Getting Customers to Refer You by Mark Coudray

If you want clients that refer you, you’ve got to make sure you do everything humanly possible to create an experience worth referring others to. If your customers aren’t  impressed enough with your service to where they’d want to use you again, then they certainly aren’t going to refer you to other people. What most businesses miss is the “Wow Factor.” A business transaction that exceeds what they were expecting.

If you don’t know how to create this Wow Factor, don’t be concerned. You can start small and build on it.  I recently read an interesting piece by Dan Sullivan, founder of The Strategic Coach Inc. in Toronto, Ontario Canada.  Dan is reknowned for his business intellect and knowledge. He’s identified four habits he calls the “Referability Habits.” If you want your  business to generate referrals, you need to start by  following  these four simple habits:

1) Do what you say you’re going to do.

2) Finish what you start.

3) Deliver on time.

4) Say ‘please’ and ‘thank you.’

Regardless of how good your product or service is,  how great your employees are, how honest you are,  how highly skilled and trained you are — if you break just one of these referability habits you ‘ll have dropped the ball. When you break one, you’re saying to your clients, employees, and to everyone you associate with that you don’t respect them and you’re undependable. If your customers and clients are annoyed with you, there’s no way they’ll ever refer you to others.