How to get referrals
ASKP3 Conference in Austin, TX
Here Are Some Really Effective Ways Get Referral From Your Customers To Do So.
1.Deliver More Than Expected
You need to deliver more than a customer expects from you. If you just do that, they will be overwhelmed with your services or their optimum buying experience.
Word-of-mouth is one of the most powerful ways to make people refer your products or services to others.
If you exceed your promises, happy customers are bound to promote your brand amongst their friends and families.
2. Keep Looking For Opportunities Where You Can Positive Response
As you know that best referrals come from a customer who really had great experience with your brand or they really loved your product or services.
So now, it’s your job to leverage that in order to find referrals through them.
Because it’s not every time a customer really goes out to say positive things about a product.
So look for opportunities when you see a customer getting happy with your product or satisfied with the services.
Then you can ask them to spread the word about you. You can request them to refer your products or services to their friends and family.
And remember, you can only ask when you are sure the customer is happy with you. So why not, utilize this opportunity?
Here are few things you should do to lead your customers :
Start keeping tabs with your customers from the very beginning.
Don’t shy away from promises and give certain expectations but make sure you over-deliver.
If you just get their feedback that your product or tool helped them or did something wonderful for them, ask right away.
You can also ask for referrals just after the transaction as well but more casually.
3. Don’t Hesitate To Ask Directly
People always wonder what’s the best way to ask for referrals to your customers.
Well, you might think, you have to subtly slide it away in a conversation or send email or just add it in the bottom of your invoice.
Sometimes you feel it to be pushy or awkward to ask.
Well, first of all, you must understand if your product or services are really helpful or you have confidence or even you can see your customer reciprocating, that’s the sign.
Just directly ask. Be confident and polite. You can ask in-person or even email or by any means – just be upfront about it.
Keep in mind, you ask them at the right time or when you are at the good note with your customer.
4. Focus On Making Customers’ Experience Shareable
If you are delivering more than you promised and exceeding the expectation of your customers, that’s a great start!
But in order to really make your customer go out of their way to talk about your brand, you need to give them something worth that.
Any consumer buys or consume products and services on a daily basis. They come across numerous brands and services, so why do they remember you?
Tips for Creating shareable customer experiences for your customers
Understand who the customer is, where he/she comes from and what are their problems. Tap on what they really want or need.
Figure out what success means to them.
First try to fill the gaps so they can really communicate with you well on their preferences, requirements and expectations.
Always emphasise about the solutions you are offering vs what they have been investing for it so far and how “not” they are working out for them.
Don’t be “sale-sy” with your customers.
Be consistent in your efforts and keep them in tabs, even after the transaction is over. Because remember, that’s the best time to ask for referrals.
Understand what they expect and then deliver something out of scope or unexpected, something better for sure.
5. Recognize And Show Gratitude To Your Referral Sources
Whether you are getting a lot of referrals or few, don’t forget to recognize and show you gratitude to them.
You might get some now but if you do not react to the referral sources, it might look bad or ungrateful.
And it will definitely not encourage more people to do it including them who did in the first place. So make sure you highlight those customers who are bringing referrals to you.
You can make a phone call, send email or even send them a handwritten note. Just show your appreciation and that will encourage them to remain connected with you.
6. Don’t Just Rely On Accidental Or Organic Referrals
There are basically two routes to get referrals from your customers –
Without Reward
With Reward
So you can do plenty to make sure your customer gets great referrals for your business on the basis of your merit.
In this case, you are expecting your happy customers to hunt out potential customers for your company without getting any direct benefit.
And that’s work well but only to some limitations.
7. Act Instantly On The Positive Feedbacks
To really get your referrals from customers, you surely need to understand where they stand regarding their experience with you.
You have to ensure that you meet or exceed your customers’ requirements and expectations.
But in order to do that, you need to keep in touch with them, otherwise you would miss that.
8. Utilize Multiple Channels To Get Your Customers Onboard
A lot of times customers are not comfortable, encouraged or allowed to refer others to you. There can be numerous reasons.
So, you need to be out of the box to get them at least onboard with you. So you don’t have to be direct all the time.
Use multiple channels or ways to get customers to continue to be part of your company post-transaction.
You can ask them to leave a review or testimonial for your website. Or you can involve them in case study, research or in a survey.
So here they might not be directly referring or endorsing your brand but indirectly they are participating in bringing your business in a positive light.
9. Put A “Recommend-A-Friend” Option On Your Website
More easy you will make your customers to refer to someone, the better chances there will be to get potential referrals.
But more than that, you need to make things “cool” for people to be interested in doing that.
To start with, you can at least create a system or functionality where customers right after purchasing get to recommend your product/service to their friend(s).
You can use a web page, link, box or form to make it quick. It should be easiest and fast to fill.
Lots of brands pre-fill their form wherever possible including the text like “ Hey [Friend’s name] check out this product I came across..” or something like that.
You can also allow your customers to get their contact list using their email address and send personalized referrals to all of them at once.
Don’t worry! There are so many tools such as InviteBox, ReferralCandy and so many more to get you started with this.
10. Leverage Customer Loyalty Program To Generate Referrals
Whether you have a customer loyalty program already in the place or haven’t yet, you need to utilize or leverage it for getting referrals from your loyal customers.
But before that, let’s dig in, what is a customer loyalty program?
Customer loyalty programs are leveraging customer’s loyalty towards brands to generate recurring sales with them in exchange for rewards.
Again, a customer loyalty program is basically a reward program where you are offering rewards to your most-frequent customers so they can keep coming back and remain loyal to you.
11. Avoid Accepting Just Any Referral That Comes To You
Not all referral is valuable, only the ones which hold quality and utmost relevance. So it is necessary to examine the merit of the referral.
So do not just ask your customers to refer your products or company to just anyone.
It is essential that the customers referring their friends or people to your company must hold similar interest as your customers.
They will be the one who will be genuinely interested in your business and will be quality referral irrespective of whether they convert or not later.
12. Be Specific While Requesting For Referrals
Many opportunities or possibilities often get lost in inaccurate communication and wrong interpretations.
That happens also when you ask for referrals to your customers, especially on personal note.
Either they don’t get who they can refer or they don’t get rough confidence to bring people in due to lack of information.
So it is crucial you must be very specific while you request for referrals to your customers.
Whether you are in-person, on phone call or through email, you need to elaborate your requirement for this referral.
13. Optimize The Framework For Your Customer Referrals
Ideal Framework For To Manage Your Customer Referrals
It is essential you have a strong framework in the place to not just get the referrals but also accommodate it for the best results.
It is machinery you need to develop whether you have a reward program or not.
Either way, customer referrals need an ecosystem to exist in the first place, starting from how you even get them.
Here are some specific strategies and steps to create and customize your custom referral to attain better business.
You need to create this framework right from the bottom to the top. As per requirement, you can decide which areas to be focussed on more than others.
14. Make It Easy For Your Customers To Refer
The easier it will be for your customers to refer, the better chance you will have to get that referral from the customer.
You have to respect the time of your customer or clients who even gave the thought to refer for your brand.
15. Give Your Customer A Template For Quick Referral
Whenever you ask your customers or clients to refer your company to your friends and family, you also need to understand how busy they could be.
You need to value their time as well. So, to make them get you referrals easily and quickly, offer them a template.
Just remove all the heavy-lifting they have to do or think of while they consider going to get you some referrals.
You can send them various referral templates. The best might be an email referral template.
They just have to fill the required details of the person like Name and all and send them in no time.
