How many of your clients ACTUALLY send you referrals?

In the past when I was still very much in Offline Marketing, I'd say around 30% of my clients gave me referrals. I always tried to go above and beyond with how I treated them, and I also gave them additional free thibgs if they gave me a referral. I usually wait a couple days after the initial day of giving my service.

I would also only ask them for some referrals if I know we had a really good connection as customer and service provider.

After a client has been with me 6 months or more I tend to find it pretty easy to tap them for referrals if they don't just send me them on their own. Once someone is crazy happy with your service they love telling others as long as their friends are not competing with them in the same product-service/market.

I sign 5-6 new deals a month and have for couple years, difference is 2-3 of those monthly are referrals now so I need to actually sell/telemarket less which is great because it's the crappiest part of this gig Eventually I can see a point in time where I really have no need to seek out new clients, they may all be referred.

So yeah, deliver quality, and you can certainly get good referrals.

We have quite a lot because we setup an autoresponder with Mailchimp that offers to join an affiliate program that I setup thought OSI Affiliate Software, and we pay them 20% for each sale they send our way. I would say we get around 15% of clients that join our affiliate program and then refer us.

Referrals are like gold in this industry and most offline marketers are far to passive when it comes to referrals. I would say close to 50% of my clients have or continue to refer me, and that's because I take a more aggressive approach.

1. In order to MERIT a referral you have to exceed expectations. So before you are referral worthy, you need to figure out your USP and deliver, big time.

2. You have to continue to deliver, and ask for referrals. Yep. I said ask. Many times, business owners don't even consider it, but would be happy to. I send out a newsletter, and an small business marketing guide each month to all of my clients, and ask them to refer us to anyone in their professional network that can use the same quality services I'm already delivering to them. Another good time to ask for referrals is right after the first month or two, after you've delivered results and their excited about it.

The key is to over deliver, and most people will be happy to refer you.

In order to actually ask for referrals without sounding like your desperate or looking for a hand out you really should lay the upfront groundwork that you will be asking later.

For example, when explaining to clients how you work, maybe after they first become a client you might say

Now John let me lay out the next 3 months for you so we're clear on a few things. BLAH BLAH THIS IS WHERE YOU PUT STUFF YOU'LL DO LIKE CALL HIM WITH UPDATES, ETC...Finally John let's talk about how I grow my business, first I strive for 100% client retention of course so my number 1 goal is doing great work for clients and we work together on XYZ for many years, second if I do great work for you besides continueing to work with me the absolute best way a client can say thank you is by introducing me to people I don't already know who could benefit from the type of work I do, and We will discuss the type of clients I work with once I achieve XYZ"

Obviously XYZ is the service your providing and you throw in better words like "once your phone is ringing off the hook with new customers" or "Once you have a beautiful website that will convert visitors to new clients" etc...

That way when you want the referrals and you have achieved whatever milestone it was you can bring it up:

"John I'm very happy that you love the level of quality on this Job, we really did enjoy working on the site for you, now I'm sure you remember John I told you when we first started working together that the best way a client can say thank you is by introducing me to people I don't currently know who would benefit from my services, now if I asked you who you knew that needed a website probably no one comes to mind, the reason John is because we really don't know the business situation of others in our industry most of the time, but at (your company) we've done some research and we've discovered that businesses that most likely need our services and that we do the best work for are businesses that recently opened within the past 3 years...who do you know who opened a business in the past 3 years"


Replace certain parts with whatever fits your business...if you only work with contractors just say "are Contractors looking to grow and make more money, who do you know who owns a contracting business?"

The words "who do you know" are assumptive on purpose. Let them tell you they don't know, but if you give them a "Do you know anyone" they will say ehhh I don't think i know anyone"

When you say this put your head down and pen to paper waiting for them to answer, don't take your head up, start numbering the paper if you have to 1 to 10.

When they say a name, say "Great, who else?"

Do this until they say I don't think there is anyone else....

Then get everyones phone number and ask how they know them. or whatever other information you want to know.

I apologize if this post wasn't written perfectly correct grammatically or if some sentences don't sound right i was rushing before doing something else.

I haven't actually counted, but it's certainly More than 50%. I get my clients to do joint ventures, and sometimes get them to call up competitors to get group discounts from suppliers.

As my client speaks to their new allies, they're naturally gonna mention me. And I encourage them to pass my details on, because the better my client's allies do, the better my client does.

But I do make it clear that I won't work with their direct competitors.

If your client has a reason to speak to other businesses about you, you're gonna get referräls.

We don't track referrals because it's not necessarily scalable. With one of my offline businesses, the deals are in the hundreds of thousands of dollars so 1 referral is worth it. With that said, we get referrals on a regular basis because we focus on excellent customer service, excellent value and treat our customers like gold.

If you provide that then referrals will come.