Referrals: The Workshop

April 18, 2025
Phil Krone

Are you getting enough referrals?  Are the referrals you get paying off in business?

If not, our latest skills-building course for acquiring more business may be right for you and your team. “Referrals: The Workshop” helps develop the skills and behaviors you need to boost the number of useable referrals you receive now. And it lays the groundwork for continuing referrals over the course of your career.

“Referrals: The Workshop” provides four hours of professional skills development training, customization for your market and industry, and practical exercises and role plays. Corporate groups learn how to begin building a “referrals” culture.

Open classes are conducted at the Productive Strategies offices in Northfield, Illinois, just north of the intersection of the Edens Expressway and Willow Road and west of the expressway.

Contact: Phil Krone at 847-446-0008 Extension 1 or  pkrone@productivestrateties.com

You’ll learn to . . .

  • Improve your referral-getting-and giving-skills
  • Convey your expertise and build trust faster
  • Understand the driving forces behind acquiring referrals
  • Identify tactics and behaviors that work for you
  • Provide real value through referrals
  • Build the right attitude for referral success
  • Develop simple metrics to track your success
  • Use referrals to penetrate both current and new accounts more effectively
  • Increase referrals from clients and other contacts
  • Become more comfortable and efficient as a business developer
  • Access decision-makers more efficiently
  • Understand why you’re not getting the referrals you think you should be
  • Appreciate why acquiring referrals is a process
  • How the “ask” in the referral process really works
  • And much more.

Build your business much more efficiently by developing a much more productive referrals process. To learn more about “Referrals: The Workshop,” contact Phil Krone at 847-446-0008 Extension 1 or  pkrone@productivestrateties.com.

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Last year after a talk I gave at the Small Business Expo on Business to Business Selling (B2B) , a woman asked for my card because she wanted to meet to tell me about her business and learn more about mine. When we eventually got together she shared that her start-up company’s goal was to console consumers who had suffered the loss of a loved one directly, as she had. But my talk had inspired a new idea: assist funeral homes to improve their services by showing more empathy to their customers who were struggling as she was. I sensed that my talk gave her confidence that, despite the challenges, her business could succeed. What I didn’t realize was that this small assignment for a start-up would eventually have such a big impact on her business as well as an industry. 

The Five Levels of Marketing - Level Five: Vision Sets the Course

By Phillip Krone • December 18, 2024
To date we have covered the Sales, Information, Tactical, and Marketing Plan Levels. Although the fifth level is the last to be discussed, it is often what sets a business in motion when it is founded. Today we will illustrate marketing to support a vision by discussing two very successful businesses.

The Five Levels of Marketing - Level Four: Planning the Work, Working the Plan

By By Phil Krone, President • December 5, 2024
As a reminder, the Five Levels of Marketing are (1) Sales, (2) Information/Data/Analytics, (3) Tactical or Campaign, (4) Marketing or Program, and (5) Vision/Strategic. We’ve explored each of the first three levels in separate columns in August, September, and October. They are available on our website's Productive Insights collection.

The Five Levels of Marketing - Level Three: Tactical Sales Campaigns in the Field

By By Phil Krone, President • October 16, 2024
Using intelligence from prior levels leads to revenue-building sales campaigns on the ground in real time.

The Five Levels of Marketing - Level Two: Putting Data and Information to Work

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Tracking key types of data each month provides insights that can build a highly productive marketing plan.

The Five Levels of Marketing

By Phil Krone, President • August 14, 2024
The Five Levels - Sales: Prospecting, qualifying, discovery, presentation, demonstration, proposal writing and closing; Information/Data/Analytics; Tactical or Campaign; Marketing or Program; Vision/Strategic

The Question That Leads to a Positive Decision (The Texas Hospital Story)

By Phil Krone, President • July 18, 2024
If you believe you have ADHD, you can be more successful by scheduling fewer first meetings and spending that time on more second and third meetings with qualified prospects. For our client, that meant cancelling half the medical CFO conventions his sales rep was planning to attend and investing more time following up with the CFO prospects he had already met. When your discovery is not productive, step back and restart at the point the discussion began to be about whose system is better. That’s an argument you are not going to win. Don’t waste years in prospect meetings in which you ask the same questions every time and get the same answers. Either decide that your product or service isn’t right for this prospect and move on—or broaden your discovery to find a need behind the need. In this hospital case, the hidden need was a fear that because no outside vendors had audited their system they might be in violation of regulations that an outsider would spot right away.
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