Refer, refer and be referred
The lifeblood of many businesses is their satisfied customer base. These are the people who can act as ambassadors by recommending you to others.
Other people who can also refer you are the contacts in your business network circle. Which is why you attend business events; to meet new people.
So now, your network is growing. You know lots of different business people and you are getting to know what they can deliver. And, of course, they are getting to know you and what you offer.
But does everyone know everything about you and what your business provides? And do you know all there is to know about your contacts?
You need to know all this if you are going to seize every opportunity to build even stronger business relationships, which results in more sales…
Create Your Referral Matrix
The simplest way to keep an eye on what is developing is to create a Referral Matrix. The concept is very simple. The Referral Matrix gives you an ‘At-a-Glance’ picture of the progress of your business relationships.
Do this for your own contacts and services/products and another for your contact’s products.
Let’s start with your services and products:
1) Take a piece of paper.
2) Draw a grid shape. You need enough columns going across to list all your products and services in the top row; show one product/service at the top of each column, starting from the second column.
3) In the first column of the rows going down list your contacts or customers.
4) Choose 3 different, strong, colours. One represents ‘Told’, another for ‘Sold’ and the third for ‘Referred’
5) When you tell a contact about one of your products; you have supplied information so you know he is fully aware of it, mark the colour for ‘Told’ against that company in the column for the specific product/service you’ve explained. (I suggest filling in a third of the box).
6) When a contact has bought that product/service from you add the ‘Sold’ color – you now have two thirds of the box completed.
7) When a contact recommends your product / service to someone else; ‘refers you’, fill in the ‘Referred’ colour.
Some of the boxes may have the Told and Referred, but not the Sold colour.
Now you can see, at a glance, which of your contacts do not know about some of your products (in which case you can inform them) and, just as importantly, if they have been informed whether they have bought from you or referred you to someone else.
Create a similar chart for each of your ‘Hot’ business contacts – those you have a close working relationship with.
By doing this you take a pro-active stance to recommending their services to other people you know and you’ll know if they offer something you may need in the future.
Taking such a close interest in your business contacts helps you build strong relationships.
What’s more you gain a good reputation for being the ‘person who knows who to contact’ and your business networking circle grows.
A Free Gift For You…
This works really well on a spreadsheet, such as Excel, using the conditional formatting feature. I have created a spreadsheet with the chart set up ready to use.
In fact the file, which I call the Opportunity Matrices, contains 3 spreadsheets: 1 to use purely for referrals within your business contacts circle, another to use for checking what your current customers know about everything you offer and the third is a Price Research spreadsheet. Use the latter to compare your prices against your competitors - it is a useful tool when you are launching a new product or service or revising your pricing structure.
I’ve also written a PDF file that explains how I created the spreadsheets - so you can do the same if you wish - and describes how to use them.
Get your copy using the request below (free and with no obligation):
You will be asked to confirm your request - I have to do this to avoid spamming problems.
~ Carol Bentley
11th December 2007 at 6:34 pm
Your articles is featured in the Carnival of Small Business Issues, #30. Thanks.