Reach Branding Certification Moves to Career Thought Leaders

Just announced, the Reach Personal Branding certifications will now be under the auspices of Career Thought Leaders.

CTL already offers its own certification, the Academy Certified Resume Writer (ACRW) and took on the administration of the Master Resume Writer (MRW) and Credentialed Career Manager (CCM) after the dissolution of the Career Management Alliance.

The Reach Personal Branding process was developed by William Arruda. As part of the transition, Arruda -- as well as Reach collaborators Deb Dib and Susan Chritton -- will present a series of webinars to introduce CTL members to the personal branding process.

The first webinar will be held on Wednesday, Feb. 8 with Arruda presenting.

Learn more and register at http://bit.ly/BrandTrends17CTL

In addition, Reach certified professionals will be invited to attend the CTL conference in Baltimore in April. Because of this, CTL has extended the early registration discount until Feb. 15.

Learn more at http://bit.ly/ctlconf2017

Marie Zimenoff, CEO and owner of CTL says, "The CTL Board and I are excited about this transition and the richness personal branding can bring to your practice – from graduating students differentiating themselves in the marketplace to executives building a distinctive leadership brand."

What is a "Fair" Referral Fee for Resume Writers?

I got a couple of questions from a resume writing colleague today about referral fees, and I wanted to share my answers in today's blog post.

Securing Referrals Special Report

* Can you please advise what is the prescribed fee amount/percentage range that one should offer another career professional for a referral (career service) that would be fair? (Is there any minimum and maximum offered?)

Referral fees are negotiable. 15% is the most common referral fee, but I've seen anywhere from 10-25%. 

One thing to consider when you're deciding what percentage to pay as a referral commission for being sent prospects from a colleague is: What is the QUALITY of the referral? If someone sends a client to you who is pre-qualified and pre-sold (meaning they're a good fit for you and they're ready to buy from you based on what the referring person said), that's worth it.

There's a mathematical way to figure this out, for the most part. You can add up what you're spending (in money and time) each month, and divide it by the number of clients you secure yourself. For example, you might spend 1 hour/week on marketing and $100 on your marketing (website, paid ads, etc.). Let's say you value your time at $75/hour. So that's $75 x 4 = $300/month (time) + $100/month (hard costs) = $400. Let's say you secure 6 new clients/month. So divide $400/6 = $66 (cost to acquire one client).

Let's say that referral partner sends you a client that pays $500/project. Your 20% referral fee would be $100. But remember, unlike your own marketing costs, you only incur this "marketing expense" if you secure the client. With your other marketing costs, you spend $400/month and might get 0 clients out of it. (Or, things might go really well, and you get 10 clients out of it!). But the advantage with referral commissions is you only pay them when you're making money (the other 80%). 

* Are referral fees always required or mandatory? For instance, I offered a referral to a resume writer once for a client that I was not able to take due to other deadlines. However, I did not charge a referral fee upon the client retaining her service. 

No, referral fees are not always required or mandatory. As the referring person, you can always request a referral fee, but it's not mandatory. HOWEVER, thinking of that resume writer, wouldn't you be MORE likely to send clients their way if they HAD sent you a 15% referral commission (even if you hadn't asked for it?) Or even some kind of thank you?

* Are referral fees based on certain factors, or more on the negotiation or agreement between two career professionals what is suitable?

Just like with subcontractor fees, I believe that the more "work" one party does, the higher the compensation should be. For example, subcontract writers who have direct client contact (including conducting intake interviews) should make more than subcontract writers without client contact (and who work from questionnaires). However, because there is no standard in the industry, this isn't always equivalent.

In an "ideal" world, I think it would be:
10% referral fee -- pass along the name of a colleague

15% referral fee -- "normal" amount of selling -- give name/contact info and some information about the resume writer to convince the client they're a good fit

20% referral fee -- going above and beyond -- information about why this resume writer would be a good fit plus introduction of client directly to resume writer

The reason why I generally think referral fees should be 20% and under is that now you're getting into the "subcontract" rates territory. When you'd pay 20% to another writer to create the actual content for the client (again, subcontract fees are generally 20-35%), I think that's the top level. But I have seen some writers who offer 25% referral fees.

In the affiliate marketing world, referral commissions can be up to 75%, but usually these are for set programs (webinars, courses, group programs), not custom services.

If you're looking for more information about eliciting referrals from colleagues, check out this special report:

Securing Referrals: How to Get More Referrals From Other Resume Writers

If you're interested in learning more about subcontracting as a resume writer, check out:

Making Money as a Resume Subcontractor

Tools for Offering Free Webinars for Marketing Your Resume Writing Business

I got this question today from a Bronze member:

I’ve decided to go back to hosting webinars as part of my marketing tool box and have been researching various companies. I found one -- Zoom -- that seems to fit my needs for about $55 a month which is about ½ of what I paid for Go To Webinar. 

However, I’ve spoken to the folks at join.me a couple of times and would like to work with them because of price and just because they are so nice. My problem is that, as you know, they don’t offer registration.

I offer both free and paid webinars using Join.me. I analyzed a lot of different webinar platforms because I'm pretty picky. I wanted something easy for attendees to use (without requiring a download) and no Javascript. Join.me has affordable pricing and good technical support. I like that attendees can use a variety of platforms (desktop/laptop, tablets or phones) to access the calls. I also like that recordings take just one click and they can be directly uploaded to YouTube.

Downsides:

• There is no built-in registration. I use a third-party registration option to handle that (EventBrite is a great option).
• No built-in toll-free number options (most attendees don't care about this, but if you did want a toll-free call-in option, you can use a third-party service)
• It doesn't track who attended versus who didn't, so you can't do follow-up marketing based on who actually was on the call or not.

So how do you let people know about your webinars? I use EventBrite -- here's my affiliate link:
http://www.eventbrite.com/r/rwdigest2

I like EventBrite because it's free if you don't charge for your webinar. If you're using your webinar for marketing, you're probably not charging for it, and EventBrite is great for this.

EventBrite gives you a landing page to provide all your event information, full-service registration (including automated reminder emails) and event promotion (you can integrate your EventBrite event with your Facebook page and EventBrite will also promote the event on their "master list" of events). For paid programs, EventBrite also has a built-in affiliate program so you can reward referrals. (It also allows you to do special discount codes for referral source tracking too.)

If you offer a paid program, EventBrite is still a great, affordable option. You can use EventBrite's built-in payment processor or your own PayPal or Authorize.net payment processing. The EventBrite cost for paid events is 2.5% of the ticket cost plus $.99 (up to $19.95/ticket) if you use your own payment processing.

Add 3% if you use EventBrite's payment processing. I find it's about 5-10% effectively. (That is, if you sell a webinar for $59, your takehome would be between $54.76 (EventBrite: 2.5% is $1.48 plus $.99 = $2.47 plus 3% EventBrite fee = $1.77 = $4.24) and $56.63 (EventBrite: 2.5% is $1.48 plus $.99 = $2.47, plus separate PayPal or Authorize.net fees).  With the example given, that's between 4-7% net.

Do You Catastrophize?

I love the word "catastrophize." It's hard to spell and it's hard to say ... but it's a perfect word to describe what happens when you let problems eat away at you.

When something goes wrong in your business, do you spend hours worrying and fretting over it? Do you re-play the problem and imagine all the ways that it could get worse? Do you slip into self-pity and find yourself asking why this is happening?

You may not know that's what it's called: catastrophizing. Catastrophizing makes a small problem look much worse than it actually is. If you let it, catastrophizing can completely drain your energy and time.

An example of catastrophizing would be your computer has a minor hiccup. Maybe a document crashes and you discover the file is corrupted. Immediately, you think something horrible has happened to your word processing software and all your Word files will be unreadable. That client draft that you're in the middle of finishing? Gone. All the resumes you wrote over the past 3 years? Done for. Well, that's it for your business. Wish I had backed it up.

While it’s understandable to get upset when you face a business setback or new problem, this type of thinking isn’t productive. That’s because you’re focused on the problem and not the solution.

Imagine the above scenario does in fact happen to you. You can open another file and discover that it was just that one file. And, in fact, while that file was corrupted, Word saved a temporary version that you're able to work from. It doesn't have your latest changes, and the formatting is off, but at least you don't have to start from scratch. And, now that you can breathe again, you go ahead and backup your computer so you don't have to worry about losing ALL your work.

You can fret over it all day or you can say to yourself, “Whew, that was a close one. I'm going to make sure I stick to a backup schedule from now on!"

The first response makes you feel like a powerless victim. But the second one allows you to look at what you can do. It keeps you productive and focused. With that focus, you recognize that you can handle this problem without losing a lot of time and money.