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Six
Strategic Things To Remember When Requesting Referrals
Referrals are important to
most if not all businesses today. In a professional services business,
such as business coaching, referrals are a major source of new clients.
One of the strategic advantages of referrals is that they tend to be
good quality prospects. And another strategic advantage is that they
also tend to be relatively easy to convert into clients.
Okay, so referrals are a
major strategic method of gaining new clients. But, guess what? Only a
small percentage of business people adopt referrals as a strategic
approach to gaining new clients and those that do adopt the strategy
will often neglect the needed commitment of time to generate referrals.
It is imperative that you pay attention to the generation of referrals
and the best way to do that is to ask for referrals at least two or
three times a year from existing clients and professional and personal
contacts.
There are a few strategic
things to remember when requesting referrals from any of the
above-mentioned sources. And your strategic thinking business coach
offers the following to remember. 1. The existing client that you are
going to approach must be very happy with the services you are providing
to him or her. Review your client list and select those “A” list clients
that are your most satisfied clients.
2. The former clients that
you might ask must still be pleased about their experience with you and
your company and very satisfied with your past work. It would be very
prudent to review your list of former clients that you have not done
work for within the last year or two and select the most satisfied from
that list.
3. You must get
reaffirmation of why your client is doing business with you and why they
selected your company in the first place. Knowing this bit of strategic
information will be very valuable in approaching the referrals given to
you.
4. Ask for referrals in a
positive and proactive manner. For example, you may ask, “Who do you
know that is in business that would be interested in knowing about what
we do and that could benefit, as you did, by using our services?”
5. Select a frequency of
asking for referrals throughout the year and develop a system to do
that. Experience indicates that asking for referrals 2 or 3 times per
year would not be offensive and would be very productive for you.
6. Always show appreciation
to and thank the people who provide referrals.
Six Strategic Things To
Remember When Requesting Referrals By: J. Glenn Ebersole, Jr., Chief
Executive of J. G. Ebersole Associates and The Renaissance Group ™
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Glenn Ebersole, Jr.
is a multi-faceted professional, who is recognized as a visionary,
guide and facilitator in the fields of business coaching, marketing,
public relations, management, strategic planning and engineering.
Glenn is the Founder and Chief Executive of two Lancaster, PA based
consulting practices: The Renaissance Group, a creative marketing,
public relations, strategic planning and business development
consulting firm and J. G. Ebersole Associates, an independent
professional engineering, marketing, and management consulting firm.
He is a Certified Facilitator and serves as a business coach and a
strategic planning facilitator and consultant to a diverse list of
clients. Glenn is also the author of a monthly newsletter, “Glenn’s
Guiding Lines – Thoughts From Your Strategic Thinking Business
Coach” and has published more than 250 articles on business.
To find out more
about the benefits & rewards of effectively working with a strategic
thinking business coach, please contact Glenn Ebersole through his
web site at
http://www.businesscoach4u.com
or
jgecoach@aol.com
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