Of course, every sales person knows referral business is vitally important. But how do you generate enough referrals to triple your sales and commissions? That’s easy, keep reading and I will share three sure fire steps to creating massive referrals for your business:
Step#1: Wow your clients
The first step to generating referral business is to go out of your way to demonstrate a high level of service to EVERYONE who comes in contact with your business – not just clients.
Everyone who comes in contact with your business is a potential customer or referral source. As a mortgage lender, I’ve had service people come into my office, see how we do business, and ask about refinancing.
But how do you “wow” your clients and others to generate referral business?
Basically, you will need to be honest, knowledgeable, friendly, professional, and deliver on your promises.
Exceed their expectations. Set yourself up to succeed. If you think a task will be completed on Wednesday, tell your client it will completed on Friday. Then, when you call them on Wednesday to report that the task has been completed you’ll look like a superstar because you exceeded their expectation. In short, deliver ahead of schedule.
Communicate proactively. Find out why your clients call and stop them from calling by answering all questions ahead of time. In the mortgage business, I found that clients and everyone else involved in the transaction would call for status updates. So I put a system in place to communicate updates to everyone automatically. Now, my phone doesn’t ring because clients get regular scheduled updates.
Give unexpected bonuses. Give your clients some kind of surprise bonus. Give them more than what they expected. Your bonus could relate to your product or it could be in the form of a gift. Here are a few gift giving ideas to help generate referral business:
Before the sale
Try to give your clients something right up front. Try giving clients a $5 gift card before they even agree to do business with you.
During the sales process
Send cookies to both spouses’ work with a thank you note and plenty of your business cards so they can give them to co-workers. This is a excellent technique for creating referral business.
After the transaction is complete
Send flowers to your clients’ home.
Step #2: Collect testimonials
Now that you have wowed your clients, get a testimonial from them.
In fact, it would be a great idea to survey your clients at the beginning, middle and end of the sales process immediately after they have received one of your gifts.
Collect your surveys in writing by using short, quick answer questionnaires – 10 questions or less. Here are sample questions for your questionnaire:
1) Why did you choose to do business with us?
2) Was your transaction closed on time? YES / NO
3) How would you rate our courtesy?
EXCELLENT / GOOD / FAIR / POOR
4) How would you rate our efficiency and speed?
EXCELLENT / GOOD / FAIR / POOR
5) How would you evaluate the competitiveness of the price you received on your product?
EXCELLENT / GOOD / FAIR / POOR
6) Overall, how would you rate the service you received during this transaction?
EXCELLENT / GOOD / FAIR / POOR
7) Have you ever purchased a similar product from a company other than Your Company Name? YES / NO
8) If you answered YES to question #7, would you say we were:
BETTER / SAME / WORSE
9) Would you recommend us to a friend or relative? YES / NO
These questionnaires will serve as testimonials for the next step in the creation of your referral business.
Step #3: Generate more referral business
Use your client’s testimonial to target everyone in their center of influence. Send your testimonial to prospective clients and referral business partners along with an approach letter.
More on the approach letter in a moment; first, here is a list of potential referral business partners that can be targeted after a mortgage transaction just to give you some ideas:
* HR manager at their work
* Listing real estate agent and that agents entire office
* Selling real estate agents and that agents entire office
* CPA
* Financial planner
* Insurance agent
* The seller of the home on a purchase transaction
* Title Company
* Real estate appraiser
* Neighbors
Now, do you need some ideas for writing your cover letter? To download three approach letter samples visit: www.Mortgage-Leads-Generator.com/a/approachletter.htm
In summary, incorporate these ideas into the way you conduct business and you will automatically deliver such a high level of service that your clients will jump at the chance to tell their family, friends, and co-workers about your service.
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Referral Business: 3 Steps to Generating Unlimited Referrals
How to Get More Referral Business
Word of mouth is one of the most effective ways to grow your coaching business. It’s free, or at most costs very little, yet very few coaches use it to anywhere near it’s potential!
Consider this: if you got just one referral from each one of your clients, over the next 60 days you’d double your client base! What would that mean to your potential income and how many more people would you be helping in supportive and uplifting ways?
So, how do you maximize word of mouth? Here are 5 Steps you can take now…
1. Really appreciate your clients and let them know consistently you value them
This is the most important, yet overlooked element of creating endless referrals. Many businesses focus more on profits than on people. Focusing on profits alone can be detrimental to success and ‘Word of Mouth’ success comes from looking beyond just profit into how you can enrich your customer’s lives.
Action: At least once a month, take the time to communicate to each of your clients and show them you appreciate them. Send them something of value, something unexpected, a bonus report, a special piece of news you just found. Make it relevant to them and do it regularly.
2. Create an exceptional experience each time they deal with you or your company
If you can make doing business with you an exceptional experience, your clients will want to tell a lot of people. People want amazing experiences!
Here is an example: There is a Life Coach in Brisbane who has a special relationship with a city coffee shop. Once every 8 weeks he invites his clients to a ‘brains trust’ meeting and the coffee and cake is on the house. Every client that attends gets a card and a voucher from the coffee shop owner to say ‘Thank you for joining us today, we would love to see you again soon’. The voucher is a ‘buy one get one free’ coffee voucher. So they are encouraged to come back again. And because the coffee shop owner is exposing his business to potential new clients the coach pays just cost price on the coffee and cake his clients eat. Normally about 8 clients attend and the cost is around $30. Just a little extra touch can make dealing with your business that much more of an exceptional experience!
Action: What can you do now to add little things that make an exceptional experience? Perhaps you can use the above example or something similar. Remember, start creating exceptional experiences today.
3. Give your customers incentives for giving you referrals
If you’re being passive about referrals then you’re sitting on a gold-mine. Come up with ways of rewarding your clients for referring business to you. They could receive free gifts, such as a 30 minute back massage voucher for referring a friend or a free Style Cut from an award winning beauty salon. The businesses involved would welcome the opportunity to have new clients come their way and would be happy to give that first style cut or treatment for free if they understand the potential value of a new customer.
Action: Reward your clients for referring people to you. Come up with rewards that will be beneficial to your clients. If you worked with executive clients perhaps a free 30 minute health check at a trusted health centre would be valuable or a voucher to use at an upmarket clothing boutique.
4. Make it easy for clients to give you referrals
If you want to get lots of referrals, you must make it incredibly easy for your clients to tell their friends. Don’t expect them to go way out of the way to help you grow your business. Make it as simple as possible.
Action: Develop a ‘referral package’ that you give to your clients. Ask your clients to be an ambassador for your business as you wish to work with people similar to them. The package would include a letter explaining why referrals are important to you, and a series of referral cards that your client can give out to others. Present it professionally and it will hold more value, more worth.
5. Ask at the right time!
When is the best time to ask for referrals? Any time! If you have followed the steps listed above…you’ve let clients know they are appreciated, you’ve made dealing with you an exceptional experience, you give them an incentive to share your message with friends and you make it easy for them to do so…you can ask for referrals at any time.
Action: The key is to do something now. Draft up a letter or e-mail today and just send it off to your clients letting them know how much you value them, who much you have enjoyed working with them in the past and include something that is going to be helpful, useful for them to use, read or understand. Then over the next 4 to 6 weeks develop your ‘referral package’ and start to use it. Take yourself out of your comfort zone and take action….because if you don’t someone will and what will that mean to your business in the years to come.
14 Rules Of Business Referral Etiquette
One of the key roles of management is to build business through relationships. A common way to build relationships is through referrals: with, for and through banks, attorneys, employees, peers, and anyone else who has something that someone else wants or needs. The better you are at managing the referral, the better off you and those in your organization will be. Unfortunately, even though most referrals start with good intentions, they’re conducted haphazardly and don’t yield the results people expect. It’s often the reason that referrals are not offered. Who wants to be burned? The tips in this article should help you control the outcomes and get what you want.
Everyone has been embarrassed by their association with another person at one time or another. How about that cousin you wouldn’t want anyone to know about? But what happens when the embarrassment happens in a business situation: more specifically, when you refer one person to another and one of those parties is unprofessional or just plain screws up? Making a bad connection could cost you money or something more valuable and much harder to recoup—your reputation.
We once stepped into an awkward situation when we referred a business peer, seeking a specific product, to one of our clients, who just so happened to offer that very product. We thought we were doing a good thing, a win-win-win thing…until we received a phone call from our client explaining that the referred person made a vulgar offer to a woman on the client’s staff when she said she couldn’t go any lower on her price. We were shocked. Our client ended the conversation with, "I'm not sure what to do, but what he [the business peer] did was disrespectful to my staff and to you. I'm going to let you handle this." The outcome was hardly the one we were shooting for. All we could do was apologize and hope our reputation didn’t take too big a hit.
The referral is part of Business 101, and it’s a valuable way to extend your business connections. Typical referrals involve three parties: the person who wants something, the person who has something to give, and the person who connects the two. Sounds simple and clean…but as our bad experience shows, sometimes things get messy. So what can you do to facilitate successful referrals? That depends on which of the three roles you’re playing. Here they are.
The person who wants something. If someone connects you to another party, remember to:
1.…respect relationships that others have developed. Consider it your way of saying “thanks” to the person who made the connection.
2.…stay professional and avoid being too casual or friendly. A referral ONLY opens a door of opportunity. You’re still responsible for building your own relationship.
3.…conduct yourself in a way that honors the “referrer.” Your actions represent yourself AND the person who gave you the referral.
4.…leave foul language at the door. Everyone has a different tolerance point.
5.…keep ethics above board. To do so will net you a double win. To fail will curse you with a double loss at the very least. Good news travels; bad news travels faster.
6.…check the ego. Don't believe that your credentials, awards, accomplishments and the referral impress everyone so much that you can leave your manners at the door.
The person who has something to give. If someone sends business your way, make sure you:
1.…deliver what you promise, and promise only what you KNOW you can deliver. If you find that you can’t help out, be honest about it and say thank you.
2.…make good on any mistakes that occur. People understand that errors happen. Keep both of the other two parties’ interests in mind when taking responsibility for those errors.
3.…if you want to keep the referral business pouring in, make sure you meet or exceed the expectations of the person doing the referring. Hint: they’re expecting you to make them look good.
4.…never “bad mouth” the person who referred the business or the one providing the service. What you say will almost surely get back to them.
The person who connects the two. Before you connect one person to another, make sure you:
1.…know whom you’re dealing with. Only connect people who will show you in a good light…that goes for the person who wants something as well as the one who has something to give.
2.…aren’t connecting people for the soul purpose of getting reciprocal referrals. A client in Boston complained about giving out referrals but rarely getting them in return. Instead of expecting referrals, he learned that the real value came back to him in the form of strengthened business relationships with others.
3.…kick off the transaction in a professional fashion. Whether by telephone, email, or in person, set a tone of respect by introducing each person as a respected professional.
4.…butt out when you see the relationship blossom. Chalk up the connection as another success and move on.
Referral etiquette is basically pretty simple. Behave yourself, respect others, and do the right thing. Then make sure you deal only with those who do the same. The combination is a winning formula for building new business relationships and strengthening old ones.
© David and Lorrie Goldsmith