If you have been in sales for a little while, you
would agree with me with saying, "There must be a better way to gain
prospects long term". Well there is a way, by gaining referrals. After
a while everyone gets tired of the constant calling on strangers.
Getting referrals is the only way forward because word of mouth is
always the best form of advertising.
So here we go!
Get
Referrals Never miss an opportunity to ask for a referral. I have
received referrals from the most bizarre places. Sometimes you have
called a one man band company who may be unsuitable for your product or
service. Don't waste this contact he probably has been in the industry
for a good time and has left another established company down the road
and has a lot of information on who to contact and even how to approach
them. He could give you names and numbers of other companies and
contact names. You then can use his name to get through to that person.
When
I worked in the financial services industry, we would not hire a new
Insurance Agent unless he could bring 100 contacts with him that he
could start on. Once they had started through some training I could get
them to expand that list up to 1000 contacts.
Yes you heard it right 1000! Have you ever heard of the term "6 Degrees of Separation"?
The
'Wikipedia Encyclopaedia' says the term 'six degrees of separation',
"refers to the idea that all human beings are connected through
relationships with at most six other people. Several studies, such as
Milgram's small world experiment have been conducted to empirically
measure this connectedness. While the exact number of links between
people differs depending on the population measured, it is generally
found to be relatively small".
Here we go; I want to get a contact to meet say Brad Pitt. Well
(1) my ex-wife's
(2) mother use to work for
(3) Claudia Schiffer as a nanny for her children. Now Claudia Schiffer is a friend of
(4) Brad Pitt.
Hey that only took me 4 steps! I am
actually trying to impress you. Did it work? That may have been a party
trick. Ah well I think you get what I am trying to get at. Well you may
have Joe Bloggs name down but what is his sister's name or the business
his brother has. Now this works offcourse better for a product that is
general like insurance, however we can use the same technique for any
product or service.
One of the best things I have seen to gain
referrals is to give people incentives like a bottle of champagne or a
lotto ticket to get names of their friends and colleagues. I once new a
Zimbabwean guy in the insurance industry that got 1000 names out of 1
contact. Make a commitment today to ask every customer and potential
buyers for referrals. If you don't ask you don't get! What harm can it
do!
