What would your Clients say if you asked for a Referral?

 

 

The only way to earn referrals is to first earn a client’s trust, reduce their perceived risk and provide a fantastic service. So what can you do to achieve this?

1. Find something extra that you can do for them, beyond what they were expecting: some extra work, outside the scope of your agreement, provided with ‘your compliments’.Give referrals to your clients and show them where they might be able to get new business. If you do this in a way that makes it clear you don’t expect anything in return, it will make you look even better.
2. Give referrals to your clients and show them where they might be able to get new business. If you do this in a way that makes it clear you don’t expect anything in return, it will make you look even better.
3. Be friendly with your clients. An informal lunch now and then will make them feel more comfortable about putting you in touch with one of their connections. Remember the marketing cliché (truth): people buy from people they like!

Asking your clients some questions like the following can lead down the referral path too:

• What could we be doing better?
• What have we done right so far?
• How satisfied are you with our services?

Listen very carefully to what they say. If their answers indicate that enough trust has been gained, it’s fair to expect some referrals. When this is the case you could half-jokingly ask, “So who are you thinking of referring to us?” There’s a good chance the client might smile and give you a name or two.

Why not do a mail shot or some other one-off promotion? Isn’t that less effort than asking for referrals like this?

One-off marketing promotions can be effective, and it’s where most B2B companies are spending their scarce marketing dollars. But don’t do a big marketing promotion before you have a customer reactivation program—it is always cheaper to reactivate existing customers than getting new ones.

So running new promotions is good, but only if you have a Referral Program already in place. 

Referrals are the best new customers. FACT!

Click here for the full story on Referrals.

Cheers, Toby.    [B105]

Toby is the founder of the B2B marketing company: Lead Creation Written by

Toby MarshallGetting your Prospects talking back | Clear strategies for B2B Marketing, powerful case studies and guaranteed results.