A referral in the sales business is basically a warm lead to prospects you are not currently doing business with. These leads are invaluable for a salesperson to grow their business, but surprisingly only a small percentage of salespeople are actively asking for referrals. Recent studies have shown that a salesperson will close the sale an average of six times more to a referral, than had they attempted to close the deal with a new prospect. If the salesperson were to focus on getting more business referrals, it is then assumed they should also generate six times the amount of sales as opposed to cold calling prospective customers. So if you could make fewer calls, and generate more sales, why aren\'t all salespeople actively on the lookout for referrals? They are simply working too hard cold calling that they do not have the time to actively seek out referrals.
The hardest part of getting sales is prospecting or cold calling new clients. The easiest part of sales is contacting business referrals and making the sale. If you are not getting referrals from the customers that you already have, it might be because they value the referral as a reward for good service. They may just simply feel you have not provided them the exceptional service that warrants them giving you a valuable referral. You have to ask yourself a few questions like, are you actively looking after this client on a regular basis? Are you building a great relationship with your client, or are you simply banking on the sales? If you are not providing top notch service on a continual basis, you simply cannot expect that client to hand over a referral. That referral will look at your client and expect to be treated excellent, and if you are not providing that to your client, they assume you will not be providing it to their referral and do not want to put their own neck on the line for you.
To be a successful salesperson you cannot always wait and rely on a client giving you a referral. You must be proactive and aggressively ask for a referral if you feel you have provided the client with top notch service. Simply ask them if they know of anyone in the business, or have any friends or associates, that could benefit from your product or service like they have benefited. You want to be sure to remind them that they have surely benefited from your service, and that you simply want to provide that service to their colleagues. When you gather a group of names and phone numbers be sure to ask your client a very important question. "Why would your friends benefit from my service?" The answer will help you to prepare your sales pitch to the business referrals. If you have already identified how the service can benefit them, you are in prime position to get them to agree to the offer. Once you have contacted the referrals it is very important to reach out to your client who gave you the referrals, and simply keep them posted as to what happened with those leads. Be sure to thank them for their help, and you will be pleasantly surprised how keeping your client posted on those details actually leads to more referrals from them down the road.
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