High Customer Conversions With Word of Mouth Marketing Programs
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Tags: business referral, internet marketing, referral marketing, viral marketing, word of mouth marketing
Is there a business on the planet that doesn’t need customers? No, I believe not. So from this, we can extrapolate that any and every business must, to one time or another, be sold. From that we can also say that the most likely form of advertising to be effective will be a variation on a word of mouth sale – in this case the business referral.
This we presume to be the recommendation of another wise unknown company as a prospective new client or customer for your service or product. Let’s take an example: Derek sells WigetY, new and improved – Dan with CompanyD thinks it’s great, and thinks that Bill over with CompanyC would also love it, and tells Derek about Bill and how to contact him. That’s a business referral. Similarly, if Derek had asked Dan who would he recommend WidgetY to, and Dan proceeded to give Derek names and numbers of those he expected would be interested, each one would also be a business referral.
According to Tom Hopkins, writer and world known sales trainer (“Sales Prospecting for Dummies”), a business referral has a 60% chance of becoming a sale, with cold calling coming in a distant 10% or less. What does this mean to my business? Referrals are cheaper to get – simply put, if I’m with Dan and he gives me 3 names to call, that I can say “Dan with CompanyD said for me to call you”, you bring into play the ‘big gun’ of trust – if that referral trusts Dan with companyD, he’s more likely to give you the opportunity to show him what you’re talking about – and so much more likely to become a buying client to you. This may seem like an obvious thing to be doing, but not all sales people do this.
Other experts state you should always close by asking for referrals – however, this is simply not the case. I just agreed to spend $5k on WidgetY with Derek – now why would I recommend anyone to him when I have no idea if this will work the way I want it to? No, best thing for Derek is to make sure my delivery is on time, make sure there’s no problem with getting WidgetY up and running.
Now, in about 4 weeks when all has gone well (and if it hasn’t, Derek had better have made sure any problems were fixed ASAP!) this is when Derek should come and ask for his referrals. Why? At this point, you’ve given your client a great product, you’ve shown that your follow up and customer service is as you said they would be, and now Dan knows what kind of product and company you are. If Derek asked when first placing the sale for referrals, and got three, do you think he would get more AFTER the product was placed and client was satisfied? You bet. This would be when he’d get the business referral from Dan for all his business contacts, not just two or three. So stand out, and don’t be like all the other guys.
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