A Proven System to Get Referral Business
July 6, 2008 – 10:59 amBusiness referrals are one of the tried and true (but sometimes frustrating) ways to grow your small business. A few years ago I learned a fact about how the brain works that when I applied it, exploded my referral business. Below, I’m going to quickly outline it for you so you can start using it today.
Most experts state that the best time to get referrals is after you have proven yourself to a customer. While this sort of works, it doesn’t even come close to being an effective way. If you’ve tried it, you know what I’m saying.
The first meeting is the best time in the relationship to let people know how you work. To build your business with referrals, you advise people right away that referrals are how you do business. Here’s why:
Your brain is programmed to pay attention to what’s immediately of consequence. What just happened is already starting to fade. When you are in the middle of doing a task you can hold all the details in mind to a very exacting degree. A couple days after you have finished, many of those details have faded, because you are on to the next important things.
The part of your brain responsible for this is the reticular activated system (RAS). Researchers call it the attention center of the brain. It has many tasks but one of them is choosing what to pay conscious awareness to.
You can fall asleep watching TV and not pay attention to those sounds but immediately snap awake when your dog starts barking or someone opens the door. Or if you want to find someone in a crowd and they call your cell phone to let you know they have a red hat on, suddenly all the red hats appear. The RAS developed to instinctively choose what you notice.
How to Use a Customer’s RAS to Refer Business
You prime the pump by talking about referrals right away.
Here’s how to do it:
When you’re talking to your customer for the first time… you can say something like, “Mrs. Jones, I only will take you on as a client if I am absolutely convinced that I can over-deliver exactly what you need.
“Mr. Customer, I’m confident that if we start together, eventually you will be pleased with the results you get. I don’t take on new business if I can’t deliver a great result and provide what they need.
So, if we do business together, there will be a time when you are thrilled with who we are and what we do. We actively set it up that way.
I make sure, up front, that the fit is good and I can hit it out of the park.
A couple of things about that. First of all, if you refer someone to us, we won’t give you a free toaster or a trip to Mexico. We provide our clients with the best pricing possible, so we haven’t built in awards, prizes or cash back if someone refers us.
If you refer us to a colleague, it will be because of a benefit you see for that colleague by working with us.
I make sure that you get a ton of value so that you want to send friends and associates to get the same results.
Of course, I will only work with them if I know that I can give them great results as well. No matter what, I will deal with them in a professional and caring way. I would only expect that you would send me someone if you have been dealt with professionally and with care. Right?
So if this makes sense, I’ll be checking to make sure that you are happy with my service.”
You will end up getting and keeping more customers at a profit.
Tags: Small Business
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