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.



How to Build Your Business with Referrals Repeat Business - To learn more about this author, visit Kevin Lawrence's Website.

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