Referrals are the lifeblood of your business. Whether you're an architect, mason, landscaper, or excavator, you need happy customers telling other people about how great you are. The more that happens, the more new customers you'll get.
Naturally, you need to offer superior service and top customer service in order to generate referrals; if you're not already doing that, don't expect referrals. But even if you are the best designer or plumbing contractor in town, you may not get as many referrals as you deserve. Here are four tips to fill your referral pipeline (in a future blog we'll give you four more):
1) Don't be shy. One of the most effective ways to get referrals is simply to ask your current customers to recommend you. You don't need to do this face-to-face -- just include a line on your invoices, statements, or other regular correspondence that says something like: "We would be honored if you recommended our services to others" or "If you are pleased with our services, please tell others about them." This plants the referral seed in your clients' minds.
2) Do unto others. One of the best ways to encourage clients to recommend your services is to recommend theirs (assuming you respect their work). If a landscape architect snags a new client that you sent his way, you can bet he'll send work your way when the opportunity arises.
3) Make it easy. Make sure your contact information is handy to your clients. Include a business card with each correspondence, hand out magnets or other doodads, advertise regularly...anything to make sure that when someone asks your client for a referral, they think of you quickly and have contact info ready.
4) Ask for feedback. Whenever you finish a project, take time to personally ask your client if everything was done satisfactorily. Obviously, this gives you a chance to fix problems, and this conversation may cement the positive feelings the client is having immediately after reviewing your work. If this conversation goes well, gently hint that you appreciate referrals.
In a future blog post: Four more tips to increase the frequency you hear the magic words, "XYZ client recommended you..."
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