Getting Referrals

The simple rule is - ‘Like associates with like’ The key is to be able to profile your customers and identify those that bring you the most profits with the least amount of hassle.

If you have a group of customers who:

• value quality service over price quibbling,
• buy often, and
• don’t try to squeeze all your profits out from every transaction …

- try to get more of these.

Alternatively, if you pitch an offer to a particular market segment, and qualified prospects

• make up their minds quickly,
• are open to up sell / cross-sell offers, and
• pay promptly (we can all dream …)

- definitely try to get more of these.

You Have To Ask

Unsolicited referrals often happen when you provide a quality service or product before, or within the agreed time frame.

But for every referral you get, there are many more that you could get - if you simply asked.

There is an optimum time to ask for a referral. The best time is at the time of ‘heightened excitement ‘ - which is typically just after:

• Your prospect has made the commitment to purchase your product or servce, and /or
• You have delivered against a major milestone in a project, and/or
• You’ve successfully turned around a customer complaint, and your client compliment’s you on having a far better service ethic than your competitors.

There is no need to feel bad about asking for a referral. If your customer is convinced that you are the best business to deal with (If not, why are they doing business with you?), then they will feel that they are actually doing their business and personal network a favour by sharing this with them.

Be Prepared

Asking for referrals can happen in an unstructured way, and at the wrong time. The end result will probably be a ‘No. can’t think of anybody right now …’

Don’t waste the opportunity.

Know when to,  and how to ask for a referral.

Possibly offer to draft the email for them, or even do the call, and merely mention that they endorse your product.

Offer An Incentive

In some cases an incentive may not appropriate. However, there is usually no harm offering some form of free information product as a Thank You - provided a certain number of referrals pan out as genuine prospects. The incentive can be in the form of:

• A gift to the referred friend,
• A reward for the referral to the current customer, or
• A gift and a reward - essentially the combination of the first two.

Follow Up!

Getting a referral - however obtained - and then not following up is wasting a low-cost lead …. and yet we often come across this.

A low cost prospect who you ignore? You should only do this if the referrer is one of your worst customers, and you don’t want to grow that segment of your market.

Unfortunately, many of the times the reason why referrals are not followed up are due to disorganisation in the business:

• There’s no formal system to manage referrals,
• Staff are operating in crisis mode, and so don’t have time to follow up on strategically important leads, and/or
• Your staff forget - they have not been trained as to the value of a referred lead, so they make no special effort to follow up - allowing themselves to become distracted by some or other urgent, but not important task.

Failing to follow up on your referrals will have a negative impact on your future marketing efforts:

• When your referrer asks your new lead what they think of your business, and you haven’t bothered to contact the lead, your referrer will start to think less of your business. After all - you chose to not use one of their referrals - which could lead them to assume that you don’t value the quality of the leads they provide to you.
• You will never be able to ask for another referral from that customer.