Do you want to figure out how to get your clients to be raving fans and encourage referrals? If you want to get new clients, you need to take care of your current clients. Do that, and the business will largely market itself.
So how do you take care of your clients? Of course, you shouldn’t say, “Say nice things about me and send me more clients!” You need to think about social and economic norms. Follow the advice in today’s episode, and you will get more referrals.
Take care of your clients to get referrals: How to do it
Of course, if you want to get more referrals, the first thing you need to do is take care of your client. A few ways you can do that include:
- Deliver a quality product. If you don’t deliver quality products and services, nobody will want to refer anyone else to you.
- Remember birthdays and holidays. This will help you build strong relationships with your clients.
- Ask about important things in their lives. If you show your clients that you remember important things they’ve talked about, you can strengthen your relationship with them.
The stronger your relationships are with your clients, the easier it will be to generate referrals.
Considering economic and social norms
When you try to generate referrals, consider economic and social norms. Consider this example. One day care became frustrated that parents kept picking up their children late, so they started charging a fine for late-coming parents. Shockingly, the number of parents arriving late to pick up their children went … up! They felt like it was okay to pick up their children late if all they had to do was pay a few extra dollars.
Another example from psychology: Imagine somebody is waiting on the side of the road with a truck and a TV. You walk by and the person asks, “Hey buddy, I have to lift this TV into the truck. Do you mind helping me?” you’d help him, right? Of course, because that’s the socially nice thing to do.
Now if that person said, “Hey, I’ll give you five bucks to help me pick this up,” you might actually feel kind of funny about the situation.
The point: Before you start asking your clients to refer other people to you, think about the economic and social norms you might run into.
So, how can you generate more referrals?
Help your clients track their progress
You need to create opportunities for your clients to share their progress on social media. That way, more people realize how well they are doing with their training. A few ways to do that include:
- Try to tally up the total poundage your clients lift each session. Then, create a way for them to share this on social media.
- Try comparing the total weight lifted to an object people can easily conceptualize.
- Try taking pictures of the workouts they can share on social media.
- You may even want to try before-and-after pictures that help them tally their progress from month to month.
When your clients share this information on social media, other people will ask them about their training sessions. This will give your clients an opportunity to refer people to you.
Consider the social good
You should give your client an opportunity to involve other people in their workouts. For example, you may want to hold a charity boot camp. Advertise that all of the money is going to go to charity, but you may want to offer a discount if the person brings a guest for free.
This is an informal way to get your clients to refer people to your program. Your clients feel good about themselves because they feel like they are giving money to a good cause. You get to grow your business because more people are suddenly attending your sessions.
Remind clients that little actions matter
Finally, remind people that little actions that take them no effort can make a big difference in your small business. Of course, you don’t want to directly ask for referrals, but you may want to encourage people to leave reviews and ratings online to increase your online presence. Remember that you can only ask people to do so many things before they start to question your intentions.
As an easy tip, you may want to include helpful information in your signature line. When you send emails and documents to your clients, that signature line will constantly be popping up, but you are not directly asking people to refer someone to you. Therefore, you are not necessarily violating a social norm.
Then, when your clients run into someone to compliment them on their progress, they will be able to refer that person to your training program. This is one of the top ways to get more referrals.
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