Referral Fire (July 24 Edition)

Being appreciative is appreciated.

Everyone likes to be appreciated; everyone is also unique. Part of appreciating your referral sources is to understand them. Steven Covey says in The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, "Seek first to understand - then be understood".

How do you appreciate your referral partners?

We all appreciate our referral partners, we just aren't all good about showing it. This may affect the number of referrals that we get. Dr. Ivan Misner in The Worlds Best Known Marketing Secret says;

"You can greatly enhance your word-of-mouth-based business by designing creative incentives for people to give you referrals. Yet of all the key techniques for making the system work, this one seems to frustrate people the most."

In order to effectively design your incentive plan, you have to know and understand your referral partners.

The incentive that comes up too often is "finder's fee". Though perfectly fine, there are many other non monetary plans that work well also. Remember, not every incentive plan will work for everyone. The key is to have a number of incentive plans so as to positively impact as many people as possible.

Dr. Misner goes on to give us an example of visiting his chiropractor and noticing that his name was on the bulletin board as having given a referral the previous month. That was great, but he didn't think much of it, until the following month when his name wasn't there. He went on to find a referral so that his name would be on the board the next month.

While these referral rewards might take thought, they give others a reason to refer to you. Many people will take a challenge when nothing else moves them to action. How can you make it FUN for people to refer to you?