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Are Referrals Still The Best Way For You To Grow Your Business And Love Your Life?!?
Short answer: if they produce results for you and your business
The only ‘best’ way to grow your business is answered by analyzing the intersection of ‘does it work’ and ‘do I like doing it’.
Referrals, for some professions/industries, are an amazing way to grow your business. The question is actually this: How do they work within your business and, specifically, your sales system.
Let’s take financial advisors as an example. Almost all financial advisors treasure referrals because of the huge advantages they offer:
Better close rate
Easier and more comfortable sales process
Referred clients tend to refer more
Retention
The challenge becomes when and how are referrals most effective in your business.
I am taking brand new professionals out of the mix for the rest of this blog and focusing on those that have made it past the survival stage and are now successful enough to be able/fortunate to choose how they want/if they want to grow their business. Rarely, are they going to choose cold calling and expensive direct/mass marketing.
I advise my clients do 3 simple things when it comes to referrals:
- Focus primarily on current clients. They are, without question, the best source of organic referrals you will ever find. They know what you do and if they believe you are excellent and deserving of referrals they will be your best source.
- Focus on creating a referral marketing system that targets your ideal clients. Intentional, proactive marketing by referrals must be focused on those prospects that combine the most revenue, profit and fun. For financial advisors, this is almost always found in client complexity. The more complex your client’s financial and personal lives are the more value you will provide.
- Use referrals in combination with other forms of marketing. You should have a website, you should be active on #socialmedia (just differently than what all the horrible social marketing experts are telling you), you should be doing regular email marketing to your current clients beyond service work (referral concierge) and you need to be giving more referrals (yes giving referrals is marketing).
I freely admit that I am very well compensated by owners of financial firms to work with them on the above ‘simple things’. You can do it on your own if you are able to be ruthless in your self evaluation and disciplined execution.
Quick Start Tips:
- Tabulate where all your sales came from last year (make sure you carve out market growth) and categorize them by type of marketing.
- If client referrals aren’t number one you have (a) some real work to do and (b) an amazing opportunity. Remember this: if the people who are paying you for your service aren’t referring to you…that is telling you something needs to improve and change.
- Become a human being on social media and focus on sharing about your life and not stuff you get paid for at least 90% of the time in your posts and make sure that you are posting at least once per day during the week something you actually wrote. The reality is that AI is taking over alot of what financial services provided in the past and this is a good thing. The best clients are looking for a real person to work with and will choose them based upon their competence, expertise and authenticity.
Related: How To Grow Your Business and Fly Fish During the Work Week