Business Referrals: How To Get More Referrals
It is some time since I brought you one of Scott Hallman's Tuesday Profit Tips™ but business referrals from satisfied customers and other network connections are such an important source of new leads. As a customer focused entrepreneur you will already know the benefit of referrals but you may not be taking full advantage of the possibilities.
Over to Scott.
How to Overcome Them and Turn Your Customers Into
Your Greatest Sales Force
Click to listen to the message.
We have all heard that Referral Marketing represents one of the lowest cost and highest-leverage strategies on the planet. Why? The answer is simple. The cost to obtain a new customer from outside marketing is 500% to 1000% more expensive than a referral customer. Business owners can increase profits by 10% to 30% with an effective referral program.
But There is a BIG Problem
Unfortunately, this powerful business building strategy has been nearly put to death by many "business trainers" that touted its merits without teaching the HOW. As a result, business owners routinely make 16 common mistakes that keep them from having a continuous stream of high quality referral customers every month.
The Key is to "Activate" Your Customers
Most businesses do not have a formal referral system in place. Yes, they get referrals as a result of providing quality services and products…but these are passive. Turn these passive referrals into active referrals and watch your referral business soar.
Passive referrals are those that happen by accident…that is, the customer refers someone to you without you doing anything to motivate this action. Now these are cool. After all, it feels great when a customer thinks that highly of you. But a passive process yields few referrals.
In contrast, an "Active Referral System™" gets your customer involved in, well, actively recommending you to their friends, associates and family members. An Active Referral System engages your customers in the process. In fact, ideally they will contact their friend on your behalf and sing your praises.
On our membership site, www.smallbusinessgrowthclub.com, we teach an hour and a half workshop that helps members develop 5 Referral Systems. But for this week's "Profit Tip" I want to share one key that will help you get more referrals now.
In order to get your customers "activated", a few things must be in place:
You need to catch your customer in what I call a "peak referral state". That is, when they are ecstatically happy with your product or service.
The key here is to know when these peak times are. Make a list and begin to watch for them.
Here are a few examples to help you get started.
- On the day that your customers jump in their new pool the first time, they are sure to be in a peak referral state.
- When a patient shares the fact they feel better than they have in years, they are in a peak referral state.
- When a customer gets their first checks from the website you created for them, they surely will be in a peak referral state.
However, the peak state is not always when the service or product is delivered. Instead, it is when the benefit is delivered. For example:
- When a back patient is first treated, they may actually feel worse for a while…it may be on the 5th or 10th or even 20th visit before they get the breakthrough, and yes, at that visit they are in a peak referral state.
- When a customer purchases your nutritional supplements it may take 2-3 months before they feel the positive effects….it is therefore critical to determine this time frame in order to catch them in their "peak referral state".
Sometimes the peak referral times are caused by outside forces.
- Today, when the stock market had it biggest loss in history, would be a terrible time for a stock broker to ask his clients for a referral if they are in the market and just got creamed.
- However, it may be a great time for the stock broker that had his clients "shorting the market" (betting the market would drop) to ask for referrals of clients whose friends and families just got creamed.
It is critical that you learn to ask for the referrals at precisely the correct time. It takes a bit of work but it will increase your referrals significantly. And perhaps more important, it will end that horrible feeling of being embarrassed or feeling awkward when asking a client for a referral.
So this week ask for a referral at the peak referral state and see what happens… who knows, it just may be contagious.
Apply this strategy and ProfitNOW™
To your success,
Scott Hallman
PS To get instant access to the full Active Referral Workshop, click here now
Thanks Scott.
This is a great tip and one of those that is so obvious when someone tells you about it. When are customers most likely to give you business referrals? When they are most happy with you.
You will know that I am a huge fan of Scott Hallman and his Small Business Growth Club and the referral workshop is terrific. Very concise and packed with practical advice on this important topic.
When I talk to businesses, everyone I speak to knows how good it is to get business referrals but apart from a bit of networking (that often doesn't generate much), they do little about generating referrals from the people in the best place to make a compelling recommendation - their satisfied customers.
It does take effort but once you have your business referral system designed, tested and proven, you keep rolling it out either periodically or when customers are at certain stages.
Scott has received such a great response to this referral based profit tip he has decided to host a teleseminar on Wednesday October 15th.
Below is one of the promotional emails that I've received. It is chargeable but take note of the guarantee.
So over to Scott Hallman again.
Failing To Convert Referrals?
From our research, we identified The 5 Reasons Businesses Fail To Convert Referrals into Lifetime Customers.
This is unfortunate because a client, customer or patient entrusted you with the ultimate gift of confidence ... the confidence that your product or service can help their friend. But their friend will never get to experience that benefit, will they?
And you will never get to experience the stream of profits this referred prospect can provide to your business.
Poor follow up is one of the top culprits ... I am not talking about just the act of follow up, but also how you follow up. What you say. How you say it and much more.
Join me this Wednesday, October 15th, at 5PM CT for an incredible, "hands-on" training teleseminar where I will share with you the "16 Reasons Referral Systems Fail - How to Overcome Them and Finally Drive in A Constant Stream of Referral Customers".
This will be a 90 minute tele-workshop, complete with IMPLEMENTATION. So join me and bring plenty of paper and something to write with.
The guarantee is simple. If you don't passionately believe that you can apply what I teach you to generate at least 10 times the cost of the teleseminar + $1,500 ($1,000 an hour) for your precious time on the call, simply email us and we will void the charge.
Plus, I am gifting you a $129 program for FREE
REGISTER NOW to Learn:
What keeps companies from getting more referrals? - I will share with you the precise 6 reasons that cause this problem.
What keeps companies from converting a higher percentage of the referrals they do get? - I will detail the 5 reasons why this occurs so consistently.
What keeps companies from converting new referral customers into lifetime customers? - I will reveal the 5 reasons this occurs as well.
Oh, and yes, I will teach you the solutions for successfully overcoming these obstacles and ensuring you get the proper system in place.
Why am I qualified to teach what the others all have gotten plain wrong?
Because I used these same systems to generate 50% of our customers for my Health Care Services company that was listed as the 59th Fastest Growing Private Company in America (INC 500) and I surveyed over 200 business owners to learn why their referral systems were not as effective as they should be.
REGISTER NOW:
Since the typical referral customer can be worth $500-$5,000 in lifetime profit, joining this low cost training should be a no brainer. Plus, if you don't find 10 times the cash to pay for the training (plus $1,500 for your time) I will refund you every dime.
REGISTER NOW
To your success,
Scott
This looks a great offer from Scott Hallman and I believe that it is a great idea to allow you to try out his training on a low cost, no risk basis in an area that is sure to bring big rewards.
As a Platinum member of the Small Business Growth Club, I get these calls free so while the time is horrible for anyone in the UK or Europe, I will be listening to the recording with interest.
I want like to make a deal with you. I know that you are going to find Scott Hallman's techniques so practical and you will immediately see the profit potential that you will want to join the Small Business Growth Club.
I just can't stop raving about the Small Business Growth Club and the way Scott Hallman takes these ideas and strips them down to their essence.
Incidentally, did you get your copy of Scott's $5k Profit Report. It is a compelling read.
Update October 15
In today's email from Scott he has added in 30 days of "coaching support"
I am going to follow up with you via email, including video, to push you along and make sure you IMPLEMENT this stuff. Plus I will add in additional insights into how to more effectively implement...regardless of your management skill.
Update October 16
I listened to the recording of Scott Hallman explaining the 16 reasons why referral systems often fail the morning after the call.
This recording was available within six hours of Scott finishing the call which is a tremendous service. The downside is that because this as the first, he was uncertain of the technology and while the mp3 is 97 minutes long, it starts with nearly six minutes of music and a could more minutes of chatter. If you have this recording, it starts around the 8:40 mark.
Overall the call was excellent as I expected with little overlap from the main referrals module in the Small Business Growth Club.
Scott identified:
- Eight reasons why businesses fail to get referrals
- Six reasons why businesses fail to convert referrals
- Four reasons why "successful" referrals systems only produce 50% of what they could.
Hopefully this recording will remain available for you to buy as a standalone product.
Scott's emphasis is very much on helping you to implement so the referrals modules in the SBGC tells you what to do and then gives you the step by step method to implement your referrals systems.
But as Scott said at the start, there is a tendency to think referral systems are easy, so many businesses try to cobble something together, they try it out and then find that it doesn't work. Then they've proved to their satisfaction that "referral systems don't work."
This is crazy because an effective referral system is the easiest and lowest cost way to attract on target new business but these sixteen mistakes undermine the efforts.
And yes, several of the mistakes did hit home.
Special Hidden Profit Webinars
Don't miss the chance to learn from some of the world's leading experts (and me) in finding hidden profits in a series of webinars starting on January 15th 2009. See Hidden Profit Webinars for more details.
Comments