It's the start of the New Year and time for all of us to be looking for more clients and prospecting more effectively. One of the most effective forms of prospecting I have found over my sales career has been to always ask for referrals, This way I always have a professional introduction and there is credibility from the outset.

The easiest script I have used over the years when asking for referrals is this - 'If we had to swap jobs today, who would be the first three people you would call'

Here are my 10 steps for effective referral prospecting:

• Ask for specific referrals to narrow the customer?s focus.
• Gather as much information about the referral as possible.
• Ask your customer for permission to use his or her name.
• Ask your customer for help in obtaining an appointment with the referral.
• Contact the referral as soon as possible
• Inform your customer about the outcome of the contact.
• Build referral alliances (this can be through sources such as clubs, centres of influence, key people in the industry).
• Prospect for referrals just like you prospect for sales leads
• Rank your referrals as you do your customers:
• Seek internal referrals (other departments, locations, divisions, branches and subsidiaries).

Take a listen to a cut from my sales resource 'Sales Success Strategies'

At last I have completed my speaking series 'Speak for High Fees in Many Lands'. It has taken 3 years, but the end product is great.

One of the great advantages of my occupation, is that I get to visit fantastic countries, eat excellent food and get paid for doing it. Here are some tips that work a treat:

Find the other offices When speaking internationally, find out where the International client for whom you are speaking has other branches around the world. Find out who you should contact at the other offices to do the same talk. In January I spoke at a large software company in Dubai. The CEO from London was in Dubai at the time and heard me speak. After the talk he asked me to contact him to replicate the talk to their other international offices. They have offices in 33 countries.

Identify clients you have spoken for in the past that have international offices. Get a referral to the decision maker in the overseas office. Email or send a letter and follow up with a phone call.

Add on an extra day to meet with potential clients ? Wherever I speak in the world, I add on an extra day to see potential clients and bureaus. I can normally fit in 5 appointments for the day and this always results in at least one extra booking. On a recent trip to Singapore, I managed to give a keynote speech to a large Insurance Company and in the same day have five meetings with potential clients. One of these meetings was a cocktail party where I met with twenty of the most influential business leaders in Singapore. This was only achieved because I had developed a center of influence in Singapore who had arranged the talk and all of the meetings. He is rewarded with a percentage of the fee, which makes it a win-win situation for everyone.

For the next two weeks, there is a special offer to all my subscribers - a 40% discount on 'Speak for High Fees in Many Lands'. As an added bonus for those who invest, you get 500 contacts of Bureaus, event planners and associations in the UK, USA, Asia and Australia. These will be supplied at 125 every quarter, the first batch in an excel worksheet with the programme.

My challenge to you is to make ten times the investment in the next six months.

Click here to be taken to the 40% discount page (for the next 14 days only.)

It's amazing how many people have great sites, but very little traffic. There are many ways to drive more traffic to your site and one of the easiest is have a linking strategy. The more links you have, the more the search engines love you and promote you.

For me the easiest two ways of developing link strategies are through articles and links with people I know and other sites that have high rankings.

Here are some effective ideas for writing articles:

• Keep it short and to the point ? don?t ramble.
• Pace and balance - Write a quick summary of each paragraph, then develop each one with three or four supporting sentences. Close with a motivating call to action.
• How-To, "7 Tips" and Q&A are immensely popular. Use sub headlines in bold type to help guide their eyes down the page.
• Focus on the customer.
• Include a call to action - "Visit us today to find out how great prospecting ability can make a world of difference for your business!"

If you have written any articles, finish them with your contact details which includes a link to your website. You now submit these to article directories for others to download and put onto their websites. Because there is a link in your article, you have an automatic link back to your website. Just imagine if you have 20 articles which have been downloaded and linked 200 times, your traffic will soar.

Submit your articles to this new directory http://www .articles4business.org/ are there are not yet thousands of articles there where yours will get lost amongst the many.

I also swap links with everyone I know, so if you have a website and would like to swap links, drop me an email with the details to frank@frankfurness.com

This month it has to be Amazon. They must be the world's biggest online store, but do they make it difficult to become a vendor.

I first made contact at the beginning of January to sell 23 of my products on their online store. I was told that I would have a dedicated account manager and that it would cost me £25 a month plus a percentage of the sales. Two days later I was debited the £25 and month and a half later I'm still trying to get sorted.

They seem to have so many departments (who don't liaise with each other) and after complaints and numerous unreturned calls, slow progress took place.

Finally I was rewarded with an email telling me that all my Ferguson televisions had been uploaded and that day received my first order for the television. The only problem is that I don't sell televisions and after numerous phone calls they told me that they had messed up and would remove the televisions immediately and let the buyer know that I didn't sell televisions.

After repeated assurances and email confirmations I was assured that I wouldn't be charged commission for the sale of the TV, but as you can guess a different department charged me the commission.

I am now in contact almost daily and told that it will be sorted, the only challenge is WHEN??

In our businesses how easy do we make it for potential clients to do business with us.

Why do a small percentage of people qualify at a top level every year while others sit back and wonder how they could ever achieve it.

There are many reasons, including Knowledge, Good Habits, Positive Mental Attitude and Excellent Skills, but research has shown that these top producers have definite goals and a detailed plan of action for attaining their targets

So, why not you? It?s the ideal time to set up your Goals Programme and detailed Production Plan.

Start by setting up a Goals Programme (maybe the first time you?ve ever done this). Guidelines for setting goals are as follows:

• Goals must be written
• They must be your goals
• They must be achievable.
• You need to stretch yourself to reach the goals.
• You need goals in every area of your life
• Set yourself short, medium and long term goals.
• Be prepared to change and pay the price for reaching your goals.
• Realize that goal setting is an ongoing process