Hot Leads: A System for B2B Referral Success

If you had a choice between getting referral business and taking out another ad, which would you choose? Of course, you would want the referrals, right? Most people do.

Here’s how to improve sales using that referral method, regardless of whether you’re new or a seasoned businessperson.

Kickstarting The Referral Machine

Start with your friends, family, and anyone else in your social circle that you’d consider a friendly acquaintance. If you’re on Facebook, the net could be rather large. Start by introducing your new company, your products and services, and then asking people if they’d like a free trial or a comped service in exchange for a testimonial.

What that will do is build social proof in your concept and brand. When you have other people willing to recommend you through testimonials, you’re basically letting other people advertise your business.

Friends and family may not be able to afford what you’re selling. But, even if they can’t, or won’t buy from you, they may be willing to sing your praises, and that’s usually enough.

If they won’t do that, maybe it’s time to get some new friends.

When To Ask For Referrals

When is the best time to ask for referrals? Immediately after the sale. Don’t be shy. A lot of businesses like to wait until the customer has been a customer for months. That’s OK too, but it’s an epic waste of time.

Customers’ memories start to fade pretty quickly after the sale. If you don’t strike when the iron is hot, they may not feel very motivated to recommend you.

How To Track Referrals

Using something like this lead management software makes tracking referrals a slam dunk. You need to have an app that’s capable of tracking names, addresses, phone numbers, and where referrals are in the sales cycle.

In addition to that, you want your tracking system to be able to send out reminders to both you and your referrals, specifically as it relates to reminders about followup phone calls, meetings, and post-sale thank you notes and care packages.

Systematizing Referral Business

This is where things get fun. At some point, your personal network is going to be tapped out. You’re going to have to figure out how to get more business, but you don’t want to go back to buying ads.

Well, if you have a website, and you should, then you have a great lead generation machine right there. You just need to turn it on and run it.

Content marketing. When you publish insanely practical advice on your blog, and then get other people (bloggers) to promote it for you, you end up with an endless stream of referral business – the referrals come from bloggers recommending you.

And, if the blogger has a lot of traffic and a nice, loyal, community, the kind of customers you’ll end up with will be very warm and willing to listen to what you have to say. And that’s the best kind of customer to have.

Nicole E. Powell is a marketing consultant. She likes to share her business insights online. Her posts can be found on many marketing and business blogs.