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Market Your Business Through Referrals, John Jantsch
By Los Angeles Internet Marketing | November 18, 2007
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“I
get at least a hundred times the referrals now as I did before I had a
referral
plan.”
~ Scott Hensley - Affordable Concrete Cutting
Today
I want to share with you, in it’s entirety, a copy of a letter I
received from a small business owner who implemented a number of
suggestions I gave him in the Duct Tape Marketing book.
I chose to share this not to point out how brilliant I am - writing this stuff is the easy part sometimes
- but to showcase how acting on what you read - the really hard part - can payhuge dividends.
Scott’s business cuts concrete, not exactly your Web2.0 business - yet, he has developed a simple, but systematic approach to generating referrals and shares
it very specifically in this great letter - thanks Scott
Dear
John,
I
implemented what I call a “passive referral system” days after I read your book. I have a small business in a niche industry and have always been successful at getting the calls, business and the money.
Either way, I can always use more calls, business and money. I never realized the importance of a referral system because I always got referrals without trying, most likely because of my niche.
I am not a “come out and ask” sales pusher type so some of your suggestions don’t work for my personality. I am sure they work,
don’t get me wrong, it is just not something you could convince me to
do.
Therefore I took the main message from your program, which is to simply have a referral plan and I implemented it. I will explain to you how I do it in a minute but th reason I am writing is to tell you that I get at least a hundred times the referrals now as I did before I had a referral plan.
I get calls from new customers that mention people that I have never heard of and say “so and so referred me!” Simply having a plan is enough for me and I want you to know.
I would have never thought of it without your newsletters and your book.
I merged my referral plan into my marketing plan to some degree. I derive a lot of business from the yellow pages and unfortunately yellow page people are loyal to the yellow pages and the next time they need a concrete cutter they will return to the yellow pages and wind up being serviced by my competition or who I like to call the “uninsured toothless cave man.”
As a self proclaimed marketing professional I like to vision it as similar to the old west, my competition and I are Ranchers. These yellow page customers are wild cattle and when the come up to one of my fences I open the fence quickly and drag them in. I then take my branding iron and brand them.
I send them to re-education training, if you will. Everything that they see or hear in the next several days is “Affordable Concrete Cutting” and my logo, so I can gently hypnotize them into never even thinking of leaving my ranch and when they call home or call their friends they tell everyone what a fantastic experience they have had here and how it would be great for their family, friends and colleagues to join them.
On top of that I keep my fences in tip top shape by keeping in touch with my customers by using (USPS Direct Mail) mailings every month or by sending them a
decent gift for no reason other than to remind them of the great experience
that they have had here. Now, my competition on the other hand, has a real problem with keeping their fences up and the fact is that their customers
escape most of the time.
This is when I open my fence up and persuade them into coming in. I then hold
them down and “re-brand” them (most were never branded in the first place) and again gently hypnotize them into forgetting the competition and to never even thinking of leaving. We provide better than great service, we are on time every time and the customer’s satisfaction is priority.
Why wouldn’t they tell everyone? Well as you said it yourself because they were never asked to! So now I ask. I don’t ask verbally but I make it more than known that referrals are very important to me.
My first contact with the customer is via a phone call inquiry. I mention my company name several times and I make the customer feel great about using us. Next my guy goes to the site and performs the cutting. This is where the
marketing and branding or re-branding begins. Once the job has been completed
successfully my men give the customer a paid invoice and are instructed to hand
the customer ten or so business cards and to ask that they mention it to
everyone. The old “your best compliment is a referral” thing.
Unfortunately, sometimes this part gets left out. I counter this by sending each customer a computer generated paid invoice with an insurance certificate request form and a W-9. On the invoice I hand write a thank you and I enclose several business cards and a Rolodex card.
Now, as part of your referral suggestion I put a big sticker on the envelope that reads “Thank You! We appreciate your referrals.” Then I prepare a Thank You card that basically says if you were happy with our service then please tell everyone ( the key is to make sure they are happy in the first place.) I don’t mail this until a day after I mail the invoice.
Then I prepare a “gift pack” which is a bubble mailer (lumpy mail) that contains a gift, a pocket knife with my logo on it, a mouse pad, some pens or a couple of
pads of paper. Inside the mailing is a bunch of business cards and I don’t mail
this until the end of the week because I have to go to the Post Office and by
the end of the week there are about 20 - 30.
Every new customer is placed on my mailing list and they are mailed a gift, a
letter or a post card every month, come Hell or high water! Since I started using the stickers and the Thank You cards my business has exploded and is increasing exponentially.
Just a small suggestion for referrals works incredibly. Now I know you
would probably say that verbally coming out and asking works better and I am
sure it does but that’s not my style. The point is that thanks to you I have a
referral system that is active and in place and it is working.
Thanks
Sincerely,
Scott Hensley
Related
article
How to motivate referral sources
John
Jantsch is a veteran marketing coach, award winning blogger and author
of
Duct Tape Marketing:
TheWorld’s Most Practical Small
Business Marketing Guide
published by Thomas Nelson.
He is the creator of the Duct Tape Marketing small business marketing
system.
You can find more information by visiting
http://www.ducttapemarketing.com
You may reprint this
article in its
entirety if you attribute the article to John Jantsch and include the
information about the author above.
———————————————————————-
Immediately after I read this article I went out and bought a bunch of self-printing business card labels from Staples!
I highly suggest that you do the same!
———————————————————————–
Learn what your next step is to grow your business by calling my Los Angeles Internet Marketing Firm at: 866-539-3549. I work with Fortune 500 Companies, top Affiliates, Programmers, Business Consultants, Attorneys, etc… and I’d like to help you as well!
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Topics: referral generation, Los Angeles Internet Marketing, Company Marketing Techniques, relationship marketing, Marketing Basics, Coaching / Internet Mentoring, Historical lessons in business |