Ask for the referral when you make the sale!
Ask for the referral every time you make a sale. There is no better way to find your next client. Referrals are what salesmen call “hot prospects.” That’s because, unlike so-called “cold calling,” you have an “in” with a referral. It’s almost like being introduced at a meeting or party…
Let’s face it. No matter what anybody tells you, selling can easily be hard work, whether you’re doing affiliate marketing on the internet, or network marketing, or selling woven cedar baskets by the side of the road.
You need to get your product or service in front of people who are looking for your product or service or who you can convince they need your product or service and are willing to pay money to get it.
Now, I don’t know about you, but I like to get maximum results for my efforts, which means I would rather get paid a lot more than minimum wage for my work. But if all I go for is lots and lots of traffic, I’m going to do a whole lot of work that I’m not getting paid for. Trust me; it can take a MASSIVE amount of un-targeted traffic to get one sale.
Even when you work to get targeted traffic to your sales page, you can spend way more time than you need to getting that traffic. Just because your traffic is targeted doesn’t mean you’re going to get a lot of sales. Targeted traffic from people who don’t know you is still going to be a hard sell.
I remember when I was selling insurance door-to-door. I had a low cost accident policy that would actually cover very high risk industries for accidents in the field. If you’ve ever checked out insurance, you know how hard such a policy is to find. So when I was selling in an industrial town, it was a really great policy to be offering! Most of my “traffic” was targeted!
But let me tell you; I still had to do a lot of leg work to sell a policy. People are naturally less trusting of strangers, and they were in no hurry to give their hard-earned money to someone they had never even heard of. I had to do a lot of walking and a lot of knocking to get someone to sit down and listen to what I had to offer.
The magic happens when you ask for the referral
But when I DID make a sale, that’s when the magic of the referral kicked in! Hint: Always ask for the referral when you make the sale!
Whenever I made a sale, I would ask my new clients if they knew of anyone whom they thought would also benefit from my service. Most people who bought a policy LOVED giving me a list of referrals. Once I had this list, I could go directly to that person’s house and tell them that their friend had just recommended that I go and see them, because he thought they would probably benefit from the service I had to offer, too.
What a difference asking for the referral made! The number of “clicks” went way up! Rather than going through entire blocks in a town full of really good prospects (a logging or other industrial town), I would go to a house, make a presentation (and usually a sale), then on to another house with the same results. Asking for the referral was almost like magic!
The same thing applies in online business, whether it is affiliate marketing, network marketing or direct sales of tangible goods. When you make a sale, ALWAYS, ALWAYS, ALWAYS get the contact information of the person purchasing from you, and ALWAYS, ALWAYS, ALWAYS ask for the referral. You will save hours of work and watch your sales explode.
Please tell us what you’re doing to get referrals in the comments, below. Make sure to leave us a link!
Even though there are so many “wonderful” systems out on the internet, the one thing that will ASSURE continued business growth and opportunity is asking for a referral from a satisfied customer.
We actually were able to stop buying advertising with several of our companies because of the steady sales from referrals.
We transferred part of that budget allocation to rewarding solid referrers.
I could write a book about that.
Maybe I will.
Like I have a lot of time, but we do discuss these ideas on our weekly Talk Show Podcast, You Can Build It, your business.
370+ episodes always available FREE on iTunes
You really ought to write that book, Chuck!
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