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Referral TIP

Written by: Donald F. Pooley

Article Overview: Ruth Forbes asked me "For the e-mail referrals, do you have, up your sleeve, a GREAT (motivating) letter to clients? I would like to get to those clients who have yet to give me referrals."

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Referral TIP

Ruth Forbes asked me "For the e-mail referrals, do you have, up your sleeve, a GREAT (motivating) letter to clients? I would like to get to those clients who have yet to give me referrals."
While I don't have such a letter, Ruth, here's an idea that Pamela Yellin calls her "Client Feedback Survey":
1. Call your clients and tell them you want to get feedback on how you are doing, so you can become better at serving them. Do this yourself, at least the first few times, and don't send a letter.
2. Ask the person to be honest and to tell you specific ways in which you could improve the way you do business. Listen carefully and take notes.
3. Thank the referrors, even for negative feedback.
4. Then ask what they have liked about doing business with you. Most important, ask what is the biggest benefit they have received from working with you. Turbo-charge your results by asking feeling questions.
5. Tell them you are glad they feel that way, and ask who else they care enough about that they would want to see them benefit in the same way.
6. Describe your ideal prospect, to prompt them to give you the highest quality prospect. Also, show them a list of people they would be likely to know (neighbors, friends, etc.) and ask who on the list would be worth contacting.

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About the Author: Donald F. Pooley
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Don Pooley, the author of this article, allows you to publish it if you include these credit lines: Copyright 2005, Donald F. Pooley, Inc. Don Pooley CLU, CFP, CHFC, "The Advisor's Advisor" has shared his marketing know-how with audiences of life insurance men in all major Canadian cities, London, Australia, Chicago, New York, San Francisco, Hong Kong, and Singapore, and now in his free ezine. To get more ideas on marketing your services, plus free ebooks, subscribe now at http://www.eTIP.ca/

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Re: Win Prizes - The Triple Crown Contest! - Hi GT - if you log into your author account you'll see Referral Program as one of the options on the left side. If you click on that you'll get the link that will tie people to your account.

Picking a corporate lawyer - Hi Everyone, I was just curious to know what's the most important criteria a small business owner should look at when choosing a corporate lawyer? -Cost/hr? -Location? -Reputation/Referral? -Experience? -Personality? How did you pick your lawyer? And what's a fair price to pay per hour? Thanks

Re: FREE Toronto Referral Workshop - Hi there, Indeed, I have never heard of a Referral Seminar. What a good idea. I guess being offered for free, there must have been a great deal of people attending. It is another way of saying: Do you want to increase your customers. Come along and we help and teach you. It has been said, that even in downturn of business confidence and consumer's caution, business will not come to a grinding halt. Please Andy, can you let us h ave these 14 ways of getting referrals. Thanks.

Re: How to develop sales contacts? - Everyone has the right idea here. Depending on your business, there are different techniques that you could use. For consultants and sales heavy businesses, there are three tactics that I have found especially useful in my business: 1. Attend Networking Events 2. Cold Calling 3. Referral Program 4. Affiliate Program (most successful) The affiliate program was successful for me, as I hooked up with a franchise consultant, and he gave multiple unit businesses that needed my credit card processing services. I highly suggest you hook up with a sales partner, and give him a cut of the monthly revenue.

Re: A Tip to Increase Traffic - I do believe that Link Referral is also a powerful way to increase your traffic, however, here are some tips that I have came across with the other day from Webblogs: Write Well and Write Often Frequently updating your blog with useful content is the first step to building your blog's audience. The content you write is what will keep readers coming back for more. Make sure you have something meaningful to say to them and say it often to maintain their interest and keep them loyal. Furthermore, post frequently to increase the number of chances you have for your blog's content to be noticed by search engines such as Google or Technorati. 2. Submit Your Blog to Search Engines Get on the radar screen for the popular search engines such as Google and Yahoo! by submitting your blog's URL to them. Most search engines provide a 'Submit' link (or something similar) to notify the search engine of your new blog, so those search engines will crawl it and include your pages in their results. It's important to understand that simply submitting your blog to search engines doesn't mean your pages will appear at the top of a Google search results screen, but at least your blog will be included and will have the chance of being picked up by a search engine. 3. Use and Update Your Blogroll By adding links to sites you like in your blogroll, the owners of those blogs will find your blog and will be likely to add a reciprocal link in their blogrolls. It's an easy way to get the link to your blog in front of many readers on other blogs. The hope is that some of those readers will click on the link to your blog on the other blogs' blogrolls and find your content interesting and enjoyable turning them into loyal readers. 4. Harness the Power of Comments Commenting is a simple and essential tool to increase your blog's traffic. First, respond to comments left on your blog to show your readers that you value their opinions and draw them into a two-way conversation. This will increase reader loyalty. Second, leave comments on other blogs to drive new traffic. Make sure you leave your blog's URL in your comment, so you create a link back to your own blog. Many people will read the comments left on a blog post. If they read a particularly interesting comment, they are highly likely to click on the link to visit the commentor's website. It's important to make sure you leave meaningful comments that are likely to invite people to click on your link to read more. 5. Syndicate Your Blog's Content with an RSS Feed Setting up an RSS feed button on your blog makes it easy for your loyal readers to not just read your blog but also know when you publish new content. 6. Use Links and Trackbacks Links are one of the most powerful parts of your blog. Not only are links noticed by search engines, but they also act as a tap on the shoulder to other bloggers who can easily identify who is linking to their sites. Linking helps to get you noticed by other bloggers who are likely to investigate the sites that are linking to them. This may lead them to become new readers of your blog or to add links to your blog from theirs. You can take links to other blogs a step further by leaving a trackback on the other blog to let them know you've linked to them. Blogs that allow trackbacks will include a link back to your blog in the comments section of the post that you originally linked to. People do click on trackback links! 7. Tag Your Posts It takes a few extra seconds to add tags to each of your blog posts, but it's worth the time in terms of the additional traffic tags can drive to your blog. Tags (like links) are easily noticed by search engines. They're also key to helping readers find your blog when they perform searches on popular blog search engines such as Technorati. 8. Submit Your Posts to Social Bookmarking Sites Taking the time to submit your best posts to social bookmarking sites such as Digg, StumbleUpon, Reddit and more can be a simple way to quickly boost traffic to your blog. 9. Remember Search Engine Optimization When you write your blog posts and pages, remember to optimize your pages for search engines to find them. Include relevant keywords and links but don't overload your posts with too many relevant keywords or completely irrelevant keywords. Doing so can be considered spamming and could have negative results such as your blog being removed from Google's search entirely. 10. Don't Forget Images Images don't just make your blog look pretty, they also help people find you in search engine listings. People often use the image search options offered by Google, Yahoo! and other search engines, and naming your images with search engine optimization in mind can easily boost your traffic.

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