If you have a client who enjoys your product or service, they can bring in their friend, acquaintance or family and recommend you as an excellent provider of the same. The new client who came in on recommendation is a customer referral.
Giving excellent customer service, rewards your business by creating a herd of return customers who spend their money on you over and over again. The biggest reward of customer referrals, however, is the gaining of new customers. Your satisfied customers can bring in more customers into your business, whom you can then take through your funnel and convert into paying customers.
Generally Marketing comes at a cost.
• You need a good message, so you get an excellent copywriter to prepare one.
• You need to understand the market, so you conduct market research.
• You need to combine the new knowledge with your message, so you hire a business growth consultant.
• And then there are all the changes to make to your business and products.
• Conclusion; gaining new customers through marketing is not only expensive but also complicated.
This is why gaining customers and clients through customer referrals is such a great idea. The greatest advantage of customer referrals is that the customers or clients come to you almost ready to buy. Because they have already been pre-qualified and convinced for you, they just need alittle convincing and they will buy. How beautiful is that?
So how do you get customer referrals?
It is not as free as I may have implied above. You have to start where all marketing starts, by defining your preferred market and designing solutions that you know will not only meet the needs and wants of your target customers, but also surpass their expectations.
You then create a herd of loyal customers and clients who swear by your product’s excellence.
Then you sit back and wait while customer referrals roll in.
Well NO!
You now have to ask, and convince, your clients and customers to get you customer referrals.
Your customers will get you referrals on their own but you cannot depend on this approach only. Your customers want to help you but they don’t run your marketing and sales departments, you do. So you have to request for the favor and show them how to do it. The good news is, since most, if not all of them, are raving fans of your product or service, they will have no reservations in recommending you to their friends, families and even work colleagues.
Encourage them to recommend you by offering incentives, showing them exactly how to recommend your product or service and backing them up when they have successfully convinced a prospect to consider you.
Mastering customer referrals will open a whole new pool of customers and clients you never knew you had. Of course the most important fact to remember is that you must be worth referring to a friend, family member or business associate. So you must fully satisfy and impress your current herd of customers and clients before you can motivate them to tell a friend.
So mine through my other articles and discover how to communicate with your customers and deliver on your promises to them. Then study my other articles on customer referrals and I guarantee you, the discovery of a whole new world of strategies to get new customers and clients flowing to your business.