If you make any of your money off of sales, then you probably love referrals. Business coming to you based on the positive words of someone else is one of the best feelings a salesperson or business owner can experience. It shows that not only are you doing a good job, but others are noticing and telling their friends as well. Yes, referrals can be amazingly productive for your business but unfortunately, sometimes they can end up being a huge waste of time as well.
It seems a shame to malign something as beautiful as a referral but when the referrals you get require you to spend time and money to follow up on them with no results time after time, it might be time to help teach others the true definition of a referral. You see, if someone tells someone else to visit or call your business and they do so, that s a great! But, if someone you know tells you to call someone else they know and simply use your name in order to try to get business, this can often be a prescription for a massive waste of your time.
I call these referrals “use my name”referrals and they are given out quite a bit in the business world. When someone hears what you do they immediately think of someone in their network that might be able to use your business. This is then followed up with a use my name referral when they tell you to call someone else that they know. The problem is if this referral is not warmed up, you are doing little more than cold calling. To be effective at all, a referral has to be properly warmed up. In this case, the referral is nothing more than a lead and if all I wanted was a lead, I could pay a lead service to supply me with all that I ever needed. This is not to say that you should be ungrateful, however, you just need to know how to turn a lead into a warm referral so that the people you speak with are helping you get more qualified business.
The easy way to do this is by saying a few simple words to the person who gave you the use my name referral. Simply tell them that you would like to do the best job possible for the person they re referring you to and in order to do that you need to make sure they know why you are calling. Then ask if they would mind telling that person why you think they should speak with you and warm up the referral for you. Then, once that s done, you can contact the referral and hopefully close the business. Make sure to tell them that you will do the same for them if the opportunity arises.
So in closing, a referral exists when everyone associated with it is aware of it. Make sure that all parties get connected before the conversations take place and you will greatly increase the value of all the referrals you give and you get.
Author Resource:-
Stephen Labuda is an entrepreneur who built his business by networking with other professionals. You can connect with him and read more about networking at http://www.networkedevents.com.
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