photo credit: Wonderlane
Duct Tape Marketing recently posted an article pertaining to the question of where a true referral actually comes from. While we all know that usually it’s something along the lines of a friend or family member has expressed a need for some product or service and we tell them about a company we dealt with that can help.
While that work’s sometime’s, it doesn’t always cut it. There may be plenty of referrals that we could give someone, but don’t necessarily know that they need it. Such as, if a friend tells you that their business creates too much information on finances for them to handle, we may know of an accounting software that could help but don’t necessarily realize this software can do that job.
Spend a couple hours brainstorming with anyone in your organization that has customer contact of any kind or call up a dozen customers and ask them to identify the true value your firm brings them with the goal of creating a top ten list of trigger phrases that everyone in your organization and anyone wishing to refer business could use as the perfect way to spot your ideal customer.
Someone is not likely to walk up to a friend and simply say “i need new accounting software”, more likely they will express a specific problem technically related to accounting. So businesses need to spend more time letting people know exactly what their products and services can do so that they do get the right referral’s from their customers.