It’s not easy to build a referral-based business. Simply asking your clients for referrals doesn’t cause your phone to ring. To consistently generate referrals from your clients, you must make it easy for them to introduce you to quality prospects in their network.

One way to make it easy is to suggest specific people in their networks who have come up in conversation. It might be a co-worker or a friend with whom they played golf with last week. If you don’t know the names of specific people, you can suggest a category of people who are likely to have similar needs such as others in their company who are at a similar stage in their career such as retiring or who also have to address specific issues like how to get prepared for a potential merger. When you suggest people in a similar situation to theirs, it’s easy for the client to see that referring you would be beneficial for their friend.

Another way to make it easy is to provide simple, quick, and low-risk ways for your client to introduce you. If you and your client are going to the same event or having lunch together, suggest they bring the friend or co-worker along. Another option is to have your client introduce you by email. And you can make it even easier by sending along a draft of an email your client can use as a starting point. Perhaps you can send your client something just to forward to the referral. With this method, it takes less than 60 seconds for the client to introduce you.

Referrals can be a powerful and profitable marketing strategy. However, to consistently generate quality referrals , you need to construct a systematic process and to think carefully about how to make each step of the process easy for your clients.

To make sure your referral system is designed in a way that will generate the quality of referrals you want, consider consulting with a referral coach. A referral coach can help you save time by avoiding mistakes and get your referral system operating more quickly and effectively.

For more information or a free 30 minute consultation please visit www.referralmastery.com

Posted in Generating Referrals, Success by Mike Brizz.

You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.