If
you are in sales you already know that a "dream situation"
is when you have a constant stream of customers or clients
coming to you - AUTOMATICALLY - to buy whatever product
or service you offer.
But
why would customers * automatically * come to you? How can
you arrange it so this happens and you have more free time
to cultivate because you can stop wasting time having to
do marketing?
Because
of your advertising, reputation -- and because you have
put into place an automatic referral generating system.
You
cannot control the "word-of-mouth" buzz about
your business, but you can certainly control the number
of referrals you get if you set up a standardized referrals
system, so that's what this article is all about.
Referral
customers are usually the BEST type of customers
because they are typically the most reliable, easy to deal
with, loyal, easy to negotiate with, lowest cost and most
profitable customers there are. They are much more easy
to deal with because they are already partially PRE-SOLD.
They already know about you and what you have to offer.
They come pre-endorsed.
No
one likes cold calling, paying advertising costs, or running
after prospects who aren't interested in you or your offerings,
so the way to free yourself from these headaches is to get
your customers to come to you through an automatic, robotlike
system that produces predictable results via the laws of
averages. That's what an automated referral system does.
ENDORSEMENTS,
INCENTIVES and ASKING all work at creating referral
customers but in creating an automated referrals system,
you have to know how to link these psychological factors
together into an automatic, robotlike system that frees
up your time and energy.
On
top of that, what you want to do is put into place not one
or two but SEVERAL simultaneous referral mechanisms -- as
many as possible -- that will work on building your business
while your energies are applied elsewhere.
This advice of
putting multiple systems into place reminds me of a millionaire
chiropractor that marketing legend Dan Kennedy once interviewed.
Dan asked this super successful businessman chiropractor
what one method he used to get the majority of his customers
and this millionaire chiropractor, who was running several
offices, said, "Well, I cannot tell you of just one
system I use to get a customer, but I can tell you of 100
systems I use to get one customer."
The
moral is, you can and should try to put MULTIPLE systems
in use. We don't have space to go into the hundreds of referral
systems possible here, so time is best served by me telling
you where to find them. You want quick, cheap, EFFECTIVE.
The
beauty of referral systems is that they will generate a
steady stream of customers coming through your door without
your asking so that you preserve your time, energy, money,
pride and dignity. Then you can pull some time away
from sales calls and marketing concerns and concentrate
instead on what you love to do about your job....why you entered that career or profession in the first place.
Isn't
that what you are ultimately after?
Yes,
referral systems can ratchet up your SALES and INCOME, but
wouldn't it be better if they also free up your time and
enjoy life a little more in the process? You should be spending more time
at play or with your family or on vacation. You should be
spending more time on life's meaningful activities outside
of work that make a difference, too. I've read multiple studies
of terminal patients in hospitals
who, when asked what they've regretted most about life always
included in the top answers, "I wish I had spent less
time at work," "I wish I had spent more time on
vacation and doing the things I love," "I wish
I had spent more time with my family."
AUTOMATED
referral systems will enable you to do that. So
here's what you do about it.
When
I'm doing business consulting for clients, establishing
an automated referral system is one of the quickest ways
to increase the prospects coming into their door ... and
then sales scripting will increase the conversions
of leads into actual sales. Over
the years I have collected a pretty impressive list of referral
systems and cross-promotion methods I have used with clients.
All together probably about 300 different referral and cross-promotion
systems. I have
Jay Abraham's "93 Extraordinary Referral Systems"
package, Bob Burg's Endless Referrals
book
(which I highly recommend), and all sorts of other systems
I've seen, purchased, read about and tried from a variety
of businesses and industries.
From
this experience, I want to tell you that there are TWO
(2) referral system packages I highly recommend you
MUST GET to increase your SALES and business.
Only
TWO!
Of
course, first buy Bob Burg's book, Endless Referrals ,
on Amazon.com. The end chapters are a little slow, but it
has lots of pointers on NETWORKING and getting referrals
from other professionals. It is rich on the proper etiquette
for obtaining referrals from other professionals, and teaches
that you should concentrate on satisfying their needs first.
Then you'll get referrals in turn.
Whenever
you meet another professional, for instance, Bob suggests
you ask them, "How can I know
if someone I am talking to is a good prospect for you?" Later you send them a card saying, "It
was nice to meet you. If I can ever send someone your way
I certainly will." You can also set up a
networking club where people cross-refer business to one
another, and Bob explains how to do this quite well.
That's
the one referrals book I want you to get (and it's so cheap that it's a no brainer), but there are
TWO packages I want you to consider because Bob Burg's book
doesn't go into automatic referral systems. If you are a
busy man (or not busy enough), these AUTOMATED REFERRAL SYSTEMS are what
your business needs. They are an ethical, automatic, painless way to increase
your free time, income and cut most of your selling hassles.
Superstar salespeople quickly learn how to use automated
referrals systems to become number one producers through
referral FRENZIES, which these systems will teach
you how to produce.
First
there is David Frey's collection of 106 "Instant
Referral Systems: Create a Continuous Stream of New Customers
Using Proven referral Systems that Run on Autopilot,"
which you can find at:
http://tinyurl.com/28glm
If you only read just David Frey's list of 106 systems, you will realize
how many possibilities are out there for putting into place
quiet, almost invisible systems that generate sales in the
background. David put together a collection of referral
systems, with examples, that far outstrips the Jay Abraham
package I mentioned earlier in terms of quantity and QUALITY.
You can apply David's systems rather easily.
With
all respect to Jay Abraham, whose material I love and adore,
skip Jay's package and get this package instead because
your money will be better spent. Remember, you can find
out more about Dave Frey's referral collection at :
http://tinyurl.com/28glm
A second source you probably are not aware of comes from
NLP and marketing consultant Glenn Osborn. Glenn is
a man who has gone to dozen of marketing seminars (Jay Abraham,
Dan Kennedy, etc.), NLP training seminars, copywriting seminars
and so on. He's spent a life time interviewing millionaire
entrepreneurs, business owners and sales people to find
out, "How did you do that? What made it work? Exactly
what steps did you follow 1-2-3?"
Glenn
has collected dozens of referral systems over the years,
only he has specialized in the actual step-by-step, get-it-to-work
referral systems that MILLIONAIRE entrepreneurs, business
owners and salesmen have used to make their millions. You can easily personalize a set of systems like this for your
own business.
Glenn's
millionaire referral system package, put together from his
personal experience and from the contributions of his millionaire
mastermind group, is appropriately titled "Don't
Buy Million Dollar Referral Systems From Me."
Glenn also has an Enchanted
NLP course, which he tells me is the most profitable
course for his clients. That is, it is the one training
program he offers that his clients make the most money from,
but more on NLP sales scripting later.
Anyway,
basically the idea of referral systems is to create an automatic,
systemized, dependable, predictable stream of steady customers
you can CONTROL so that you become somewhat free from active
marketing duties that eat up your time, energy, money and
chip away at your dignity. It's always better, and far more
enjoyable, to have customers come to you, and referrals
systems do exactly that. They flip it around so that you
don't have to go to customers but reverse it and start a stampede of customers coming
to you, which means more time for other
WORTHWHILE pursuits.
Ask
many professionals about their major source of business
and you'll find many instances in which 50%, 60% or even
90% of the sales comes from referrals, and yet those
same professionals have no strategic or systemized way to
increase the numbers of those referrals so that they control
the fate of their business. If you want to do that, automatic
referral systems are the key. In fact, think ahead....if you want to maximize the value of your business in order to sell it, and if you want it to look as simple to operate as possible to prospective buyers, then automatic referrals systems are IT!
Take
a look at the following list of referral systems and you'll
see plenty of autopilot systems that you can use directly
"as is," or adapt for your business to create
a continuous stream of new customers at your doors and
all the success that goes along with it.
There
will be more cash in your pocket, more time on vacations,
less overtime and marketing headaches, fewer wasteful advertising
expenses, and just a lot more fun with a whole new, higher
class of customers when you get them by referrals.
To
learn more, consider these two packages, take them apart,
and put several systems in place that will pay for the cost
many times over.
Once
again, there is David Frey's systems at:
http://tinyurl.com/28glm
Glenn
Osborn's
tape set called "Don't Buy Million Dollar Referral
Systems from Me" is also pretty good, so I would
order the David Frey set of referral systems and the Glenn
Osborn set when you want more, or BOTH together, or just
one depending on which one appeals to you most.
Get
them, listen to them, adapt them to your business and watch
your income climb, the number of people you serve climb,
your fun and free time climb, and then use those extra
resources for good deeds and good times.
However, the big thing to remember for getting more customers is to Offer
service. The more you offer service, through
more customers served, gives you a greater chance to create greater
merit in life, and income follows merit. Now you know how to increase that number of potential
customers.
Here's
another bit of advice...
You're
reading this article presumably because you want to sell
more and increase your income. You're not interested in
baloney theories and things that don't work. I also know
you hate people trying to sell you stuff because I hate
that myself, and even though I'm urging you to buy these
collections, this is because these are the solution to the problem of referrals amd the best I could find out there. Investing in these systems
is the BEST WAY to insure you achieve these results in the
shortest period of time, with MAXIMUM COMPREHENSION, so that
you actually increase your business.
To
increase your sales and business, OVERALL there are several
KEY skills you should learn or get better at which I'll
be teaching you:
