Open House – Come Visit Referrals Quad City!

April 19, 2013 by Leave a Comment

I 74 BridgeThe next two Tuesdays, Referrals Quad City will be hosting open houses in our two groups. Our breakfast group open house will be held Tuesday, April 23rd at 7:00 am at the Chophouse Restaurant in the Radisson Hotel in Davenport. Our lunch group will host its open house Tuesday, April 30, at noon at the LaFlamma Restaurant in Moline.

If you would like more information just email me and I will get back to you right away. We need to have the RSVP for the Breakfast meeting by Monday (4/22) and for the Lunch meeting by Thursday (4/22).

If you want to know more about Referrals Quad City click here and you will get the basics, click here and you will see the rules!

We look forward to visiting with you in one of these two meetings!

 

Dave Wellman, FounderReferrals Quad City

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Filed Under: Local Business, Networking, Referrals Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

Snowy Days and Tuesdays

March 5, 2013 by 1 Comment
"TUESDAY" production sign

(Photo credit: Vaguely Artistic)

Well for two Tuesdays in a row Referrals Quad City has been the victim of bad weather. Last week our lunch group was overwhelmed by snow and today both groups were affected. The most difficult part of this is that today was a planned big event (open house) for our breakfast group with much work done to prepare and at least 6 visitors planning to attend!

But, like any venture some days are going to turn out just like this. You know what they say about the best laid plans!!

As I write this post several lessons about business come to mind:

  1. Every business is going to experience things totally out of their control. Sometimes things just happen!
  2. The goal of every business experiencing these “out of their control” things should be to press on, retool, and never quit.
  3. The plan for success is never the victim of any single “out of control” event.

We will be rescheduling our first annual open house and you will be invited again! My hope is that the weather cooperates and that we can see an even bigger crowd of entrepreneurs, business owners, and sales people looking to improve their business skills, build a strong and successful referral network, and look for ways to give back to the community we all live in!!

Have a great week and mark you calendars for next Tuesday to join us again at Referrals Quad City!!

See you then -

PS – If you were planning to visit as a guest this week, you do not have to wait till the rescheduled open house to visit! Next week would be fine!!

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Filed Under: Local Business, Networking Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

Helping the Group Market

July 13, 2012 by 2 Comments

As the Quad Cities premier referral, business connection, and networking group, we should all be working hard helping each member of our group market their specialties. The “million dollar question” is, “How can I do this in an effective and beneficial way?”

Here are a few suggestions that I hope will help:

  1. Have a cup of coffee with each group member and learn all you can about them, their passions, and their business specialty. If you don’t really know someone, their motivation for doing their job or being in business, or what exactly they are good at, it is really hard to market them with people you meet.
  2. Read/subscribe to each members blog (if they have one). By getting regular updates from the writings of our members, we can learn about and understand industry trends that will help us to recommend our members to our family, friends, and business connections. By the way, if you have a thought that would add to the conversation, leaving a comment at the end of a post will add content to their blog and help their rankings in the search engines. This will allow more people to find them as they search the members specialty online.
  3. Follow each member on Twitter, LinkedIn, and even like their Facebook page. These social media helps are like passive word of mouth advertisements for our group members. Every time someone clicks “@referralsqca” on Twitter and sees our web address, there is a possibility that they will visit the site, learn something new, and contact us about the group. The same thing is true about every members Twitter account, website address, facebook page, etc.

These are just a few easy steps we can all take to help the whole group market their businesses. As group members, we have become “cogs” in the referral engine for each company represented. Let’s do our part for each member of the group!

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Filed Under: Networking, Referrals Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Referrals Quad City – Here We Go!!

June 19, 2012 by Leave a Comment

After three weeks of planning and inviting, Referrals Quad City is “opening its doors!” I am very excited about the response and am looking forward to an amazing meeting tomorrow.

Before we open our doors and begin to add members to this group, I thought that I would make our purposes known. There are three areas of purpose for Referrals Quad City:

Referrals

Referrals are the secret ingredient to the long term success of every business. Referrals Quad City was designed around this truth. Our purpose is to not only meet together to pass referral business to our group membership, but to teach each group member how to build a strong and vibrant referral system for their businesses. This training process takes time but will make each of our businesses as successful as we want them to be.


Business Connections

With the onslaught of the “big box” stores, local businesses and their owners/employees need to connect in ways that they never have before. Each local business provides much more to the community than just the product/service that they represent. It is the purpose of Referrals Quad City to provide those local business connections and to work with each other to create opportunities to benefit not only our businesses but also to have a powerful impact on our communities.

Strategic Partnerships

Strategic partnerships are those partnerships formed between similar companies that can work in a complementary way. It is the purpose of Referrals Quad City to seek after such partnerships in the development of our group. This way each member of the group will have specific opportunities to create additional business by working closely with other members of the group. There is no telling where such partnerships might lead and how much business might be created when these partnerships are formed.

As you can see from these three purposes Referrals Quad City is not just another leads group. We want much more for our businesses and for our group. Because of this we are looking for just the right fit. If you are looking for the opportunity to build this kind of referral system and create strategic partnerships with like minded businesses, then give me a call (563-484-4288) or email me at: info@referrals-qca.com and I will answer all your questions.

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Filed Under: Connections, Networking, Referrals Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

Buy Local, Build Local, Brand Local

June 16, 2012 by 2 Comments

I have a new bone to pick. I have seen in recent days people trying to enter our local Quad City market with a campaign designed to line their pockets with local money and transfer that wealth out of the QCA to be invested and spent elsewhere. Don’t get me wrong, I am a capitalist and every company has a right to enter any market and sell its products and services. But, just as true is the fact that every one in that market has the right to buy local and keep the profits at home and at work in the community!

I for one, am on a mission these days. That mission is to teach, train, motivate, and encourage local business owners as well as clients and customers of those businesses to “buy local, build local, and brand local!”

I see five real benefits to such a plan:

  1. Local businesses would reinvest their profits into the community in which they were made.
  2. Local businesses would buy products/services from other local businesses.
  3. Local businesses could pool their efforts to find ways to give back to their local markets.
  4. Local customers/clients would have someone local to call if somethings needed to be done, fixed, or changed.
  5. Local customers/clients would be more willing to refer local companies to their family and friends.

I know that larger companies can nearly every time win on price, but what a local company cannot do in the price game, they can more than make up for in the quality of service and “return to the community” efforts that the national brands cannot!

So, as often as you can, buy local, build local, and brand local! Just like milk that does a body good, this will do your business good!

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