Tip: Leveraging your biggest asset to drive new business

Looking for a low cost way to drive new business? Referrals from existing clients are price-friendly and priceless.

If you don’t have a referral program in place you’re missing out on lost opportunities every day. Your clients are your frontline marketing team. On a daily basis they interact with hundreds of people who could be potential new business for you. So, how do you leverage this resource for the maximum benefit?

• Create incentives – Find ways to encourage your existing clients to tell others about you that will benefit them. These can be free gifts, discounts on services or value-added benefits. Offer them this incentive in exchange for any new client that they send your way.
• Spread the word – Tell every existing client about your referral program. You can do this by word of mouth or, even better, via cards you hand out to your clients. Create a specific referral card or update your existing business cards with a “Referred by” addition. Hand each client 5 or 10 of these cards to pass out to others.
• Develop a tracking system – Chances are you already have some type of client file system that will work, but if you don’t you’ll need some method of tracking these referrals and credit your clients. Be sure to note the referral on both sides – who the new client was referred by and who your existing client has referred to you.

Look to the beauty industry for excellent examples of referral programs. A friend of ours offers Xtreme Lashes eyelash extensions and her main source of new business comes by way of referrals. For her clients, every new referral they send that books a full set of lashes gets them a free refill on their own extensions. At a value of $75 to the existing client, this is a huge incentive for them to send new business her way. She offers an added bonus to the new client by giving them 10% off their new full set for being referred. It’s a win-win situation for everyone and her existing clients can also feel like they’re helping out their friends by getting them an inside discount on a new service, instead of just pushing the service on them.

The spa and salon industries have been successfully using referral programs for decades, but with a little thought and ingenuity referral programs can work wonders for any type of business!

Bottom Lign: Work with your resources and you can reap the benefits of referrals!