5 things you need to be referrable

People should  only give referrals (referron) to people they know, like and trust.

To get a referral , you must be referrable - 

An absolute prerequisite is that you need to have a great product or service - you need to go beyond 

- provide a wow service-

- helping the customer profit more or produce more 

- provide a value to the customer 

Giving a Referral (making a referron) is a risk - the person is risking his reputation that the business will provide a great product or service to the referred person . They need to have trust and faith in you that you will provide an exemplary service 

5  Gems to be referrable

1. Be likeable 

2. Be reliable - be there when the customer needs you - be the best - 

3. Be the expert in your field that breeds customer confidence - have a track record 

4. Be trustworthy - you will act in the customers best interest 

5. Be a resource in your field 

six tips for turning happy customers into an army of advocates

Ekaterina Walter - entrepreneur magazine 

What's better than happy customers? Happy customers who tell all their friends about your brand. If your end goal was customer satisfaction, take a step back and try to imagine the next level: activating those customers to spread the word about your products and services.

It's important to remember that most people will only go so far to promote your company, so you've got to make it easy for them to go that extra mile for you.

1. Turn receipts into customer feedback questionnaires. 
Your in-store purchase receipts are a guaranteed point-of-contact with most satisfied customers. Think about it: they've liked your products enough to buy them. Businesses around the world are getting wise to the opportunity to ask for customer feedback by printing details of their online surveys at the bottom, along with information about prize-draw giveaways for entering. UK's upmarket supermarket Waitrose, chocolatier Hotel Chocolat, and kitchenware store, Lakeland all give you the opportunity to enter fantastic prize draws for submitting feedback. 

But the experience can go further than this: Make the survey social with links to Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and other social media sites so that customers can spread the word about entering your promotions. 

2. Get geo-social with Foursquare. 
Make it fun for your customers to share their shopping location with their friends by joining geo-social networks like Foursquare. Your customers are happy to be in your store, so give them the opportunity to check in and share their location with their networks. Starbucks has 1.5 million Likes on Foursquare, and check-ins can earn you badges and special promotions. The app is linked to other social networks, so when customers check in, it will show up to all their friends. 

With over 30 million people using Foursquare, it's a great way of helping happy customers tell all their friends where they are. Not only that, using Foursquare helps facilitate togetherness and a sense of community by showing who else is around to enjoy a cup of coffee in the neighborhood, which is an underlying mission of the company.

Related: Want Loyal Customers? Do This.

3. Create a feedback cycle. 
These days, online reviews are more powerful that advertising for persuading potential customers to purchase your products and services. In fact, according to Nielsen, 92 percent of consumers around the world say they trust earned media, such as recommendations from friends and family, above all other forms of advertising.

If your end goal was selling your product to a customer, think about adding an extra step and contacting customers for reviews. Often when people are buying online, whether it is for physical goods, virtual goods, hotels or flights, they will provide their email address. An email list is a powerful marketing tool, so be sure to send a follow-up email asking for feedback and linking to sites like Amazon or Trip Advisor to make it easy for customers to post reviews. The simpler you can make this process, the more likely it is that customers will review your company online.

4. Go mobile with a socially-activated app. 
Customers can be hugely creative with apps like Instagram, so why not encourage and reward their creativity? Clothing companyFree People is leading the way when it comes to community-building. They encourage their fans to upload their Instagram photos of how they style their favorite Free People items, and upload it to the "Add a style pic" button against the item on their website. This gives customers a great idea of how the item looks in real life, as well as building a whole community around style and fashion, with "likes" shown as hearts. Fans can build and share their own collections with the community, thus becoming an organic marketing army for the business.

Related: 15 Tips for Improving Customer Loyalty

5. Automate the sharing process. 
Has anyone not heard of Amazon? We know they are the global leader in e-commerce, but that doesn't stop them from socializing their online ordering process to let customers tell their networks about their purchases. They make it simple for customers to share their purchase information with their networks on Facebook and Twitter, or by email, effectively recommending it to their friends.

If Amazon isn't complacent about asking their customers to tell their friends about their shopping experience, can you afford to be?

6. Display your business's social properties with pride. 
One of the best ways to ensure your current customers become a part of your communities and engage with you is to make it super easy for them to find your social properties online.

Remember, the more members you have in your current communities, the more chances you have to convert potential customers into real customers. To make that information readily available for them, feature the links to your Facebook page, Twitter handle, Pinterest page and other social communities on:

* In-store receipts 
* Storefronts and walls inside your business location 
* Menus and napkins * Vehicles  * Websites  * Email communications * Any marketing assets, such as images and videos * Local advertising, such as local newspapers 

Customer satisfaction should be the number one priority for your brand, so encourage feedback and be prepared to act on that feedback, whether it is positive or negative.

Empowering your customers with the ability to share their opinions on your brand requires a leap of faith. But if you trust in your brand, helping customers spread the word about your products can be the most powerful marketing tool you ever use.

Related: Connecting With Customers: How to Market to Their Emotions  
 

Connect with me on referron

Have a look at our new venture www.referron.com

connect with me on referron . I have had 114 referrals since its launch 6 weeks ago!

http://members.referron.com/bsivc

Referron enables you to refer to and get referred by someone you know like and trust within 3 taps of your phone.

- enables you to refer on he fly

- enables you to track and reward your referrals from your own referron portal.

- enables you to mobilise your social network to take action

- allows you to engage with your social network

- enables you to encourage people to connect with you on your blogs, web pages, social networks and emails

- enables you to identify who your advocates are and nurture them

- keeps you top of mind with people who know like and trust you

- free to download and refer, and your first 3 referrals a moth are free, thereafter, a nominal fee per month

The more you refer to people who know, like and trust you, the more referrals you will get.(the law of reciprocation)

There is an affiliate model, where you can get up to  40% commission on people you refer.

It's free to download and refer, but once you get 3 referrals per month, you pay 20 per month or 200 per year.

For more details of how referron can work see http://bsiconnect.blogspot.com.au 

Let me know if you have any questions.

How to get referrals - by Seth Godin

Posted by Seth Godinon November 27, 2006

There's been thousands of pages written about this topic, but still, no luck. It's too hard.

Yes, we know that referrals are the very best way to grow your business.

And we know that asking for a referral is both scary but apparently the most effective technique.

And we know that excellent service is a great place to start.

But still, not enough referrals. How come?

First, marketers often forget to look at this from the consumer's point of view. Why on earth should I give you a referral? Yes, I know it's important to you, but why is it important to me?

And second, I have a lot to lose if I refer a friend to you. You might screw up, in which case she'll hate me. Or you might somehow do something that, through no fault of your own, disappoints. If I recommend a greek restaurant and my friend goes and they don't have skordalia, and she loves skordalia... oops. 

And third, the act of recommending you isn't easy. It's not easy to recommend a tailor to make your co-worker look a little less shabby. It's not easy to bring up the fact that you have a great psychiatrist or even a particularly wonderful (but very expensive) shoe store.

Given the no-win nature of most referrals, you need to reset your expectations and consider a few ideas:

• Make it easy for someone to bring up what you do (by changing the nature of the service or product).
• Give your best customers something of real value to offer to their friends (a secret menu, a significant gift certificate). Once you do that, not giving that gift to a friend feels selfish.
• Paying me to refer you rarely works, because you're not just asking for a minute of my time, you're asking me to put my credibility on the line.
• Understand that low-risk referrals happen more often than high-risk ones, and either figure out how to become a low-risk referral or embrace the fact that you have to be truly amazing in order to earn one.

and

• Be worthy. Not just in the work you do, but in your status in the marketplace. I'm far more likely to refer someone with a back story, someone who's an underdog, or relatively unknown. That's why saying "thank you" in deeds (not so much in words) goes such a long way.

Referron to your social network contacts soon! Exciting stuff

In the next version of the app we will have integration with LinkedIn so that you could refer:

- LinkedIn to LinkedIn

- LinkedIn to another contact in your address book (or typed in manually)

- An address book contact to someone connected to you on LinkedIn

We're moving away from having another list of connections in Referron and instead helping to make it easy for you to refer people from your address book, Facebook (which I see you don't use for business) and LinkedIn. We see that you have the names of these people already and shouldn't need to add them all to Referron. Our app works out whether they are a Referron user or not and sends the referral and invitation at the same time.

Just a note that LinkedIn doesn't give us access to someone's email address. Therefore when you refer two of your LinkedIn contacts to each other, if they have not yet joined Referron, then only their Name and LinkedIn profile will be sent to each other. If they both later join, then their other details will be made available.