Cultivating Your Referrers
Dealing with in-referrals is one of the trickiest, yet most beneficial, aspects of any business. Good referrals are hands-down better than clients who find you from advertising or surfing the internet. Referrals come through the door predisposed to you and your services, and tend to be less price-sensitive.
The most important thing you must do with your in-referrals is to look after your referrers. In order to do this well, you need to monitor the process– nowhere is Peter Drucker’s adage more true: “You can’t manage what you don’t measure.” Never leave this to chance. Without tracking in-referrals, none of the following can be achieved.
Once you have a good handle on who is sending you what, you are able to begin to respond to your referral sources. To evaluate them, use the ABCD grid discussed in the last Friday Briefing (http://us12.campaign-archive.com/?u=c5b0c09025ad045bf11bb02f5&id=8090f2712c) .
Just as you would with D and C clients, you will want to rid yourself of D and C referrers, although perhaps not as abruptly. Referrers who send you undesirable clients, or who send them with lots of strings attached, should generally be discouraged. You won’t do this without first thanking them for their good intentions and diplomatically explaining why their referred clients are not what you are looking for. By having this discussion you may actually convert the C referrer into a B referrer.
Your B referral sources need to be treated like gold and your A referrers as diamonds. Here are some of the keys to doing that:
1. Reflect well on them. By being stellar yourself, you endorse their referral to you and you make them look good.
2. Treat the referred client as special. Always go above and beyond. Sometimes a token discount is appropriate: “I always give Billy Bob’s folks 5% off.”
3. Speak well of the referrer. The word will get back.
4. Promptly and sincerely, thank the referrer. This is true even if the referrer is you business partner.
5. With your new client’s permission, report back to the referrer in a professionally appropriate fashion.
6. Make the referrer part of your “team”. Consider doing outreach events together.
7. Hold “thank you” events for your best referrers, let them know that they are special to you.
8. Thank the referrer in tangible ways– take them to lunch or to a hockey game, send a Christmas basket or a bottle of good wine, let them know that they are appreciated. Some professional bodies limit the quantum and nature of such gifting, but within your parameters, don’t be chintzy.
But the most important rule of all? It’s this: If you want plenty of good referrals, above all else you need to show yourself worthy of the trust, that you are the “go-to” person in the field, and that referrers are actually doing their friends and clients a favour by sending them to you.
Next week I’ll get back to more traditional “communications” themes. In the meantime, I have much more material on the mechanics of referrals which I’d be happy to share in coaching, workshop or speaking venues.
Summary of this and previous articles on referrals. (http://www.purposeful.ca/blog)