Recently I posted a public submission form for people to ask questions related to word of mouth marketing and word of mouth referrals. That form has produced a number of questions around this topic. Today I wanted to address one of those questions.
If you want to ask an anonymous question, you can ask your word of mouth marketing question here!
Question:
How do I make getting referrals more consistent?
First…you need to know that you are not alone in this concern and wonderment. Referrals aren’t easy to come by. In fact, they are downright hard. One of the main reasons that they are so hard is because you can’t just ask for referrals…as asking rarely works. In fact, asking often produces leads and not referrals.
Of Note: A Referrals is someone ready, willing, and able to buy!
So how do we make them more consistent? In order to achieve this goal and outcome, we ourselves need to be much more consistent. We need to create a system or process of doing the things that we know produce referrals and we need to implement it in a formal way. Doing this will result in us building personal habits that result in more consistent referrals.
For example…
If we send a single notecard to three contacts tomorrow, but then don’t send another notecard for an entire year, we shouldn’t expect referrals from these folks. However, if we send those same three contacts a notecard every month, like clockwork…never selling our service but instead letting them know we care about them, one of those three contacts will refer us.
..and to take it a step farther, once you built a habit of sending cards (as used in this example) you then add another three contacts to the mix. Now you are not adding much time at all to your process on a monthly basis, but you will see a much greater impact from your relationships.
Keep in mind that this notecard example is just that, one example of consistency. Here are some other examples of things you can do monthly for your contacts:
- Share articles that are relevant to them and their business
- Call them
- Text them
- Meet for coffee
- Drop by with coffee
- Interact on social media
- Send a video email
To get consistent results from anything in business and life, we ourselves need to be diligent about our process and we need to ensure that we are consistent ourselves!
No matter what you do for others…make sure that you do stuff that matters…to THEM!
If you want to ask an anonymous question, you can ask your word of mouth marketing question here! I’d be honored to receive it and share my insight and ideas!
…and don’t forget…
Live Happy, Smile A Lot, and High 5 Everyone Around You!