Referral Marketing - Ask Family and Friends to Let Their Friends Know What You Do

I recently saw a statistic, be it true or not, that a referral from someone will typically help you get a first meeting 40% of the time. This is opposed to a straight cold call that will usually result in a 2% to 5% initial meeting rate.

I don't know how true this statistic is, but I would have to say that based on experience, this is probably pretty close. So this would mean that you could typically have an 8 to 20 times better chance of getting an appointment through a referral. This should also mean that you will probably close more business and get more sales.

So if this is true, I would have a only one suggestion as it relates to booking meetings, tell as many people as you know what you do and how you help people. In fact, I would try to come up with a quick overview of what you do so that people can remember it. For example, Michael Port, who wrote several books including "Book Yourself Solid", has a catch phrase, "I am the guy you call when you are tired of thinking small." This really gets the point across. My slogan is "Daily Sales and Marketing Tips". No more, no less. It pretty much tells you what my site is all about.

Back to telling people what you do, I would start by telling everyone you know what you do and that you would appreciate any help or referrals that they could send your way. From there, you might want to update your LinkedIn, Facebook and any other profile to reflect what you do so that people who find you online understand what it is you do and can either hire you or refer you. Other people that you can tell are current clients, prospects and business associates.

Bottom line here is that the more people who know what you do, the better the odds are that you will get more referrals. More referrals mean more meetings and more meetings means more sales.

About this Author

Chris Hamilton is a sales and marketing consultant helping small and medium sized business take their sales to the next level. Chris provides useful sales and marketing tips daily on his website Sales Tip a Day which is located at http://www.salestipaday.com. Sign up for the Sales Tip A Day Newsletter at http://www.salestipaday.com/p/email-newsletter.html and receive the "25 Must Have Sales and Marketing Tips"

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