Referrals

What is your Referral Marketing System?

According to a recent survey by more than 1,700 small business owners the number one source of new clients is through referral. The problem for most small business owners though is that they have no SYSTEM for attracting more referrals. So whilst they rely heavily on referrals they simply do not get enough of them to sustain and grow their business.

In this article I want to explore with you why people give referrals, and how you can attract more of them. We will also look at creating your own Referral Marketing System.

So the first obvious question is this …

Why Would Someone Refer Your Business?

There are a number of reasons why someone else would refer your business. Typically it is because the referrer is usually the type of person who is a connector. They are the sort of people who like to be central to connecting different businesses together. Usually these sort of people are highly connected themselves and are often active networkers. These type of people derive some value through the process of connecting others. That value could be as simple as a sense of pride that they have connected two parties together, or it could be for more strategic reasons.

The key is … you want to find and cultivate relationships with these connectors first. Look for people who have a large network of your ideal or trypical client and then work on developing a relationship with these people. Often it can take some time to build a relationship with them but it is certainly worth the investment of your time to do so.

What about the non-connectors? Will these people still refer you?

Yes they will … however you need to work constantly at gaining and maintaining what I call TOMA with them. TOMA stands for Top Of Mind Awareness. In other words when they think of your business category you are the only and obvious choice they can think of because you own their mind space for that business category. For example when you think of marketing coaches chances are good you think of Profit Minute if you have been on our database for a little while.

So you need to put a TOMA system into place. This is easily achieved and I will discuss it in a future article.

3 Steps To Ensure You Get Referrals

If you want to ensure you get referrals in your business then there are three things you must do:

1/ Be Referrable – What I mean by this is you need to make it as easy as possible for people to refer you. One of the reasons we have discovered why a business does not get referrals is because the business owner themselves lacks clarity around what their business is and does. So if the business owner is confused then its almost certain that those you would like to refer you are confused as well. You want people to be able to clearly articulate the value you bring to the marketplace in a brief sentence. For example when people talk about Profit Minute it is easy for them to refer us because they simply tell others 'Profit Minute help businesses attract more clients'. Can you see how simple that is to remember and more importantly to pass on in the form of a referral? If you have some long convaluted USP statement that takes up half a page … well no one is going to remember it let alone refer you on in the market place. Make it simple.

2/ TOMA x NETWORK - The next key to ensure you get more referrals is to work on growing the size of the network that you have TOMA with. If right now there are only 10 people in the world who, when they think of your business category, automatically think of you … well then you only have 10 potential referral givers in the market place. If you expand that network to 100 people you have TOMA with then you have 10 X the potential number of referrals. So you need a strategy in place to grow your network and then to develop TOMA with your network.

Here is a key peice of advice … 'In business you should never let anyone forget you!'

3/ Referrer Appreciation – When a dolphin at seaworld does a trick he gets rewarded with a peice of fish. This encourages the dolphin to continue to engage in the same behaviour. Now those who give you referrals of course are not dolphins but the same principle applies. You need to show your appreciation. I can not tell you how many times I have given referrals to others whom I never hear from. They don't say thanks for the referral … nor do they let me know how they have gone with the potential referred client. So how does that make you feel? Well I can tell you that your enthusiasm for giving referrals to the person who gives you no appreciation or feedback quickly diminishes. If you want people to keep referring clients to you then give them some appreciation

At the end of the day you need to create a …

Referral Marketing System

As with any aspect of your marketing in your business you need to think about turning it into a system. Referrals are not different.

First you need a system to grow your network of people who know you. This can be done through simply networking, developing joint venture partners, or through lead geneation in your business. The key though is the larger the network of people who know you the more referrals you will receive. Think about it … if you had a network of 250 people who know what you do and are raving fans of your business then even if only 10 of them referred a client each year to you that would be 25 additional clients than you have right now.

Second you need a system to keep in touch with your network. One of the biggest mistakes made is to constantly be marketing to your database or network. While this may give you short term results it will ultimately erode the number of referrals you receive. The key is to add value to the lives of those in your network. There are many ways to do this but one of the best ways I believe is to simply send them a hand written heartfelt thank you card.

Third you need to be able to automate the system of keeping in touch with your network. You do not want to be creating more manual labour work for yourself so you want to look for a system that you can use to automate the whole process of creating top of mind awareness and attracting referrals to your business.

So what do you do from here?

Well hopefully this article has got you thinking about referrals and how you can stimulate more of them in your business.

If you understand the value of a referred client in your business and you want to find out more about the different options available to you then I suggest you watch the …

Referral Marketing System Video

In this video I go through the whole process of TOMA and the system used by the worlds number one salesman to build TOMA. I will also show you the system I and many of my clients are using to create TOMA and attract more clients.

Watch The Referral Marketing System Video

Click Here To Watch The Video

After watching the video you will not only see how easy it can be to put all of these ideas into practice you will also be given an opportunity to trial the system we and our successful clients use for cultivating TOMA with a growing network and attracting more referrals.

If you put these ideas into practice then it won't be long before your business runs almost entirely on referred clients.