What is referral based selling? By definition it’s a method of generating sales based on referrals instead of cold calling or sales other means, (I base this definition on generating 100% of my sales by using this method for the past 20 years). It’s typically a much, much better way of selling for most sales people, and great for entrepreneurs, B2B sales people, small business owners, newbies and sales veterans, etc. In my experience and professional opinion it’s much more productive, has higher sales retention and creates more loyal clients/customers. It’s the difference between getting introduced to potential clients, rather than hunting them down.
In this blog post I’ll discuss a few different referral generating methods, but focus on cross partnering for B2B through same industry method, this is how I built a referral team and 100% referral based business. There are many times when we give a referral and we’re not even thinking about it. Usually it’s a situation when you like a particular product or service and you tell a friend or business associate. In general people buy from people they like and trust, if they don’t know you how can they like or trust you? This is not meant to be a popularity contest, but it’s definitely about who knows you and not who you know (this may be the opposite to the old expression you’ve heard). You speed up the ‘likeability factor’ by 10 to 1 by being introduced either personally or through association (a referral). Let’s face it, if we are looking to buy something and we already know someone in the business, we will most likely go straight to them to buy, sometimes we may not even think of going anywhere else. So let’s take it a step further, if I’m looking to buy a house and know someone in the business we are most likely going to go to them first without even thinking about going anywhere else. The point is, that person got the first opportunity to do business with you. Even better, if we have a system in place where can get more opportunities then guess what, you build our business faster, stronger (and easier).
Referral selling is not a new concept, but having a system is very important. Why is a referral based business a better method and better mindset to sell by? It’s more efficient, the potential is much higher to make more money, it increases customer loyalty and you have more fun. What a concept, having fun at selling. There are many ways to build a referral based business, but we’re going to focus/discuss on one main method as mentioned before. The quickest way to get in front of people that will help you are people that you will be able to help. The quickest way to make this happened is meeting with people with same interest (similar industry). Let’s dig a little deeper.
This is very important; keep in mind the main reason to use this method is because is has not no comparison to other methods of selling (like cold calling). If you build sales this way with a system in place you will be building sales by leverage and not relying totally on yourself anymore and getting qualified referrals, it no longer becomes just a numbers game. The sales cycle will be quicker, the client will be higher quality and they will be more loyal. You’re probably wondering why anyone would just hand over referrals/leads to you. It’s definitely a two-way street; you meet, collaborate and sell.
Written by Tim Frisch at Get The Sale
