Need New Leads? - Part 2

Tuesday, October 9, 2007, by Leigh Anne

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So to finish up our post on asking for referrals from yesterday, I wanted to share with you an idea you might want to incorporate into your business -once a year, send your customers a unique referral offer. Promote it as a special campaign or event. Hold a month long “Refer a Friend Month” ( am sure someone will come up with something more clever to call it) The idea is that you promote a special time period to your customers (a month or so) where they will receive extra benefits for referring a friend to you. You may want to take what you normally give for a referral and double it -since this is just for a limited time period you can afford to offer a little more than you usually do. Be sure and tie the gift to “doing business with their friend” not just getting a name. You could also give them a very small gift (costing you a few pennies) for each name they give you and then the larger gift/incentive when you actually do business with their friend.

You may want to tie this special promotion in with another customer event you hold each year or pick a month when business is slower and it could help boost your sales.

This special offer of course gives you an “excuse” to contact your customers to let them know about your special promotion and what they can receive for participating in it. The follow up phone call is what will really help make it effective. Notify your customers of it via email or mailing but to truly make it work you are going to want to get on the phone. People are much more likely to respond to your offer during a personalized phone call then they will via email or having to pick up the phone and call you. During your follow-up phone calls you may need to prompt them a bit as to whose names they could share with you - have them think of people on their school directory list, parents from the soccer team, cub scout den, their Christmas card list. You will be amazed how many people they can think of when you give them just a little prodding!

The most important thing is that you are ASKING for referrals - this can be a way to keep that “pipeline” continually full to overflowing!

If you have a special way in which you reward referrals in your business I’d love to hear!

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Categories: Connect, Home Based Business