Incorporating a referral marketing system into your business’ marketing plans will guarantee you an increase in business. It will do this at a significantly lower cost than traditional marketing, and the client you receive as a referral has a higher likelihood of staying with you quite a long time as a long term customer.
Sounds great? It is, but… the establishment of a referral system that works for you, and isn’t a highly managed and time consuming version of Outlook or Google calendar is a difficult task for most business owners. Most don’t know where to begin or the essentials of what they need to really turn up the gas on receiving and effectively managing their referrals as well as the network of partners who will give them. Here’s an interesting stat – did you know that nearly 75% of the referrals naturally given out never get a response or the business owner is not even aware that they have been given? What we define as naturally given out is the casual referral or the verbal referral. The “I-know-a-guy referral”. These happen casually, usually through the every day operation of your business and dealing with people – regular dialogue associated with what is a good customer experience that you are creating. There is an enormous amount of potential with these, and if a business owner could more effectively wrangle these gems of opportunity out of the air, life would be good.
Investing in your referral network has other positives. Referrals spend more money. Research has proven this is likely because people tend to refer leads and opportunities that are highly qualified, prepared to buy, and who trust the person referring.
This is the reason we created Hello Referrals. It’s a web-based application designed to help you to organize and manage your referral base to grow your business. How? It helps you to do the things that make being part of a referral network so successful. It facilitates regular communication with your partners, effectively manages the referred leads you receive and the referrals you send to others in your network, provides tracking and reporting tools, and gives you a place to organize your trusted partners in business — the ones you love to refer. All of this in a easy-to-use web-based application that doesn’t require any software be installed. It’s refreshingly uncomplicated.