Cowboys Listen To Other Cowboys & Clients Listen To Other Clients
“People influence people. Nothing influences people more than a recommendation from a trusted friend. A trusted referral influences people more than the best broadcast message. A trusted referral is the Holy Grail of advertising.”
— Mark Zuckerberg, CEO
Like him or hate him, Mark Zuckerberg understands influence. Thousands of dollars don’t equal a simple recommendation from a friend.
We all grasp this in theory, but very few of us with professional service businesses do anything to cultivate these friendly recommendations. We’d rather spend thousands of dollars and build huge sophisticated funnels.
Your unicorn clients (the really great ones) are most likely hanging out with other unicorns.
You don’t need sophisticated funnels, expensive CRM software or anything more than the cost of a stamp to start encouraging chatter between these chummy unicorns.
Lucky for you, I happen to have a ridiculously simple 4-step process to drive referrals. I can guarantee that this process works. I’ve tested and proven it myself.
Step 1: Deliver Results For Clients
Steps 2, 3 & 4 are useless if you aren’t delivering for clients. Be so good that clients can’t help but talk about your business.
Build a clear scope at the beginning of the project and then exceed the scope.
Realize that you’re raising their expectations for future projects. That’s ok because you’ve just raised the bar for every other vendor. They’ll choose you over all those other yahoos because you always deliver above and beyond.
What’s more powerful than a client who goes out and tells her friends that she loves working with you because you always exceed her expectations?
You know you’ve got step 1 right if people use you more than once. Clients must be willing to use you repeatedly before they’ll refer you to a friend.
Step 2: Send A Handwritten Thank You Note
Take the time to send good old fashion mail every time you finish a project. A handwritten note stands out in our digital world.
Don’t ask for anything.
You just want to leave the client with a positive taste in their mouth. If you’d like to send a post-project gift (especially if you provide a high $$$ service) I encourage that here as well. Make the card or gift feature something distinctly tied to your brand if possible.
This simple gesture is a powerful tool of persuasion.
Step 3: Request Honest Feedback
After you’ve sent your physical thank you card, make it part of your project completion process to send clients an email and ask them to rate their experience with you on a 1 to 5-star scale. Make sure they elaborate on the rating with feedback on what they enjoyed and where you could have improved.
Encourage them to be honest with their feedback. Tell them you want the truth (good or bad).
For 1 to 3-star feedback, take the time to identify trends where you need to improve. If you are consistently getting 1 to 3-star ratings, you have some serious issues to address.
Don’t be that thick-headed business owner who refuses to listen. Your clients are telling you what needs to be done. Make the changes that will transform your business.
For 4 & 5-star ratings and feedback, make notes on consistent areas of strength. Identify where you excel and are delivering value your clients particularly appreciate. These highlights can become the foundation for your brand message. You will also want to flag these 4 & 5-star clients for step 4.
Continue following up with clients after every project and see how your ratings progress. You’ll be building quantitative and qualitative data that provides actionable insights. This becomes even more crucial as your team grows and more people interface with clients.
Step 4: Make The Ask
You’ve sent a physical thank you, you’ve requested their honest feedback, and you’ve identified clients who rated you 4 or 5 stars.
Now it’s time to make a direct ask for clients to refer you to friends or colleagues who need your services. Email all of your 4 & 5-star clients with a carefully worded email. Be direct, professional, and friendly with your ask.
If you have provided a great experience for this client, they will be anxious to share your information with friends when the opportunity arises. People like having the answer when someone asks for a recommendation.
Don’t mass email clients. Make this request personal. Let them know how much you enjoy working with them and would like to work with other colleagues like them because it has been so enjoyable.
Be Consistent
This may seem like a really simple concept. It is.
Consistently executing this system is the difficult part. Like I said earlier, we all understand the importance of referrals, but very few of us do anything to generate them.
Are referrals a crucial part of your business development efforts? Do you use a different strategy? Please share below. I’d love to hear other ideas and systems.
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