Creating Endless Referrals - Rod Moore

Creating Endless Referrals

Everybody in business loves to receive referrals. Rightly so ...

Referrals are simply the best source of new clients you can have. Why? Because they come to you pre-sold. They have automatically been moved through the know you, like you and trust you phases that are so critical these days.

When I conduct my Attraction Marketing Seminar I often ask the audience ... 'What is your best source of new business?'. In nearly every case people tell me it is word-of-mouth ... Or referrals.

This was also highlighted in a recent survey conducted by Flyingsolo.com.au. They asked their audience a number of questions including what is their number one source of new business. The overwhelming response of course was referrals.

Now interestingly when I ask people in my seminars if they have a SYSTEM for generating more referrals I am usually met with blank stares. Virtually no one has a step-by-step system for generating referrals of any kind. This is tragic because here is why ... Whilst the majority of Small Business owners sight referrals as their number one source of new business most of them do not currently get enough referrals to fully achieve their potential in their business.

So what if there was a way to turn on a never ending stream of referrals into your business? Would that be something you want to know about?

Well there is!

Creating an endless referral stream is possible and easily achieved. It comes down to implementing the right MARKETING SYSTEM into your business.

In my twenties I was in direct sales and we were trained to always ask for three referrals after every sale. We were taught a number of different techniques to ask in a way that would leave the new client wanting to give us referrals. It rarely worked. In fact it made them feel uncomfortable and me. So after a period of time you stop asking. I suspect that many small business owners are the same ... They long ago stopped asking for referrals.

Well the good news is ... Its possible to ATTRACT referrals to you.

Here are three things that will determine the number of referrals you receive:

1/ Size Of Your Network - The larger the number of people who Know You, Like You and Trust You, the more referrals you will receive. It makes sense right? The more people in your network who know you and trust you the more likley referral sources you will have. So the question then is ... Do you have a strategy to constantly grow your network? What are you doing each day to grow the size of this network of people? When you think about it ... This is the only place that referrals can come to right? They can only come from people who know you, like you and trust you. So the starting point is to implement a strategy to continually be growing this network.

2/ How Many Of Them Know What You Do - Now you could have a huge growing network and still not receive any referrals. How? Well if the people in your network do not really know what it is you do then it is difficult for them to refer new clients to you. Now what I mean by this is that they know the actual end solution you deliver to clients. Its not enough that they know you are a Financial Planner, or Chiropractor etc. They must know the end solution your product or service provides. For this reason I strongly recommend that you are constantly putting your client success stories, case studies and testimonials in front of your network. The more success you demonstrate the more referrals will flow from your network.

3/ Do They Know You Want Referrals? - The third thing is how you educate your network. If you have a huge growing network, and you demonstrate the results you provide to your network, they still may not send you referrals. This is because you need to educate them that you work on referrals. For this reason I always recommend that when you receive a referral you publicly acknowledge and thank the person giving you the referral. You also want to reward them. Consider developing a rewards program for those who refer to you that encourages them to refer more people to you.

As an example of this consider what we are doing with the MEGA NETWORKING & REFERRAL EVENT. We are building a notification email list for the event at the moment. When someone subscribes to this list they are then asked to refer three people to the site. By doing so they go into the draw to be one of 10 people to promote their business live on stage at the event. We will also recoginse these people in our event Blog and more. Why? Well as a thank you to them and also to educate everyone else that their referrals are valued.

If you focus on these three things above, growing your network, making sure they are fully aware of the solutions you provide, and educate them that you want referrals, you will find the number of referrals you receive begins to go up.

Now let me give you a million dollar tip ... a referred client is ten times more likley to refer you than a client that comes from a cold ad. So the more referrals you get the easier they become to generate more. Ultimately though it all comes down to thinking about implementing the right system for generating referrals. It can be a lot easier to do than you might think.