Getting other people to sell your services!
As business owners we all know the best way to get new business is a personal referral. Someone you’ve already dealt with telling someone else that you’re worthy. It’s also a great feeling, having someone come to you and say “Hey, I’m a friend of Jim’s and he told me what a fantastic job you did for him!”
New business is great. New business accompanied by a compliment? Win!
How Do You Get Those Referrals?
Well of course step one is always the same, do a great job! Trust and respect your clients and give them the service they deserve. Exceed expectations, simply “just doing your job” will rarely get anyone else to promote your business for you.
For example, there is a small pharmacy in Hamilton, Ontario. Samy’s Drug Mart. I am not sure how my wife found them but I am happy she did! A few years ago they were this tiny hole in the wall pharmacy. A few hundred square feet of store front, one of those crappy signs that you hang from rope through grommets.
The thing was though, Samy’s service was exceptional. They were polite of course, but more than that they actually seemed to care. When they found out we didn’t have a drug plan they lowered their price for my insulin. Now let me put this in perspective, their regular price is already about 20% cheaper than the big chain pharmacies. Once when my wife went to buy my insulin they were sold out. This wasn’t a standing order, she just appeared out of the blue and they had none. No big deal, we’d come back. I fully understood, wasn’t upset. They were upset. So upset in fact that they refused to charge her when she came back the next day.
Samy’s is now much larger, they have a little cafe counter, there is a clinic and a family health centre attached, they have a great new sign!
Samy’s went above and beyond and I tell people that, in fact I tell as many people as I can (I just told all of you how awesome Samy’s is, how caring they are about their customers, if you lived in Hamilton would you go?).
More than that I actually like telling people about Samy’s, they treat me so well that I want them to do well, I want them to grow and make millions of dollars. They have made me feel like I matter, so at this point I feel invested in them, and I go out of my way to tell people that. By the way, I moved 40 miles from Samy’s 5 months ago. They are still my pharmacy and I happily drive those 40 miles to give them my business!
So, step one. Be exceptional. A lot of the time that’s enough. Treat people like they matter and you’ll matter to them and they will tell people.
Sometimes That Isn’t enough
Surf your social media feeds for a while, then come back and finish reading. I’ll just listen to some music while I wait :)
Done? Great! Now, out of curiosity did you see anyone promoting a business they weren’t involved with personally? If yes, that business probably did something pretty exceptional right?
Now, next question. Did you see anyone complaining about a business or service? My guess is if your social circle is big enough you probably saw at least one, maybe more.
People are far more likely to share bad experiences than good ones. Human nature? Maybe, I am not a psychologist, but I am convinced via anecdotal evidence that people tend to complain when something goes wrong quickly, and not say much, or anything at all, when it goes well or as they expected.
What this means to me is that unless I manage to make every one of my clients feel like they’re super special they might not tell other people. They’re really unlikely to go to Twitter or Facebook and actively promote my business. Of course that’s what I try to do with all my clients, but even then they still aren’t selling my business for me.
So How Do You Increase Referrals?
There are other options, things like business referral networks, but in my opinion these things are awful. You join a network of businesses and you’re all expected to refer each other. Bob owns a garage, if someone asks you if you know of a good garage you’re expected, actually it’s a rule of being a member, to tell them Bob does a great job! It doesn’t matter if you’ve ever used Bob’s services, it doesn’t even matter if you’ve ever met Bob. Bob is a garage owner in your network so you have to tell people he’s awesome.
Do you even want referrals like that? Let alone to give your personal stamp of approval to someone you don’t know from Adam? Yeah, neither do I.
You can “buy” referrals. By this I mean offer some sort of reward program for the referrer. This is fine to a degree, I have used reward or affiliate programs personally. I still won’t refer a friend or colleague to a crappy service because I’m getting a reward for doing so, but it still feels a little shady. In fact when I do refer someone to one of these programs I make it very clear to them that I am getting some sort of reward or financial gain by doing so.
A Better Option
I hope you’ve gained something from what I’ve written above, if nothing else I hope you enjoyed it and will check out Samy’s Drug Mart if you live in the region. I hope these things because this is the point where this story converts from helpful information to a shameless self plug!
Thankuu is a new service created by Execute Marketing and developed by calder.io that is designed to help you get referrals from your customers in exchange for donations to a charity.
So it’s sort of a reward program but with a twist that makes it feel a lot less shady. You aren’t directly rewarding your customers for giving you a referral, you’re donating a set amount to a charity of their choice (or yours if they don’t want to pick one) in exchange for them giving you a referral that converts into a sale.
Thankuu allows you to create a unique page where you can promote your business and your customers can quickly and easily give you a referral (a quick 3 step process, they don’t have to create an account to give a referral!). You manage those referrals via your admin dashboard.
The nice thing about Thankuu is it is strictly a way for you to interact with your customer’s referrals and an easy way for your customers to refer people to you. It doesn’t take payments, you make the donation directly to the charity chosen, so the charity gets all the money, no hidden fees, no credit card fees. It is completely free to use at the moment.
You can easily promote your unique Thankuu page as well. It gives you options to share your page to Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Google+, create a blog post or email signature that you can copy and paste anywhere all from directly inside the application.
We really feel this is a way to give your customers added incentive to actively refer other customers to your business, without any of the added stigma of feeling like their referral is being bought.
Thankuu helps you get that awesome “Someone else told my you do a great job!” feeling, and even better you also get the great feeling of donating some money to a worthy cause! You set the donation amount, and can change it any time you want, so you can just consider it part of your advertising budget.
What are your thoughts on referrals? Does Thankuu sound like something you’d use or suggest that your clients use? Please let me know what you think!
