Comments on: My Most Excellently Flawed Referral Survey

By: Dr David Black

Dr David Black — Fri, 15 May 2009 01:44:24 +0000

The best clients are those who have been referred by another happy client.
Dr.David Black
www.blackchiropractic.com.au

By: Selena Horner

Selena Horner — Sun, 15 Feb 2009 19:22:43 +0000

I found your survey very interesting.

I provide a service that is generally only thought about when someone has pain or a problem functioning. I am a physical therapist who practices in a state without direct access. This legally means that I am unable to treat a patient without first having a referral from a physician. I also have knowledge in prevention and could tap into that area, especially in light of the number of people 65+ who are at risk of falling, have peripheral vascular disease, have osteoporosis, and have hip or knee joint pain, but again, the current legal constraint, medical model and reimbursement model do not currently support preventative methods. At the same time, our society is built on a quick fix – medications, surgery. This is problematic because the “quick fix” isn’t always as beneficial as society thinks and has a high amount of risk. Services provided by a physical therapist are not a “quick fix” and take work on behalf of the patient, although they can have long term benefit with substantial less risk.

The majority of patients choose my services based on word of mouth. To promote new referral generation does take a lot of time – either speaking to the local groups (Kiwanis, Lions, Rotary, Senior Center) or writing newsletters. The referrals from these activities do not occur immediately because a person needs to recognize a situation where a physical therapist will be beneficial exists.

By: Atniz

Atniz — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 02:17:23 +0000

Referral will help our business to grow. But, giving away 50% of the revenue might sounds very high for a real product. If it is intangible items like ebook, softwares, it is not bad at all.

By: Kris Bovay

Kris Bovay — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 23:31:54 +0000

Well first I think I might question the accuracy of the 69.4% who felt that 50% of their business came through referrals. They might feel that way – but is that real? If you don’t have a system, how do you measure?

@John – what’s holding me back from getting referrals from all my customers and partners? Time to develop a system; the feeling that I’d be moving into a ‘hard’ sell; the feeling that I’d be imposing on my existing clients; etc. I’ve got lots of reasons why – when I list them here (and I could put a lot more in this list), I realize that I need to do some work to make this easy and painless – my customers actually like me, like my work and probably would be happy to provide referrals.

By: Anne Millerd

Anne Millerd — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 18:17:02 +0000

I struggle to find referrals because my customers are retailers who are in competition with each other. I have begun asking them for referrals to non-competing clooleagues or friends, but I have a very low rate of success. They don’t want anyone else to carry our product line. They want to be unique!

By: Larry Kilbourne

Larry Kilbourne — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 18:04:10 +0000

Interesting survey, and thanks for sharing! My own suspicion (no evidence other than anecdotal) from my experience helping businesses market enterprise software is that too many perpetuate an unhelpful distinction between customers and prospective customers. They’ll spend inordinate amounts of time and money to capture the latter (”what I don’t have”), while treating the former as a fait accompli (”what I do have”). It’s unhelpful for two reasons: 1)I end up concentrating too much of my marketing energy on prospects, while taking my existing customers for granted, which can result in lost customers. 2) Because I stop marketing to my existing customers, I don’t create a mindset about how I might leverage them (through referrals for instance) to bring more business my way.

By: Alan Underkofler

Alan Underkofler — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 16:31:56 +0000

Thank you for sharing the results from your survey. I am always amazed at how many businesses know referrals are a big part of their business yet have no type of system to encourage this to happen. I think many businesses think referrals and word of mouth sales come from chance. They do not realize by simply engaging clients and prospects on a consistent basis using some kind of system will can easily double the referrals they receive.

Whether you use index cards, Excel, Outlook, SendOutCards, Act!, Goldmine, Saleceforce.com, or any of the many other CRM tools on the market the important thing is you use one!

Thank you for shedding more light on this important marketing step!

By: Joe Dager

Joe Dager — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 14:23:31 +0000

For me it is consistency. We talk about it but do we really work it.

For example: I look at the survey and it says 69% felt that 50% of their business comes from referrals. My question would be does 50% of your marketing dollars support Referrals?

So when you talk about a referral plan/system, WHAT IS STOPPING US? I for one, need to spend a little more work there.