We’ve added a new feature! Automatically “tweet” your referral marketing activities…

We’re excited to announce that we’ve just introduced a brand new feature to Hello Referrals for those of you who use Twitter.

By enabling automatic tweets, you can instantly communicate with Twitterville when you perform activities in the application like sending a referral, creating a calendar event or sending a message to a fellow partner. If the recipient(s) are on Twitter as well, they can be mentioned by their @username directly in your tweet!

For example: Just sent a referral to @standardmedia via @HelloReferrals

Why Twitter?

Those of you who don’t use Twitter might be wondering what all the fuss is about. Good question. After all, isn’t Twitter just something that celebrities use to discuss last night’s American Idol? How could it possibly benefit a business?

1. First off, Twitter is a communication platform that helps businesses stay connected to their customers.
2. As a business, you can use it to quickly share information with people interested in what you do, gather real-time market intelligence and feedback, and build relationships with customers, partners and other people who care about your company.
3. To the individual user, they can use Twitter to tell a company (or anyone else) that they’ve had a great – or disappointing – experience with a business, offer product ideas, and learn about great offers.

Communicating on Twitter that you refer business to your partners builds credibility and helps position you as a capable referral marketer. It shows that you believe in communal business development within your network. It’s also a great way to communicate more frequently on Twitter. As a bonus, it builds karma when you reference your business partner – increasing the potential for followers when you cross-promote through mentions and creating additional opportunities for return referrals.

If you want to learn more, Twitter has created a great micro-site called Twitter 101 for Business geared at businesses who want to discover the benefits of the platform. There’s also an excellent primer to get you started and some helpful tips on best practices.

Interested in becoming a beta tester? We’re looking for candidates! Let us know… email us at info AT helloreferrals DOT com

We’re chugging away into month 2 with our Alpha Testers. We’ve received some great feedback from the individuals who have been using the application so far, and we’re looking forward to more suggestions and tweaking comments as our valued users continue to plug away. In light of this, and after having read an article at Duct Tape Marketing from April of last year,  I’ve revisited a series of thoughts about social media, and the usefulness of it in establishing a solid base for referral business.

Social media is a term used to describe the type of media that is based on conversation and interaction between people online. It’s a hip term these days if you’re in the know, but there’s still a surprising number of professionals who’ve yet to embrace it, which is a shame, because business interaction has changed dramatically even in the last 5 years, and in many ways, social media can be one of the most effective means of building a network of individuals who will refer you business if done properly.

We’re working on adding an element to Hello Referrals that introduces the ability for the user to tweet when the passage of a referral has occurred – whether received or sent. We’ve been tweeting collectively via @helloreferrals, and I tweet independently for my business, Standard Media Services,  at @standardmedia. I’ve taken the time to build up a follower base that is by no means huge compared to some people, but that I’ve taken a great deal of effort to ensure is based on quality followers that are a combination of people I know or who work in a complimentary industry. I’m committed to my social media platform as a key component to my referral marketing initiative and its been paying off.  Some of my followers are people that I meet at my weekly BNI meeting, and who’ve also embraced the referral marketing philosophy, and I make an effort to meet as many of my followers face to face as I can. As a result,  I’ve generated over $5700 of referred business via Twitter since January. This is business that would not have been on the books otherwise. These referrals represent my network of followers picking up cues on Twitter for other users who required the products or services that I provide.

What I like about Duct Tape’s article is that it emphasizes a point that is key to all successful referral marketing exercises – the more social and connected you are, the easier it is to refer you. If you create a sense of community, which is the essence of social media, and put your business out there, your referral partners are introduced to a heightened element of visibility and communication. With that said, it’s not as simple as just starting or having a blog, or even just signing up for a Twitter account. It’s also not as simple as going bananas with your blog or through your tweets and obsessively updating them daily with content that is simply selling, monopolizing the soapbox, or speaking in a one way direction. You need to engage.  Your commitment to the medium is key to your credibility inside of it. Discuss and create high value dialogue about your industry and what you can do for people. Create chatter about a positive experience you’ve had or suggestions you think are sound. The consistency with your maintenance of a social media strategy is as important as the referrals you receive from it.

How has social media benefited your business? What kinds of successes have been introduced to your referrals as a result of it? What are some of the strategies you employ? Share with us, and leave a comment….

Almost there.

At the moment we’re putting the finishing touches on an alpha version of Hello Referrals that we’ll be launching to a very limited group in the next few weeks. We’ve got the core functionality complete and we’re dying to get it in the hands of some real users. Based on the feedback we get on the alpha version we’ll be aiming to release a beta version in late May.

At that point we’ll be making the software available to our first customers. It’s extremely exciting and a big step we want to get right. Stay tuned for more information regarding pricing and availability.

What Hello Referrals does…

• Ideally suited to existing groups or BNI chapters
• Wicked simple and effective management of the referrals you send and receive
• Lean and mean organization of your reciprocal business contacts and events
• Helps you and those that refer you close more business
• Creates an organized reciprocal business referral network

What Hello Referrals doesn’t…

• Not available to individuals (not yet at least)
• Allow you to drop the ball on referred prospects – that’s a big no no
• Disappoint your business partners by blowing referral opportunities – GASP!
• Require you to juggle emails, business cards, calendars, phone calls and post-its to close referral business
• Get in your way and won’t take long to learn

We’re doing our best to tweet and blog our progress and make as many friends and fans as we can while we wrap up the initial development. Thanks again for wanting to hear about what we’re up to.

We hope you’ll hang around to meet Hello Referrals because he’s very excited to meet all of you.

Chris and Steve

“Small Business Referrals” …”Word of Mouth Marketing” …”Professional Referral Networks”…

I think a lot of us hear these words, or research them online, and put together a kind of frame of reference that involves many people with ties and briefcases.  We mentally call up those stock photography shots of people around a pie graph closing a deal, or celebrating a huge quarter that you’ll find if you image search terms like “business professionals” or “business networking”. Some of us may feel a little alienated by that if we don’t exactly work in sharply pressed attire all day or have a swanky commercial downtown suite. I certainly don’t. I own and run a media business from my home office. I revel in the fact that I can have a casual Tuesday AND Thursday, or maybe rock the “Fletch” look  a bit with sneakers and a blazer under a Lakers shirt. Some of us are laborers, contractors, and renovators. Some of use might be toiling on cars all day. Some of us are florists, day care workers, graphic designers, or home inspectors. I think you get the point. Most businesses are “small businesses”. They are not in high rise office environments. They’re in retail outlets, strip malls, business parks, and homes. They’re also less then 15 employees big. With the economy and employment shaking up like a paintcan in a tumbler, there’s adaptively been a  rise in the number of home based small businesses and consultancies. In many ways…small business has gloriously and successfully gone guerrilla. Don’t assume that just because you’re a SMB, the benefits of having a referral strategy aren’t within your grasp or beneficial to you. If anything, we’re in more of a position to benefit from them as a result of our flexibility.

There’s also a wickedly inaccurate misconception that there’s minimal to no return when networking with people who don’t do something complimentary to what you do. There’s an element of intimidation and trepidation with joining something like a BNI group, or attending a Meetup. I don’t think it’s because these groups go out of their way to ostracize these potential members or networking partners. I think it’s because professionally, most businesspeople can have negative assumptions if exposed to people who aren’t immediately in their realm of opportunity, and even…dare I say…some of us may be professionally insecure.

I was discussing this with a networking partner of mine who owns and runs a granite fabrication business. He cuts and installs stone, and networks regularly inside of a rotary club and within his own list of people that he’s created. I was pleasantly surprised when he reported to me that he received more then $75,000 work of work in his last fiscal year from one of his networking partners – a caterer. He meets with her regularly, and refers clients to her that he meets when doing installations of kitchen counters and floors. After having met at rotary, he admitted that he wasn’t expecting much of a synergy between them. He assumed that his best bet at gaining some referrals was going to come from the contractor and stonemason who are also a part of his club, and he naturally gravitated towards them because of what felt was a commonality. Although they are great referral partners, and he enjoys a mutually beneficial arrangement with them, he gets slightly more referrals from the caterer. He admitted that he initially avoided a meeting with his catering friend because he didn’t think she’d be in as strategic a position to refer his services. He was wrong.

The lessons? It’s your attitude. Assuming someone won’t be a successful referral partner is a mistake. Discounting referral and network marketing – really any kind of marketing strategy for your business -  is also a mistake. It’s not just for those of us who wear suits and ties. It’s for all us. Referrals can come from the most unexpected places provided you’re open to receiving them, and assumption can hinder wonderfully successfully things from occuring.

Customer referrals:  These are referrals that come from your current customers. A customer referral is someone you’ve done business with already, and who you want to encourage to send you more business. They are motivated differently. They’ve had such a pleasant experience dealing with you, that you’re at the top of their radar when they come across someone else looking for what you offer. They are motivated by referring you to create a benefit for someone else.

They’re both great referrals and no cost business opportunities, but very different. Savvy business people will know how to leverage both streams to great returns. Many only focus on one. Partner referrals is what our application will help you manage. These tend to be better qualified because they’re coming from your circle of trust -  your partner network. The motivation is based on an expectation of reciprocation, and the model is a community building individual businesses collectively, but if you’re ignoring the other main element of referral marketing – referrals from your customers – then you’re approaching what is an overall referral marketing strategy half effectively. The first step, is knowing the difference. The second – understanding that both make up what is no cost referral based marketing.

VCP

Mike Macedonio, the President and Partner of the Referral Institute, the world’s leading referral training organization, illustrates VCP well in this article at the Referral Institute web site.

Comment or share you stories with us about how VCP has played into the establishment or management of your referral network.

1. Review your customer process. Whatever business you might be in – assess whether your process of earning someone’s business and then seeing it through is creating a stress free, uncomplicated, and pleasant experience. As an example, is simply engaging with your business easy enough? You’d be surprised how often business owners get too caught up in operational effectiveness, that they lose sight of important things like initial responsiveness – think phone systems that make customers yell “agent” or maniacally dial 0 to actually speak to a real live person.

2. Ensure that you are reliable. Whatever you say you’re going to do, ensure that you do it. Don’t dissappoint.

3. Manage expectations. Ensure that your customers are fully aware of what’s involved when doing business with you, and never put yourself in a position where you’re making excuses or explaining why you didn’t do the second item in this list.

4. Over deliver when possible. If you can, this is one of the main elements of what creates a sense of satisfaction and makes people WANT to refer you.

5. Create a sense of importance. Genuinely care about the business you earn and treat each opportunity with a sense of respect and concern.

6. Ask for a referral. Encourage the passage of your information onto another potential customer through your existing one.

If you do these 6 simple steps, you’re positioning yourself for the greatest likelihood of a referral and you’ve graduated to being a word of mouth marketing expert. These logical suggestions make up the successful formula for retaining and growing business with no cost.

When you don’t know someone immediately, where do you turn? How about Linked In?

If you don’t have a Linked In profile, you should get one. There’s a myth that Linked In is essentially just a Facebook for business but that couldn’t be further from the truth. Linked In has a very practical benefit that most of us don’t even realize for creating, or assisting with the creation of, a referral network and beyond. Most people’s extended professional networks are hidden from view — both to others and themselves. When I say ‘network”, I don’t mean what you can immediately see or who you immediately know, I mean the six degrees of each one of us — professionally speaking.

If it weren’t for my own Linked In network, I wouldn’t have realized that one of my closest personal friends has a 1st level relationship (and friendship) with a very in-demand and highly recommended French translation expert that I required on a recent project with the Federal Government of Canada. Translation was also a category in my referral marketing network that was unoccupied, and which I was occasionally (and lazily) reminding myself to fill in at some point in the event that I ever came across a media project that would require one firsthand. I took a quick scan of my extended network, and found Isabelle McCann at Anglo Franco Communications. I’ve since contracted her on the project, had an opportunity to meet to her and she just referred me to one of her customers looking for customized USB flash drives (one of Standard Media’s specialties).

We want to know your thoughts on and ideas on selecting partners when building your referral network. Let us know what’s worked for you, and what hasn’t.

This is the single most important thing you can do – and is one of the main reasons we created Hello Referrals. To help you do this better, amidst – ideally – what will be so many referrals and word of mouth opportunities that it will be a challenge to keep your referral campaign effort organized, it’s essential to know some key information about persistence. If you’re using Hello Referrals – you’re doing something right, so congratulations right there.

Why is the follow up so important?

Probably about half of the referrals you receive will require a follow up after your first attempt at contact. This is where most business owners fail in leveraging these precious opportunities. If they don’t immediately get someone on the phone, the idea fades fast. If you don’t connect with your referral initially, don’t assume they lost interest in talking with you, even if you’ve left a message or sent an email. In my experience, most of the people I talk with are so busy that they often don’t have the time to talk on the phone a lot of the time or get to that email unless it’s one of their own customers who of course get the priority. Business owners have a habit of considering a problem solved if someone has referred a solution, so they put it aside mentally until they hear from you.  Once I get their attention, the business occurs, and in most cases, they thank me for being diligent. It’s important to remember that referrals are not closed sales. They are warmer than leads, but you can’t assume that just because someone has referred you they’ll be impatiently waiting for you as soon as you call on them. It’s essential to take a disciplined approach to ensuring you create contact with them in a timely way. If you’re managing your referrals well, it’s just a schedule you apply yourself to, however, there will be instances where some referrals simply don’t bite. What do you do then?

If I haven’t made contact with the referral after two attempts, usually 2-3 days apart, I will go back to the partner that has referred me, and see if they can assist. People naturally have a sense of ownership with an opportunity that they pass onto other people, and in my experience, I’ve found that if I can’t get that potential customer on the phone, getting the person who suggested my services to them will almost always do the trick in instances where it’s not immediately happening. A balance of persistence without pushiness and and organized plan will make every referral you receive capitalized on appropriately.