitto can operate as the local or national movie rental business or both - depending on what is best for your specific business. Using Passitto you are able to make this type of decision on a case-by-case basis by bidding or not bidding on individual referrals. You might only bid on referrals placed in your local market for very general goods or services or you might bid on referrals placed nationwide for very specific goods and services.

In the past, many businesses were not able to make this type of decision without making drastic changes to their business referral networks. These efforts required quite a bit of time and energy. Now, with Passitto, businesses can retool their business referral networks on the fly. This presents Passitto users with a unique advantage over other businesses that have yet to discover and take advantage of Passitto.

Labels: business, leads, Long Tail, passitto, referral, sources

It's been a while since my last post. We've been busy here at Passitto adding some new features you will find useful.

Import your LinkedIn profile!

We are happy to announce our integration with LinkedIn. In just a few easy steps you can import your entire LinkedIn profile into Passitto. You will also notice we have added LinkedIn's Company Insider widget to member profiles. This will allow you to see how you are connected with various companies listed on the site.

Passitto is also integrated with Facebook, so if you don't have a LinkedIn account, but you do have a Facebook account, you can still import your profile.

Group Calendar and Events

Another new feature of Passitto is the calendar and events system. All groups now have access to this feature. You can easily create events for your group, see who is planning to attend, post messages regarding the event, as well as have the event location mapped using Google Maps. Remember, creating your own group on Passitto is quick, easy and 100% free. You can create a virtual extension of your existing leads, networking or industry group, as well as form a completely new group.

We invite you to check out all the new features!

Jeremy Bamford, CEO
Passitto.com

Labels: API, calendar, exchange, Facebook, group, leads, linkedin, passitto, referral, referrals

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

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