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.

Optimizing Your Web Site With SEO Organic Techniques

Optimizing Your Web Site With SEO Organic Techniques:

SEO organic methods take more work from the individual, but is a safer and, in the end, more effective way to optimize a web site for search engines. In a way, Organic SEO helps to keep Internet “pollution” to a minimum, so you're also helping the virtual environment! In the following paragraphs, you'll find a few easy ways to use this type of search engine optimization.

You're no doubt familiar with the basic concepts of search engine optimization, but are you familiar with SEO organic methods? While search engine optimization is a very important aspect to any online business' marketing plan, it's become increasingly standardized and mechanized. Many SEO services and applications simply use the same basic plan to enhance a web site's search engine rankings.

This has led to a lot of marketers using nasty search engine optimization methods to get results. These types of methods can be great for generating traffic, but in the end they make the Internet an uglier place. These methods, known as “Black Hat” SEO methods, are just a bad idea. Not only do they frustrate potential users of your web site, they may not even work forever…
You see, Google and other search engines are constantly looking for ways to defeat Black Hat SEO techniques. If their efforts are successful – and really it's just a matter of time before they are – your time and money may be wasted. Why spend money on search engine optimization that could be useless in just a few months? Worse yet, search engines aren't just knocking these sorts of sites down in rank; they're totally removing them from search results.

Some of these Black Hat methods include using cheap labor or robots to perform a number of tasks. For instance, sometimes these services will sign up to tons of forums and or social networking sites and simply spam the link to a site everywhere possible. This is a definite annoyance for many webmasters, who end up with sites cluttered in meaningless links.
Link farms are another common type of Black Hat SEO. These sites are knockoffs are legit online directories, and are packed with links, many of which lead to very poor web sites. Some of them just link back and forth between each other and the link site, causing users to get lost in a sea of useless information. SEO organic techniques can be a great alternative to some of these Black Hat search engine optimization plans.

The main thing that people associate with web sites is their domain names. Domain names that feature the keywords that your website is targeting are a great start to organic SEO. Another, related, search engine optimization idea is to customize your web site's title the same way: feature the keywords that your site targets. Both of these elements are factors that search engines use to rank a site.

There are many more ways to optimize a site with an SEO organic plan, but these tips will get you started.