Tweet

How to Build Your Business with Referrals Repeat Business

Written by: Kevin Lawrence

Article Overview: Your business is a lot like a big wooden barrel in an old farmyard full of other barrels. Your barrel holds all of your customers. The other barrels belong to your competition. When a customer leaves, for whatever reason, think of this as your barrel of business leaking - part of its content is being drained. What's important to understand, if you want to build and sustain your business, is how you can prevent this from occurring. Why spend countless hours of time, heaps of money and plenty of precious energy marketing your business, if new clients just slip out through holes after you siphon them into your barrel?

How to Build Your Business with Referrals Repeat Business

Your business is a lot like a big wooden barrel in an old farmyard full of other barrels. Your barrel holds all of your customers. The other barrels belong to your competition. When a customer leaves, for whatever reason, think of this as your barrel of business leaking - part of its content is being drained.

What's important to understand, if you want to build and sustain your business, is how you can prevent this from occurring. Why spend countless hours of time, heaps of money and plenty of precious energy marketing your business, if new clients just slip out through holes after you siphon them into your barrel?

There are two ways you can make your barrel's level rise and not sink:

Put a hose in the barrel, in order to supply a constant stream of fresh, new customers. This is known as client acquisition.


Plug the cracks in your barrel before customers begin slipping through. This is called client retention or repeat business, and it can easily lead to referrals. Better customer service and stronger relationships with clients are maintained by businesses whose barrels stay leak-free.
Let's look at the first method: Adding a hose or constant stream of new customers to keep your barrel's level from dropping. It's very expensive to build your business this way, and many medium to smaller sized companies cannot afford the advertising budgets or additional skilled salespeople necessary to be successful using this approach. As you know, you can eat up all your profits so quickly with even one brief marketing campaign. And, that's why it's been said that it's five times as expensive to bring in a new customer as it is to keep an existing one happy. It's also ten times more fun and fulfilling to take care of an existing client than it is to look for a new one: How much do you enjoy searching for clients?

The other way you can increase the level of your barrel is by plugging its holes. Certain business' growth systems create a protective layer of film within their barrel. As a result, the barrel is insulated and its cracks are sealed. Once these cracks are filled, price sensitivity amongst customers tends to decline and competitors are left unable to penetrate your barrel in their pursuit of new clientele. Furthermore, a wonderful thing happens when you plug all the leaks you possibly can: Your barrel starts to self-generate.

When customers are cared for and feel positive about dealing with you, they will invite their friends, relatives, neighbors, co-workers and others to come join them in your barrel. This form of self-generation is called referrals - my favourite way of building businesses! What's beautiful is that it's effortless, it works, and it's really simple: Treat all your existing clients, contacts, suppliers, prospects and peers the right way - the way they expect to be treated - and they will bring you success in the form of repeat business, loyalty and new customers. If you are friendly and sincere with your clients and take pride in doing the best job possible, and if you experience happiness because you have made other people happy, then you have truly added value to your customers' experience. They will reward you for this, because it truly is the little things that separate successful people from the rest.

We design systems to help our clients properly insulate their barrels. An effective strategy for building your business with repeat and referred clients should contain:

A description of your "ultimate customer": You get what you focus upon and if you don't focus - well, you get the picture. We all know there are certain people and particular business types we would rather deal with.


A description of your ideal strategic alliances (people or businesses that you can share business with) and a strategy for meeting and building mutually beneficial relationships with these people.


Plan to C.A.R.E. for your clients:
Continuously stay in contact with them throughout the year
Appreciate your clients and their ongoing business
Remind them of all the services you provide and that you do value their referrals
Educate your clients on different areas of tax and finance that they can benefit from

A detailed outline of the step-by-step process you will rely upon in order to effectively convert potential and new customers into lifelong supporters and referrers.


A referral reward plan to show your appreciation to those who give you referrals in order to encourage them to send you even more customers in the future.


A plan to build and maintain your customer database so as to ensure that it is current and effective.


A list of your personal and business goals for the next 1 to 5 years.


A time management strategy: How do you intend to spend your time each week, reactively or pro-actively? If you're reactive, you'll get other people's "stuff" done, but wonder what happened to your day. On the other hand, if you're pro-active, you'll set goals, prioritize activities, stick with your plan, and look back upon your day with satisfaction and tangible results.


A Year Planning Chart (YPC) that ties all activities outlined above together on one sheet, so that, at a glance, you can see everything you need to do as well as how far you have come and have to go to reach your goals.


Your celebration plan: How will you reward yourself and your staff once you reap the benefits of following your plans and charted activities?
Our referral system can work for you in any way you like - your imagination is all that limits its potential. But remember, any successful plan has to be pre-defined and recorded, otherwise human nature will take over and nothing will happen.

Related Articles
  Did You Get Any Referrals Today?
  Getting Referrals
  Sales Success Tip-How to Increase Your Referrals
  Stress-Free Selling® - Go After the Easy Sales First
  Move from Mild Success to Wild Success

Article Tags:



Related Forum Posts
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.
Exclusive: Interview with Results - Hi Forum Members, I'm helping start up a Business Coaching and Consulting company here in Toronto, Ontario, Canada (a Subsidiary of RSC Business in Los Angeles). As a Research and Development Intern I am required to practice my listening and interview skills by surveying Small and Medium Businesses on thier Business. This Survey is designed by RSC Business to also assist the Business being interviewed more insight into their own business. I am looking to interview about 30 businesses across North America over the span of 3 months. At the end of these interviews I will be publishing a report of the results and they will be made available for free to the Interviewees. The Report data will include responses from a minimum of 100 interviews. I would like to extend this opportunity to members of the Forum. If you would like to have this short 20-30 minute interview conducted on your Business and you reside in North America please send me an email or PM. Please contact me at andy[at]jvprosperity[dot]com to arrange our interview and to get free access to the results when they are published.
Re: Great start, but no finish - My advise is FOCUS on your business. Focusing is the main factor to succeed on business. If you have a great idea, then follow it only, don't look anywhere else. It is especially essential in an online business. Because there are a lot of mind blowing sales letters promising millions dolllars or overnight success, people find it difficult to concentrate on one business and they lose their energy. Concept is simple. 1- Have a good idea; 2- Build your business on it; 3- Monetize your business; 4- Promote it; 5- Build list of responsive customers; 6- Maintain You Business. Focusing and not fearing from competition (instead you can learn from competitiors) are main tips of billionaires ,BTW. Orxan
Re: HOw to market a B2B consulting company - [quote="zohahunt77":428owzbi]Hi, I was wondering if anyone can tell me the difference between B2B and B2C. I don’t know about b2b marketing but I have done marketing so know things about it. I will suggest you to take online services which will spread your business all over web network. Online marketing is the best way to market any business.[/quote:428owzbi] B2B = Business to Business - You are marketing to other businesses. B2C = Business to Consumer - You are marketing to consumers.
English teachers learn Japanese as Interns - Yasunori, what about the many students that leave N. America to teach English in Japan. They may want to learn Japanese (maybe Business Japanese is a bit different) and the Japanese Business Culture.


Share this article with your friends. Fund someone's dream.

Leave a comment below or share on the left and you'll help support entrepreneurs in Africa through our partnership with Kiva. Over $50,000 raised and counting - Please keep sharing! Learn more.

Tweet

Newsletter

Get advice & tips from famous business
owners, new articles by entrepreneur
experts, my latest website updates, &
special sneak peaks at what's to come!

Name:
Email:

Popular Articles

What I Really Want Is...

Mistakes Made by New or Inexperienced Sales Staff

Email Marketing Made Easy #11 - Avoiding Spam

Suggestions

Email us your ideas on how to make our
website more valuable! Thank you Sharon
from Toronto Salsa Lessons / Classes for
your suggestions to make the newsletter
look like the website and profile younger
entrepreneurs like Jennifer Lopez.