Referral Flood Blog

Be Easy To Refer

People do like to make referrals. The problem often though is like everything in life, the squeakly wheel is using up all of their grease. So, instead of just squeaking louder yourself, give them some more grease.

Create a whole series of referral tools and put them in the hands of those you know can best refer you to others.

Here are some of my favorite examples

• Mail a personal letter and enclosed a "proposed letter of referral" that simply needs to be copied onto their letterhead.
• Send four referral type postcards, already stamped and ready for them to send
• Send them a supply of business cards
• A supply of pens with your company logo
• A list of names or target prospects

You get the idea - be easy to refer and you will be the provider of choice when the referral moment arises.

A CPA and reader of mine, MaryAnn Soukup, developed a little mini brochure with a tear off business card for this purpose - What a great little inexpensive marketing piece!

This is the type of tactic you will find throughout Referral Flood

Turn Blah Advertising Into Referral Advertising

If you provide a service for homeowners or call on businesses located in office buildings this tip will give you a way to turn an advertising message into a referral message.

When your service technician visits a home to do some repair work, incentivize them to hang some door hangers on surrounding homes. Now, of course, everyone does that right? Well, the key to making this work is to also leave a space on the door hanger for the technician to write a note. "We just completed some work for Ted and Betty at 1933 and they thought you would like this 10% off coupon." - all of a sudden you've got a referral.

You can also fire this approach up through the mail. Get a criss-cross directory that lists homeowners by street and every time you schedule some work, send a letter to surrounding neighbors with this same coupon type message. Better still, give Ted and Betty a 10% discount and quote them singing your praises in the letter.

You can take this same approach in office building. "Hi, I was just upgrading Acme Accounting's network and they thought you could use this 10% off coupon."

Put your printer to use creating all kinds of these leave behinds but make sure that you make space to turn them into referrals.