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Don't Leave Word Of Mouth Referrals To Chance

Guest post by: Jackie Mckay

Article Overview: One of the easiest and most inexpensive ways to fill your practice is by using your current client data base as your personal sales team.

Don't Leave Word Of Mouth Referrals To Chance

One of the easiest and most inexpensive ways to fill your practice is by using your current client data base as your personal sales team. If you don't have many clients yet and you are still in the market research phase, you can use this on those client's with whom you are doing your market research.

Let me explain more.

Getting in front of your ideal clients takes effort, time and money. Blogs, websites, Facebook, networking, promoting talks etc. - you get my drift. This is all work. Getting a new client takes way more effort than retaining a current client. Please, never forget this!

Once you have locked in your ideal client you will come to be their trusted advisor/go to person because they know you, they love you and they trust you. This is why your client's come back to you.

Wouldn't it be great if your clients, who know, love and trust you would rave and refer people to you on a regular basis?

It just makes sense that if you have given exceptional value and created raving results for your clients, they will become a raving fan. Problem is, once your client has completed their session with you, they are bombarded with countless distractions and you have left the top of their mind. And, many holistic therapists feel shy or awkward about asking for referrals, preferring instead to hope and pray that their clients will generate new leads for them on a whim.

The solution...Why leave the referrals to chance?Instead, be transparent with your clients from the get go about referrals. Plant the seed very early in your client relationship that you will often ASK for a referral, and let them know that is largely how you build your practice.

Ask them if it's okay with you to check in with them - as a habit to see if they can think of someone who would be a good referral. The client will think about this throughout the duration of the time they are working with you. Each time they talk to you or think of you, they'll be thinking about doing "their part" in helping you build your business through referrals.

Now, take it one step further and make it easy for your client's to refer to you. Educate them exactly on the type of person you help. Tell your clients how much you love working with them and let them know that they are your ideal type of client and why. Give them some of your savvy business cards. Make sure your business cards define the exact client you work with! And, train them on how to explain what you do so that you can control how your services are being shared.

And lastly, don't forget to put a system into place to reward your clients for promoting you. Make sure you follow up with a thank you card or be unique and send them something that will have you stand out - try a movie card, a coffee card, or their favourite bottle of wine.

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Article Tags: data base, personal sales, referrals, word of mouth



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Measuring Word of mouth - [quote="jvprosperity":2l2ujat4]I couldn't find the Part 1 Doctrine on the site but I believe from reading the blog posts it had to do with the distractions entrepreneurs and their customers face daily. He may have also talked about Word of Mouth and the true way of measuring it.[/quote:2l2ujat4] Hi Andy, So how can one measure "Word of Mouth" marketing then?
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