6 Ways to Get Referrals without Asking

Business Referrals - 6 Ways to
Get Referrals without Asking

by David Frey

Do you hate asking your customers for referrals? Most people do. Fortunately, there are many ways to get a continued stream of qualified referrals without having to go through the painful process of asking for them face-to-face.

Yes, I admit it – I hate asking for referrals – don’t you? Be honest. Doesn’t your heart start to pump faster and hands start to sweat even thinking about asking a customer for a referral? If you’re like me, you hate to impose on others. Asking for names of friends or family members almost makes you feel as though you’re selling a multi-level marketing opportunity.

Not to worry. There are many ways to get a continual stream of qualified referrals without having to go through the painful process of asking for referrals face-to-face. The secret to getting referrals without asking for them is to develop referral systems that do the asking for you. Here are six innovative systems for getting referrals without asking.

Referral System # 1 

Make a list of people / businesses that sell complimentary products and services to your own product or service. If you sell athletic shoes your list might include health clubs, running clubs, basketball teams, or podiatrists. Now create a referral program that pays referral fees for people that are sent to you by your referral partners.

To make this system more effective, give your referral partners customized coupons, tickets, or cards that the referral brings with them to your business so that you can correctly track each referral source.

Referral System # 2 

Approach charities in your local area to get a list of donors that already give to the charity. The United Way is a good place to start. Most United Way donors make advanced pledges or set goals to give a specified amount to the United Way.

Now approach the executive sponsor of the United Way donation drive and make a proposal. Propose that for every referral that is sent from their organization to your business, you will take a percentage of your sale and donate it to the United Way (or whatever charity they are affiliated with) in their name.

Referral System # 3 

Local churches are always looking for innovative ways to raise money to sustain the programs they offer to their members. Most churches would be enthusiastic about the opportunity to receive a donation from you or your business.

Simply call up the ecclesiastical leader and ask if you can meet with him/her to talk about a potential fundraising activity. Propose that for every referral they send your way, you will donate a percentage of the sales to the church. In return, the church should agree to promote your business. This same referral tactic can be done with the booster clubs of local sports teams, Boy Scout troops and other organizations looking to raise money.

Referral System # 4 

Most everyone has a barber or hairstylist they use on a frequent basis, especially if you have children. I don’t know about you, but my barber always engages me in conversation during my haircut. And most barbers and hairstylists are very happy when you give them a $2 - $3 tip. Do you see where I’m going with this?

Why not approach the local barbers and hairstylists and offer them $1 for every referral card they pass out to their customers. You might even motivate them to talk up your business by promising them a percentage of each sale that results from their referral.

Referral System # 5 

The last referral system will not only bring you referrals, but will also create a lot of goodwill. I learned this tactic, strangely enough, by Princess Diana and a local real estate agent. When Princess Diana died a close associate of hers was interviewed and revealed that Diana always carried a set of “royal” thank you notes.

Every time she met with someone she would remember their names and as soon as she got in her car she would write a short thank you note to them. The people cherished the thank you notes they received from the Princess. After hearing that, I started to carry around my own box of thank you notes.

But here’s what really will make this referral tactic take off. Not long ago I received an email from a subscriber to my Marketing Best Practices Newsletter that had this phrase under the man’s signature:

By Referral Only

By Referral Only...means: We invest 100% of our time and energy to delivering first-class service to our clients. As a result, our valued clients, suppliers, and friends refer their family, friends and work associates to us for advice on buying or selling real estate. We're interested in building strong life long relationships one person at a time.

You see, its not enough to send a thank you note. People need to know that you want and appreciate their referrals. The phrase, in essence, answers the question, “What can you do for me in return for this nice thank you card?” Immediately, I had this phrase printed on the bottom of my thank you notes and my referrals took off.

Call the Cops. There's a Criminal in my Computer!

Call the Cops.  There's a Criminal in my Computer!

A common plot of Hollywood thrillers is the “Don't Answer the Phone” device.  In this kind of movie, the babysitter is aware that there is a maniac about to come to kill her or the children.  The big moment comes when she gets a phone call from the police who say “The calls are coming from inside the house!”  Pretty scary stuff.

But we have a modern day version of “the maniac is inside the house”.  The maniacs are actually hiding in the house but not in the closet, not in the basement, not in the attic but in the computer!  And it isn't just happening to an occasional unfortunate victim.  These kinds of crimes are happening to thousands of people every day, people like you and me.  It's called cyber crime and it's an epidemic that law enforcement is putting all the skill and detective work they can muster to try to control.

When you hear a phrase like “cyber crime”, it makes you think of Arnold Schwarzenegger in The Terminator as a heartless android out to create chaos.  But cyber criminals are far more elusive than Arnold.  They could be any one in your neighborhood or halfway around the world.  They don't need a key to your back door or a tunnel under your house to get in.  Cyber criminals can take up residence inside our computers and quietly commit crimes as we sit there enjoying our YouTube selections or having an IM chat with Aunt Edna.

The problem is not that our legal system has not done a good job of defining crimes committed using the internet as crimes.  The legal community has all the laws on the books that they need to stop these criminals.  The problem comes with finding the criminals and even know when a crime is being committed.  But despite the elusive nature of cyber criminals, some of the kinds of crimes that can be committed directly over the internet are pretty scary including…

* Identity theft.
* Fraud.
* Embezzling hundreds, maybe thousands from your bank account.
* Hijacking an elderly person's Social Security checks.
* Cyber seduction of youth and even children.
* Unauthorized access to your financial information which they can sell to other cyber criminals.
* The downloading of computer viruses and other destructive software that can damage your computer.
* Cyber terrorism.

Amazingly, most of this kind of crime can be happening inside your computer without you ever knowing it is there.  The key to success for cyber criminals are these little programs sometimes called “spybots”.  A spybot is a tiny program that can take up residence in your computer by hiding in your internet system with cookies and other content that you download when you are surfing the web.  These programs can then capture and record your keystrokes and send them back to the cyber crimanl who can capture your secure information from that data.  Or they can watch your cyber surfing and learn where you go to help cyber criminals figure out better ways to commit their crimes.

Cyber crime is something we hope our law enforcement professionals will eventually learn how to stop.  But because cyber criminals can be anywhere in the world, stay on the run and even change electronic locations of their “headquarters” without ever betraying their physical location or who they are, it's a amazingly difficult job for our law informant professionals to learn how to find these criminals and to capture them and put them away.

We can help by being ever vigilant about our computers.  There are programs we can install that can “lock the front door” of our computers.  The two top names in this kind of software are Norton and McAfee but there are dozens more that can do the job just as well.  The good news is that these programs can simultaneously watch our emails, monitor for spybots and keep our computer clean of viruses and other internet surprises that can cause so much damage.

So just as we work with neighborhood watch and put locks on our doors even though there are police in our neighborhoods, we have to view cyber crime as a problem that everybody has to work together to stop.  By making sure your computer is protected, you take one more victim out of the cycle.  And that helps everybody in our quest for a safer internet.

Overnight Success....NOT!

Overnight success...NOT!

Today we're going to talk about having big goals...but REALISTIC goals. SFI holds tremendous potential for those who will apply themselves, but it's not going to happen overnight or without work. As the old saying goes, "the only place that success comes before work is in the dictionary."

We often hear from affiliates asking why they're not seeing a big commission check yet. But more times than not, the person asking hasn’t even been an affiliate for more than a few weeks and is only really beginning to even understand how the whole SFI system works. And frankly, even if the number was six months, it’s still much too early to be expecting a significant income stream to have developed.

We always say that if you’re not willing to give a business at least a year, don’t even bother getting involved. You must understand: It takes time to get to know all the nuances of a business. It takes time to get to know the products. It takes time to develop a game plan. It takes time to figure out what marketing activities will work best for you.

The fact is, anything worthwhile takes sustained effort. If that were not true, we'd all be the perfect weight, we'd all have perfect relationships, etc. It's the same thing with your own business. If you're thinking money's going to start pouring into your lap next month, you’ve set yourself up for failure.

But let’s look at some real examples and see if we can put some perspective on this. Let's start with SFI's own president and founder, Gery Carson. Gery explains:

"My success as a entrepreneur and business leader is widely known today. Yet what most people don’t know is that I LOST money my first two years. I only broke even in my third year. And it was only when I got to my fourth year did I finally start seeing profits. Oh, how I wish someone had invented an SFI for me back in the mid-80's when I was starting out! ; - )

So was all that effort worth it? ABSOLUTELY! Because I persisted, today I live a dream life, I have my dream home, drive my dream car, and I get to lead one of the most exciting Internet companies in the world. Yes, because I stuck with it, I am today truly blessed beyond my wildest dreams."

But let’s go farther. Let’s look at some of the actual home business superstars we've interviewed and featured on our Website in the past:

Note that amounts listed reflect declared earnings at the time their interview was published.

ROBERT BLACKMAN now earns as much as $85,000 per month. Yet it took Robert two years to see his first four-figure check ($1,000 or more), and it took him five years to see his first five-figure check ($10,000 or more).

CHARLES LESLIE’s monthly income exceeds $12,000 a month. It took Charles five months to see his first $1,000 check, and three and a half years to see his first $10,000 check.

TRACY DIETERICH earns $36,000+ monthly. But it took six months to hit that first $1,000, and a year to get to $10,000.

DALE CALVERT makes so much more than $100,000 a year that he won’t even divulge the amount. Yet Dale worked four months before seeing that first four-figure commission check...and two full years before hitting five figures.

DR. JOE RUBINO now cruises at over $62,000 each month. But that first $1,000 check took two months, the first $10,000 check, one year.

ROBERT BUTWIN drops $80,000 or more into his bank account each month. But would you believe that first $1,000 check took two years to reach, and a full FIVE years for Robert to reach the first $10,000 check? It’s true!

DAVID A. NELSON clears $40,000 in a month. But reaching that first $1,000 check took 18 months. Reaching the five-figure check took two years.

TONY KENT has exceeded $90,000 in monthly earnings. But exceeding $1,000 took Tony one year...and a year and a half to exceed $10,000.

In other words, even the most dynamic, highest-earning entrepreneurs took MONTHS to begin seeing an income of any real significance. And the real wealth, the $100,000+ income we all strive for, took an average of almost THREE YEARS to achieve!

Do you think ANY of these gentlemen don’t think the ends justified the means? Do you think for an instant that the months and years invested hasn’t been rewarded a thousand times over at least? You don't even have to think about it, do you?

If we told you that after two to three years of following our system, you could be making more in a month than you now make in a year, could you handle that? This is a genuine and realistic goal. But when you say you want to quit your job in six months and live off the income from your new business, well, that's just not realistic.

Not what you wanted to hear, right? But is what we're suggesting so tough to swallow? Of course not.

Can you think of any other endeavor where you could invest just five to 10 hours a week for a couple years and at the end of that time have that turned into a $3,000 to $10,000 residual monthly income stream? Money that keeps coming in month after month, year after year. Money that keeps coming in whether you work 10 hours a day or two. A commission check waiting for you in your mailbox when you return from yet another vacation. Money that when you’ve left this planet continues to provide for your spouse, children, or grandchildren.

Sounds extremely nice, doesn’t it? But again, these are likely not things you’re going to see in your first year. It's just not going to happen. Some of you—the go-getters—you WILL see it happen in your second year. For most of you, however, you need to be thinking two to five years. And you know what? When you get there, we guarantee you, you’ll say it was nothing!

BOTTOM LINE: We reap what we sow, but the harvest is never in the same season as the planting! Today you are planting...and will be at least for the next several months. Your harvest will come in time. Be persistent. Be patient. Work the Web using our proven SFI system. Think long term. Take action every day, (no matter how small) to build your business. And always remember, THE ONLY WAY TO FAIL IS TO QUIT.