How to Get Others Referring to You

Vision Alliance | How To Get Others Referring To YOu

How would you like to get twice as many new customers for 1/3 the cost of anything you’ve ever done before – or even for FREE? If that sounds like pie in the sky, please find a quiet spot and read this article very carefully. You are about to learn one of the most effective ways to get new customers, extra sales and leads for your business. In today’s economic climate, in fact in any economic climate, people are very cautious about dealing with strangers. This means, that no matter how good your product or service, you have to overcome 2 major hurdles.

1. You have to convince the purchaser that your product or service is what they really need and want.
2. You have to assure them that your company will deliver as you promise. In other words,that they can trust you

To some extent you may overcome these hurdles with a money-back guarantee or some sort of a free trial. However, you’ll do far, far better if you…STOP TRYING TO DO BUSINESS WITH STRANGERS. Let’s face it. It’s hard. It’s expensive, and it can be draining on you and your staffs’ energies. After all, to win the trust of a person who doesn’t know you takes time and effort. And at the end of it all, you still can’t be sure if you’ll get their business or not.

However, having the trust of a person is crucial if they are going to buy from you. That’s why the easiest sales are to people who have already bought from you, or referral business.

When you get introduced to a prospective client from someone who is known by the prospect the other person is more likely to listen to you and give you a chance to sell yourself and what you have to offer. You may wonder, “Why would another business want to introduce me and what I’m selling?” There are a number of reasons why someone may want to recommend you.

  1. They may recommend you if you have given them value far and beyond what they expected and they like you and your product.
  2. Maybe they’ll do it because they want you to introduce them to your customers.
  3. Maybe they’ll do it because if their customers buy your product, they’ll then need more of their product as a result. This is especially true if you show your customers how to grow their business and get more customers. As they grow, you get more business from them.
  4. They may do it because you pay them to introduce you or you offer them a ‘bribe’.
  5. Or they may do it because they know their customers will want your product or service and that they’ll get goodwill and thanks from their customers for letting them know about it.

Let me share a very important fact with you… Every single person you want to reach, is already someone else’s customer. Which means they are buying products and services similar to what you offer. Providing that the business they are buying from is doing a good job, these customers will trust a recommendation from that business.

Getting someone else to refer to you is not as easy to put into practice as it sounds.You see,the business owners who may want to introduce you are very busy people. Introducing your business is never going to be as important for them, as it is for you. So what you have to do is to make it so easy for them that they can’t possibly refuse you. How do you do that? To make the introduction easy for them and effective for you, you are going to have to provide the email or letter and the promotional collateral (brochure etc) for them to send. All they have to do is put copy and paste the letter into their email, attach your information and press send.

There are also programs out there such as affiliate and referral partner programs that can also track your referral partner activity. This is not necessary however a great idea especially if your volume of referrals start to increase rapidly and if you are selling products regularly that way referral fees can be easily and effortlessly calculated.

next time you want someone to start referring to you, try thinking about how you can make it easy for them. Write the intro letter for them, collate your introduction information / presentation pack that’s brief and displays the benefits of why someone would want to do business with you and then of course be sure you have a great offer for the new prospective customer to “try you out”.

Would you like some help with this in your business?  Why not book a Complimentary Business Growth Session with one of our Coaches?  Connect with us here.

Generating Leads

Your aim is to generate leads and opportunities and convert these into increased revenues to your business. This article outlines some of the challenges you may be already facing and highlights some quick simple steps of how you can generate more leads into your business.

In my experience one of the fundamental challenges most business owners face is not being able to generate enough leads into the business. Without a consistent supply of leads into any business, the business is usually faced with poor cash flow and finds it difficult from one month to the next.

You may have already experienced this and you now can be in a position where you have the opportunity to change what’s going on.

If you want to create amazing results in your business, and want to turn your vision into reality, the only way this can happen is if you are fully accountable for your success and are responsible for the actions you take on a daily basis.

Leads are prospects or potential customers.

It’s important though to attract quality leads into the business and not just any lead as this can waste your valuable time and money.

Your marketing efforts will determine the quality of the leads you bring into your business and the challenge businesses face in this area is 80% of all marketing doesn’t meet the expectation of the business owner.

Try not to limit yourself when it comes to advertising and marketing your business.

Traditional marketing methods include local paper advertising and emailing.

Opportunities let outside the square and can include strategies such as, building your referral networks.

Ads and direct mail are only the beginning!

They are important, however they should not be the only source used for generating leads for your business.

Not all lead-generating techniques are created equal either. Some techniques will work well for a certain business, and those same strategies won’t work for another. Much is dependent on your type of business, your location, timing, how well you apply the lead generating strategy, and a host of other variables that tend to make marketing an inexact science. Therefore it’s important to test and measure each strategy to find out what works, and make it work.

So here’s a brief look at what you can do to start bringing more quality leads into your business.

Firstly start thinking WHO, WHERE, WHAT, HOW & WHY when it comes to marketing your product or service.

Who are my ideal clients / market?

Understand who he/ she is and why.

Where are we going to find our clients?

Why will they buy from me? What makes us unique? Remember people shop on value and emotion.

Now you know who you want to target,

Create a Lead Generation Action Plan for the month

  • Listing at least 2 to 6 different lead generating strategies,
  • What steps you need to take to implement the strategy.
  • Who will complete the task/s required  to complete the strategy, and
  • Be sure you also have a Due date for the activity so you stay on track for the month.

Daily Consistent Action will produce results in your business that you need!

Here is an example of a lead generation action plan. (Click the image for a bigger version)

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Is your BRAND – Bland?

Have you ever run a marketing campaign and then wondered why the phone didn’t ring? Or why hundreds of customers didn’t come rushing to bash down your doors to buy from you?

Reality is, the response rate to ‘direct response’ marketing is lower than any of us would care to know. We are optimistic by nature, and when we place an ad, do a flyer drop or run a radio campaign we spend the week leading up to the campaign working out how we are going to handle all the extra business it will create, only to be disappointed when the phone only rings two or three times.

So should you even bother spending your money on marketing? The short answer is a resounding YES  The key is to understand how to make it work for your business.

Have a think about the last time you got so excited about an ad, flyer or radio/TV commercial that you dropped everything in a mad panic to get to the phone and buy whatever it was they were advertising. However, I am sure you could sing a jingle or two of your favorite brands.

Now, I’m not saying that direct marketing doesn’t work, what I am saying is it rarely works as well as we expect. For this reason, it is a trap for any business and to maximize your return on investment there are some important factors to consider before launching any campaign.

There are two very different types of advertising, Brand Building and Direct Response. I’ll kick off by saying that ‘Direct Response’ marketing needs to make you enough profit from the campaign to pay for itself, and also add some profit to your bottom line to be considered a ‘success’. This type of ad is ‘salesmanship
in print’ and needs to compel the reader to take action NOW. Don’t expect a high response rate unless you are willing to offer a deal too good to miss. I am sure you’ll remember the classic “but wait, there’s more” ad campaigns, offering a set of steak knives, along with money back guarantees and 2 for 1 deals. Your offer has to invite your market to act NOW

Now let’s take a look at the latter, Brand Building. Brand building is all about
‘Trust’ and ‘Credibility’. You will always feel comfortable buying from someone
that you trust and has credibility, no matter how good a deal is, if you do not
‘trust’ the seller then you won’t buy. Marketing guru Seth Godin says it’s about being a “purple cow”. It’s about being the one purple cow in a paddock of brown cows. Also known as your USP (Unique Selling Proposition). If you are not different from your competitors then you’re destined to compete only on price.

Having a strong brand can make the phone ring, can make customers walk into your store, can create loyal customers and can get people to buy from you. Many of the ‘big’ players have proven this time and time again. So how do you go
about building your brand?

Make  it unique
You need to be truly unique to position your brand for success. ‘Satisfaction guaranteed’ and ‘friendly service’ are far from unique, and if that’s all you can come up with to clearly define your difference then you’re wasting your time.

Support a cause
Sometimes building your brand can be as simple as supporting a cause, the rock band Midnight Oil did it, as did the ‘Body Shop’ with their policy of ‘no animal testing’ and their ‘save the whales with Greenpeace’ campaign. Studies have shown that people will switch to your brand if you support a good cause.

Create a ‘WOW’ factor
Remember the last really good movie you watched, how many people did you tell about it? Make your business an ‘experience’ your customers will rave about.

Have a clear vision
Your vision needs to enroll and inspire you, your team and your customers. Get everyone excited about your brand.

Know your customer
Make sure you are clear about WHO your ideal customer is. Using a ‘blanket approach’ will cost time and money. Once you have clarity about your ideal client you will be able to send a clear message directly to your market.