I drove back from a Business Networking Meeting this morning and felt compelled to drop this wee comment into my blog. I was with a group of other Business owners who get together every two weeks for just over an hour and discuss business, pitch their own businesses and in the midst of all that offer the most powerful business opportunity there is. The Referral. Why do I say it is the most powerful?? (And the most succesful too by the way… )
Well because the referral carries with it a couple of things. Obviously it is a lead that you probably wouldnt have got using other methods so it straightaway lowers your aquisition cost of a potential new customer.( Thats the cost of getting in front of that customer for all you non business types-I’ll talk about that later if enough of you ask me to explain it in more detail) So any resulting sale and profit from the sale goes straight to your bottom line. Its perfect. But the other thing that goes with it is that beautiful word in any sales environment “trust”. A referal to you from someone else tells the potential customer that you can be trusted so the risk of doing business with you is eliminated by at least 95%. I like them odds.. If you have the trust of your customers then you are well down the road towards your repeat sale with them. And its only at the second sale with your customers that you can really start to think you have them as clients and that you now have a relationship.
Anyway I was sitting in my meeting this morning and I noticed that every face in the room had a smile on it when we realised that 4 of the guys at the table were working on the same project and they had been given the opportunity of being there because one of them had been refferred to that client and then it spread to the other 3 who were able to add more products and services to the clients list of wants. See I said “wants” again… So the power of the referral had spread…
Relationships are important, no matter what business you are in or where you do business. The networking that this group does has seen them work their way through the economic climate that is gladly showing signs of climbing its way back towards where it was 18months ago..They all work hard at delivering a good quality product or service but being part of this ggroup has provided them with opportunity of a low cost sale. There’s that aquisition word again..
So how do you tap into the power of this referral system?? Heres a couple of tips for you..
- Go out and find a business referral group and join it
- Make sure you commit to regular meetings and become an active member. There are too many stories of people giving up after2 meetings because the “didnt get any referrals”..
- Do your best to get to know the other members and have an honest interest in what they do
- Help them by passing on as many referrals as you can
- Make sure that your product or service is a good one and that you take care of any customers that get referred to you. Dont forget you are responsible now for the reputation of the referer who gave you the opportunity. Dont let him down by being less than good at what you do.
- Always be accountable to the group and work in integrity
- Think of others first. ( I love the quotation, “if you help enough people get what they want then you will get what you want”)
So if you want to receive the powerful gift of a business referral then you must be prepared to offer one back..
As usual I welcome all feedback
Simon
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