Many of my clients and audience members ask me how to get more referrals. Well, first ask yourself if your business is a referral based business. If not, it is never to late to start. To begin building a referral based business, you must start with looking at the service and experience you provide to your clients and are you forming relationships.
One way to evaluate your business is how would your current customers rate you? Do they feel “mostly” or “fairly” satisfied? If so, they are probably taking their business elsewhere. I’m sure we have all patronized a business which we were not completely satisfied. However, when an alternative option comes along, we usually are willing to explore that new option.
The secret to building a referral based business is to make sure you exceed the expectations of your customers not just satisfy them. Before you can exceed your customer’s expectations, you must know what those expectations are. Do you know what your new and existing customers expect from you? How do you know this? When was the last time you asked them?
- Make a habit in asking your customers what they expect from you.
- Make it a habit of finding out how they were served in the past.
- Make it a habit to asking your customers what your competition provides that you don’t.
Your goal is to find out what is it that they really want, not just what they need. This is my favorite question that I suggest all of my clients ask their customers or clients. “Let’s pretend it’s a year from today, and we have been working together or you have been shopping at our business for that time. How will we know we’ve been successful? What’s your measure of our success in continuing our partnership?” Then be quiet and let them tell you.
When you ask these type of questions, you not only learn what they want and expect, you also help to build trust. Trust is critical to any referral based business. Trust is also not easy to build quickly.
It is important to know that people’s perceptions are constantly changing. As your customers move from one buying experience to another, they judge their experiences from one business and compare it to the next. They base their expectations about your business from a best experience they had in the past from another business. This means if other businesses, not necessarily related to yours, are exceeding their expectations you must keep up and do it as well.
Always remember this: Your customers are happy when you meet their expectations. Your customers become loyal when you continually meet and exceed their expectations. Your customers become your ‘word of mouth’ ambassadors and will refer you when you create experiences they remember. Now that is Magical!