4 Experiences that Lead to Referrals Without Asking

One important thing I’ve learned over the last 20 years of teaching folks how to get more referrals and personal introductions, is that while the product or service you sell is important and contributes to your referability, the most important factor in getting referrals – especially without asking for them - lies in the Experience you bring your prospects and clients through. 

Here are 4 places for you to examine with the question, “What experience am I providing?  What can I do to make this experience smoother, more valuable, and/or more enjoyable?” 

Prospect’s Initial Experience 

I’ve written a lot about this over the years. You want to bring so much value in your first couple of meetings that your process becomes referable. They think of other people who should go through the same process.  The two most important parts of this initial experience are the questions you ask that get them thinking in ways they haven’t thought before and what you teach them so they understand and see new possibilities. 

New Client Onboarding Experience 

Many types of businesses have discovered the power of the “Onboarding Experience.” 
-  Luxury car dealers walk new owners through the special features of the car. 
-  Financial professionals create a Client Binder for saving printed statements and many other important documents. 
-  Some replacement window manufacture reps sell the window and move on. The ones I’ve trained help the customer throw a party to show off their new windows and doors. 
-  We try to help our coaching clients experience a very fast result with our strategies. 

Continued Client Experience 

Do you have, use, and talk about your Client Service Promise?    Read that sentence again!  Have?  Use? Talk about with prospects and clients?  What goes into this promise? 
- Continuous Value:  Bringing value to the client in the form of good questions, education, introductions to other resources, etc. – between your client-review meetings. 
- Business Friendships:  Making your relationship much more than the core work you do. Business Friendships shield your clients against the competition and turbo-charge your referability! 

Your Referral Experience 

Once you get a referral – whether you asked for it or it was volunteered – how your referral source experiences your processing of that referral will help you get more referrals (or not). 

1.  Treat the prospect like royalty. 
2.  Keep the referral source in the loop. 
3.  Say “thank you” for the referrals they provide. 
4.  Get your new client to thank the referral source for introducing them to you. This is huge!

I'm curious. What are you doing to get more referrals, introductions, appointments, and turn those prospects into new clients? Send me your best practices so I can share them with others. What are your greatest challenges? Send them to me and I'll do my best to help. My direct email is [email protected].

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