Customer referrals present a wonderful revenue growth source; for some businesses, referrals are nearly the only source of new customers. Yet, referral processes, if they even exist, can be haphazard and tremendously unpredictable. That's why it's so important to make developing and implementing a customer referral program as easy as possible
Brainzooming has been working with multiple organizations to develop and formalize their referral strategies. Sometimes the process is formal. In other cases, it can start with an easy conversation.
That was the case on an extended road trip where a real estate agent asked for ideas to stimulate her customer referrals. I quizzed her during the drive on two initial questions. Afterward, I turned her comments into a question set that she can share through varied channels with current clients. The questions are specifically developed to stimulate their thinking on potential referrals.
Step 1 in Developing a Customer Referral Program
The first step involves identifying as many possible answers as you can to the following two questions:
- Which types of customers do they want more of?
- Which types of customers currently (or potentially) demonstrate outstanding performance in making quality referrals?
Ideally, you would answer these questions with data.
Often, though, we start with sales and business executives who can describe these clients’ characteristics more readily than they can access data to demonstrate what works in fostering new client relationships.
Step 1A, An Alternative Starting Approach
If you want to start informally on a process like this to increase referrals to your organization, use these questions that I asked the real estate agent:
- Describe the (types of) clients that you ENJOY working with?
- What types of clients are EASIEST for you to work with and serve?
- Describe your REPEAT CLIENTS (who keep coming back to you for years)?
- What types of needs / business situations generate the MOST TRANSACTIONS and/or REVENUE for you? Profit for you?
- What are any GEOGRAPHIC parameters among your top/preferred clients?
- What PSYCHOGRAPHIC parameters can you point to that describe your best customers?
- Describe the clients that make (many) REFERRALS ALREADY? What characteristics define them? What motivates them?
- What DEMOGRAPHIC characteristics describe your best (referral) customers?
Step 2: Turn Your Answers into Actionable Questions
Describing these characteristics leads to forming questions that make it easier and more productive for current clients to imagine referrals. This works in stark contrast to asking current clients to start without help in envisioning who they’d refer to your organization.
While the range of questions developed to help customers should be specific to your business, they’ll generally fit into these types of groupings:
- Personal / organizational characteristics
- Characteristics signaling a potential need for what you do
- Changes that trigger new needs
- Interests and behaviors of people with frequent needs
Taking the Steps to Grow Referrals
If you want help in developing a referral strategy, contact me and let’s chat. We have multiple Blast! collaborations already developed that address:
- Identifying characteristics of top customers
- Profiling clients who routinely generate referrals
- Testing referral motivators and challenges with customers to develop/vet the strategy, processes, and client engagement changes
Solidifying your referral process is a fantastic investment in growing your business. Now’s the time to start! Mike Brown
