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How can YOUR customers benefit from giving YOU referrals?

Written by: Peter Lawless

Article Overview: We all know that the very best lead you can get into your business is a referral. When someone is referred to your business by someone that they know and respect, they are already open to your offering.

How can YOUR customers benefit from giving YOU referrals?

So how can you ensure that your business has a steady stream of referrals to supplement all you parallel lead generation activities?

While there are many systems that exist to automatically generate referrals, there is no doubt that the very best way is to ask your satisfied customers.

But what is the best way to ask to avoid getting the brush off? Indeed you may find customers will promise the world, yet they never seem to actually deliver.

Most referrals are luck! Most in fact come about due to the following 2 reasons.

A satisfied customer may be talking about the great benefits he just received from a business to a friend who just happens to be looking for a similar solution.

Someone looking for a solution calls around a number of friends and looks for a recommendation.

So how can you convince your customer to help you?
By showing them what they stand to gain from giving you the referral.

I would suggest that you have a conversation with your customer, when you have just confirmed that they are happy with your offering, along the following lines.

* What specifically did you like about our offering?
* Why did you choose us in the end?
* What did our solution enable your business to really achieve?
* How do you believe you would put a value on that?
* And what precisely would that value be?
* How long did it take you to get that value?

At this point you feed back to the customer the value that they obtained. Here is an example of a specific client situation of mine.

"Peter's intervention at Aquatech was very timely. We were a successful heating and supplies company, turning over more than €3million. Peter identified a few areas for immediate improvement, specifically in relation to marketing, organisational structure and sales process. 6 Months on, I am delighted to say that our revenues our up 40% year on Year." Brian McCarthy, Aquatech Ireland.

Now that you have your testimonial in the bag from a delighted customer you now continue with your questions.

Are you friends or know anybody well who runs a similar business to your own?

How do you believe they would be able to benefit from the same type of offerings that you just benefited from?

If they were to get those benefits, how do you see yourself benefiting?

Now repeat back to the customer how they stand to benefit from passing on your details to their close associates as a referral. But don't let them off the hook here.

* Ask them how they believe the best way to make contact with these people is.
* Find out when they intend to make contact.
* Ask for the names of the people that they intend to make contact with, so that you can ensure you really look after them.

When you get back to your office, you need to confirm 2 things.

* The testimonial that your customer has given you is OK to use
* The names of the people of businesses that they promised to contact. As a reminder you may even suggest that they use the testimonial that they have given you as a way of introducing you!

Some people still feel uneasy about asking their customers for both testimonials and referrals. As part of our workshops, such as the Customer Value Proposition Workshop, we bring our customers through the process.

Related Articles
  Karma Keys to a Referral-Based Business
  Getting Referrals
  The Give and Take of Business: 3 Lessons on the Reciprocity of Referrals
  Did You Get Any Referrals Today?
  “Reaping Rewards From An Effective Referral System”

Article Tags: aquatech, brian mccarthy, client situation, generation activities, ireland, marketing, no doubt, referral, referrals, satisfied customers, steady stream, testimonial



Related Forum Posts
Re: Marketing to Wealthy Consumers - Hi Russell - lots of great ideas so far! I haven't seen talk about referrals yet though. It's the most powerful way to reach more wealthy consumers if you already have an established base. I'm assuming that your customers may be repeat clients but there is a long time period between purchases (they don't come every month for a new item). Have you tried any referral programs for existing customers or thought of a way to stay in touch with your customers on a regular basis so at least they keep your company top of mind?
Customer Service - Great customer service, referrals and positive word of mouth are effective ways to promote your business. I've found that educating my customers about the sort of referrals I want is very valuable. While this sort of promotion can be very effective, it is only one type of advertising that should be done. Of course, the amount of promotion that you need to do depends on the amount of business you need to generate. Chris
20% increase - One of my businesses uses a system to help business owners manage customer relationships and encourage more referrals. I'm finding that this economy is making business owners take a second look at their business and it's assets (aka customers) to see how they can leverage them. Make those Customers (one-time sale) into Clients (repeat sales). I'm finding them more open to having this discussion with me and the results are speaking for itself. Everyone I've worked with so far has seen at least a 20% increase in sales or referrals within 4-6 months all done by managing an existing relationship.
How to develop sales contacts? - Unfortunately starting off there isn’t a whole lot of easy tricks. But when you get those 2 interested prospects from sales calls and turn them into customers, you need to develop a referral system that gets 3-4 good prospects from each of them. That's the key to prospecting in sales, referrals from satisfied customers. Sometimes they'll give you the business without having to ask, but normally you'll have to pry a little and ask them who they know that could use your service or product.
Re: Do Your Prospects / Customers Trust You? - All good points everyone and I'm learning as I read through. Gaining trust takes a lot of time and even if you're an expert or a startup in the field that you're promoting or excelling with, still, you have to put enough attention on how you'll be able to establish value among your prospects and customers by giving them what they need (contents, contacts, ventures, etc) and not only by offering them services and selling them products. Thus, customers do trust us with the way we give them satisfaction first before they give something back in return.


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