How do you get more customer referrals??

Grant Leboff:So, Adrian, I think one of the real sources of leads for any business is referrals.

Adrian Swinscoe: Yes.

Grant Leboff: I think it's a perennial issue, how do we get more customer referrals? How do we get referred? How do we get people talking about us more? Do you have some insights around that?

Adrian Swinscoe: Yes. One of my favorite things comes from my mother. I think it's something my mum said to me when I was a kid and I'm pretty sure pretty much every mother says to every child which says, "If you don't ask, you don't get." I think that applies to referrals hugely.

There's a piece of research, I think it was done by a company called Hinge in the States around professional services firms. They looked at professional services firms and they asked them about what their marketing growth strategy was. About 90% of them, 90%+ of them said, "Oh it's referral based. Based on reputation and working with our clients," and so on and so forth. They were like, that's brilliant. Then the next question they asked was, "So do you have an active and a proactive referral strategy program in place?" And the majority of them, in fact we're getting to a really low percentage point, said, "No we don't." And you were like, "Aha."

I think that's the thing is that people assume that the service that our product or our service or our business is in the front of mind for our customers at all times. But frankly, we're not. We're not that important. We don't figure so largely in our customers' lives that they're always going to be thinking about us. And, therefore, sometimes we have to give customers bit of a helping hand or we have to nudge them and make them pay attention and go, "Oh, we know you like us. Is there anybody that you can refer us to?"

Even just doing that small thing, one it gives you an opportunity to have an extra conversation with your customer which may lead to other things. At the same time you're just being a bit more proactive, they might turn around and also then say, "Well I don't know how to do that. What would you like me to say?" There you go, that tells you even more about what your customers need because sometimes we also make an assumption that people know what to say when they're introducing us and actually we're not necessarily all that skilled or equipped to do that. It's dangerous to make assumptions but it's also dangerous not to ask.

Grant Leboff: Let's assume for a second that we've got an enlightened company that is going to ask. What other things can they do around that that might make the referral more likely?

Adrian Swinscoe: If you're building the habit or getting into the habit that you're asking your customers for referrals, now a lot of mistakes that companies are going to make is that they focus on their customers but not also on their employees.

They focus on enabling their customers about how do we refer them but they also don't enable their employees to actually ask for those referrals or to chase up those referrals. Because actually there's a thing there around, well again I go back to that previous point around - we're not that important. Sometimes we have to, if people make a promise to us, one we have them keep the promise, help them make that referral but also encourage them to do it and potentially reward them in doing so a way of saying thank you or giving them additional help and so on and so forth. But actually we've got to also make sure that our staff are enabled and trained and equipped to ask for those referrals and also to follow up on them as well.

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