Do you know how many referrals per active customer you averaged during the last 12 months?
It’s a key statistic, yet most people have no grip on it at all.
The quickest way to double your business is simply to get every existing customer to bring you another one.
Not only will you double your business but…it lowers your marketing costs as it's free.
- There’s less price resistance.
Customers referred to you by satisfied customers come with a certain level of pre-established trust. They are predisposed to buy and they’ll be less resistant to price than new customers attracted by advertising.
- You’ll get more referrals.
The customer obtained by referral is generally much more likely to refer a new prospect to you than an advertising-generated customer.
To increase your referrals, start with two words:
Priority and Accountability.
Priority begins with two statistics you’ll need to measure.
Stat #1: The average number of referrals received each week or month;
Stat #2: The number of conversations about referrals required to generate one.
These two statistics have to become your highest priority and your primary focus. You also will need to hold yourself and your team accountable. That means asking yourself each day:
How many clients did I talk with today about referrals?
Taking whatever referrals happen to come your way and being happy with that is lazy. Any experienced athlete will tell you that without measurement and accountability, there will be a gradual decline in performance. With measurement and accountability, there will be stability and usually, improvement in performance.
Successful businesses are managed, even micro-managed, by the numbers.
Let’s take a real-life example with a physiotherapist clinic. They determined that they were averaging one referral for every ten times the physio actually conversed with a patient about referrals. They want ten referrals each month. How many patients does the physio need to talk to? He needs to speak to 100.
Most businesses could easily increase by 50% to 100% exclusively through installing this kind of measurement.
No big marketing breakthroughs. Just automatic performance improvement through measurement, priority and accountability.
The real question is will you implement the actions needed to achieve this?
Or will you cheat yourself out of more business by not really committing to your referral goals?
Only you know the answer…
If you’d like some help cracking the most important thing in business – the rhythmic acquisition of customers – then book a chat with Helen or click here for more information about marketing and business coaching.