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Top 7 Tips in How to Pitch and Catch Business Referrals

Written by: Leanne Hoagland-Smith

Article Overview: Business referrals are much like the game of baseball where you pitch and catch. These 7 tips may help you pitch and catch more referrals to increase sales.

Top 7 Tips in How to Pitch and Catch Business Referrals

Business referrals are the source of 80% of all new sales according to past and current market research. What continually amazes me, as a business coach these past 8 years, is the number of small business owners who fail to leverage this untapped revenue resource. Possibly, these 7 tips may help you to change your current business results and catapult sales to new levels of success.

1. Revisit all clients (current and old) and ask for a referral. When was the last time you ask a former client or a new client for a referral?

2. When meeting new prospects or even suspects, upon the end of your conversation ask the following: “Do you know of anyone who might benefit from my services or products?” Asking is a powerful tactic to increase sales.

3.Incorporate asking for 3 solid referrals within your proposal or statement of work. Establishing a process for consistency securing new referrals from satisfied and loyal clients is truly a "no brainer." Referrals are part of the Law of Attraction and the Law of Abundance.

4. Meet with other members of your networking groups or strategic alliances and learn more about them so that you can “pitch” their services or products if and when appropriate. Referrals are not a one way street. You must also think of others with whom you have established business relationships.

5. Always use the referred person’s name (with permission) when contacting a referral. By using the name of the referral source turns a cold call into a warm call.

6. Update the referring individual as to the progress of the referral. By keeping the referring individual aware of the progress shows that you are a person of high integrity.

7. Establish a monitoring system for all pitches and catches so that you can determine if your catches (closed deals) land in your glove or end up being a run-a-away (lost deal). Keeping track of your referrals is necessary so that you not only acknowledge the referral source, but can determine the source of all new sales. Measuring your activity allows you to "work smarter not harder."

If you are not actively using referrals as a strategy and a tactic to increase sales to your bottom line, you are potentially missing thousands of dollars in new revenue. And after all, business is all about revenue, no ifs, no buts and no maybes.

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Business Tips - How about: Tips for managers to handle employees more effectively? Tips on how to deal with difficult customers? Tips on how to deal more effectively with suppliers? The only three I have in mind right now, but will try to come up with something else. Chris
My entry - 1. The Best Business Books Ever: The 100 Most Influential Business Books You'll Never Have Time to Read - this is a fascinating book about the history of Business theory, and I'd recommend it to anybody. 2. The Big Book of Small Business: You Don't Have to Run Your Business by the Seat of Your Pants, by Tom Gegax. Ditto. 3. PADI: The Business of Diving Book Okay, so this book won't be of use to anyone who doesn't want to start a scuba store, but I did, and this book was of course invaluable to me in reaching that goal.
Pitch Like A Girl: How a Woman Can Be Herself and Still Succ - Pitch Like A Girl: How a Woman Can Be Herself and Still Succeed Ronna Lichtenberg 2005 From the inside cover: "As a woman, you probably feel uncomfortable when it comes to promoting yourself and asking for what you want." WHAT IN THE HECK IS THIS, I asked myself when I read that. Women are the fastest growing business owners in the US and Canada, there are t housands of women executives and CEOs - though not as many as might be expected, admittedly, yet the book opens with this surely out of date stereotype. However, as she continued to give examples of women who had high paying jobs but were routinely not paid as much as men because it hadn't occurred to them to ask for raises, etc., I decided it was probably true for a majority of businesswomen... Anyway, more of the info from the jacket: "Other books have told you how to get what you want by being more like a guy. Pitch Like A Girl tells you why its an advantage to be who you are and how to do better by bringing more of yourself to work." The TOC: 1. Pink and Blue 2. The Quck-dry Chapter 3. What's In your head that's not in his 4. The Me, Inc Mindset 5. Visioning: Discover What You Really Want 6. Identifying Prospects 7. Pre-pitch homework and heartwork 8. Crafting the pitch 9. Pricing the pitch 10. Packaging the pitch 11. Delivering the pitch 12. Closing Conclusion A Word to the guys The Empathy Quotient The Systemizing Quotient Bibliography And on a side note - non-fiction books without indexes - of which this is one, annoy me.
Why women don't charge more - I just read a chapter in Pitch Like A Girl: How a Woman Can Be Herself and Still Succeed, by Ronna Lichtenberg that deals with this. THe chapter is called Pricing the Pitch. "In a WAll Street Journal article about what might be holding women back from corporate success, Terry Dal, a former vice president at Wells Fargo bank, said, "Good girls don't advertise; only prostitutes advertise. We feel dirty promoting ourselves." The author's advice: The first step in getting the money you desserve is to understand the market rate for your offering. Not what you think you need, not what they're willing to pay, but the going rate for similar goods and services offered in your area by someone with your skills and experience. Then, seek expert advice. "Men routinely consult lawyers, financial advisers, exxecutive recruiters and any other paid counselors to help them assess what constitutes a fair fee." Your research into going rates should not lead you to a single price for your pitch but rather a range of prices - both a market range and a personal range, which should overlap but won't necessarily be identical. In pricing, one size does not fit all. The final step in determining your price is to consider what you think you'd be paid for the same job if you were a man. The author also discusses why women usually discount their prices (must'n't appear too over-confident), the difference between discounting and "giving a discount", and other issues. I'd advise every woman wondering about what to charge to read at least this chapter of the book.
Re: How do you get your clients? - I think staying away from gathering clients strictly online when first starting out is probably a good idea. Your first few clients could maybe be people you know, or know through somebody that may require some of your services. Another good way of gaining new clientel is offering your first few clients completely free service in exchange for placing your business card or promotional material in their business if you're doing b2b sales. Referrals are the lifeblood of many small businesses.


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