As many of you will know, I’ve done a some work in the past with Grant Thorpe, business coach, professional speaker and mentor, and he is always an inspiration when talking or working with him, so I thought that I would share with you some of his words of wisdom.
As I would like to expand this blog by including articles from other authors, I’ve decided to kick this series off with an article from Grant, so I hope you enjoy this and that you get some ideas and motivation from this.
So please read on and enjoy!
“One of the most effective ways to grow your business is to have your existing clients refer new business to you. After all, they are already using your services and continue to do so because they are satisfied in all respects.
“One of the most effective ways to grow your business is to have your existing clients refer new business to you. After all, they are already using your services and continue to do so because they are satisfied in all respects.
People do not have a natural mind set to look for opportunities to refer our ’service providers’ to colleagues, friends or family. The focus is often on what am I getting not what I can share.
By referring a service provider to someone within your sphere of influence you are achieving three key things.
• You are giving your friend or colleague a chance to use a service or product they may not have been aware of if you had not brought it to their attention - a gift to them!
• You are supporting someone who is currently doing business with you (your service provider) and feeding them additional business.
• And you are fostering a reciprocal arrangement which will start to lead to mutual referrals between two parties that already understand each others businesses. A chance for you to get some business back!
Referrals work in such a simple way but it requires that you first train everyone around you to refer, remember it is not a natural state for them to think this way. This can be done in a couple ways, by referring to them first and by association they will start to see the rewards from this practice. Give and you shall receive!
And secondly by constantly asking all those around you if they know anyone who is thinking of ‘needing your service’ in the near future? A key point here is you are not hounding the person you know to do business with you, you are asking them to refer you to anyone they know who is thinking of needing you in the near future.
Once you get a referral it is very powerful, the new client comes to you with ‘advocacy’ the blessing of your mutual contact, and in many instances will not even bother to get your competition in the door for a comparison. The business is yours!
We have a natural filter in place that stops us seeing this ‘potential business’ which is right in front of us every day.So we need to first train ourselves, then all around us, to open up this filter and to start looking for potential clients through the people we already know and are already doing business with.
To ensure that you start thinking this way, the first step is to make it a new personal minimum standard to simply ask every person you are in contact with if they know anyone who could use your service in the near future. That’s everyone, even the person at the grocery store checkout, or your lawyer, or your mother! Leave no one out of the equation. Everyday we walk over ‘Fields of Diamonds’ and don’t see these opportunities because we are so busy working to create business, when if we just asked…….?
Read more about the results Grant Thorpe can achieve for you on his website at http://www.grantthorpe.com/
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