Active Referral Networks: Why They're Your Best Source Of Sales Appointments

By Carrie Richardson, Richardson & Richardson Consulting

Growing Your Business Feels Like A Never-Ending Battle

As a small business owner looking to grow your IT business, you need to find ways to continually generate new sales appointments that eventually will turn into new deals and increased revenue. If you don’t consider yourself “salesy,” the idea of trying to ask strangers to trust you and buy from you can be very unsettling. And for a lot of us, talking to strangers doesn’t come easily. If you want to grow your business, you have to talk to strangers. Right?

There are two main ways that business owners can generate sales appointments. The first is cold outreach activities like networking, cold calling, and cold emailing. The second is by getting referrals from clients, peers, and others in your network and community. If you’re not keen on talking to strangers, I have some good news for you – it’s much easier to talk to friends, and it’s also a lot more profitable. Referrals are your fastest path to new revenue, and you get referrals by talking to people you already know.

Passive Referrals Are A Gift, Not A Strategy

Referrals are a great way to grow your business, but most business owners are 100% reliant on passive referral collection. Waiting with an empty pipeline begins to create points of stress in your business - and when other business owners get busy, it’s not likely their priorities will include trying to find new clients for their vendor partners.

Without a consistent stream of referrals, you may need to invest more time and resources into other forms of marketing and outreach, which can be expensive and time-consuming. It's important to have a plan in place for generating referrals and to consistently nurture your relationships to ensure you always have a steady flow of new business. It can be difficult to generate new business from cold leads in a timely fashion, which can lead to a lot of anxiety around a decline in revenue.

When you’re losing revenue and you can’t rely on a steady stream of new clients to keep the business afloat, you might feel like you’ve got no choice but to invest in an expensive third-party marketing engagement.

Relax. There are no business development emergencies, and an investment in a third-party firm will take a year to show dividends. There are no quick fixes when it comes to growing a business, but building, growing, and maintaining an active referral network is a quick thing to learn, a simple thing to execute, and a major game changer for small business owners who are anxious to keep their sales pipelines full!

Referral Appointments: Easier To Get And Close

Referral appointments are simply easier to get than cold calling appointments.

When a client refers you to a potential customer, they're essentially vouching for you and your services. This means your prospect is more likely to trust and like you before you even pick up the phone to schedule an appointment.

Not only are referral appointments easier to get, but they're also easier to close. Referrals have a significantly higher closing rate than cold calling appointments. When a client who is a good fit for your services recommends you, the company they refer to you is also more likely to be a good fit for your business, which means you're more likely to close that deal.

Referral appointments also take less time and effort to convert into proposal meetings. With cold calling, you need to spend time researching potential customers, crafting a message, and then convincing them to take a meeting with you. With referrals, you move right to sales discovery, skipping most of the time and expense associated with lead generation.

More Deals And Higher Revenue

When it comes to generating sales appointments, referrals are the way to go if you want to increase your revenue. Referral customers tend to spend more money and have a higher lifetime value than cold calling customers. This is because they're already more invested in your business and trust you based on the connection to another client who also trusts you.

Referral customers are more likely to refer you to their network of contacts, which can result in even more deals and revenue. Word-of-mouth marketing is incredibly powerful, and it all starts with getting referrals from your existing clients.

Building A Referral Program

Instead of creating a referral program that rewards clients for a referral with gift cards or free services or cash, consider using reciprocity to create more referral opportunities. This means that you should focus on building strong relationships with your existing clients so that they feel motivated to refer you to others out of a sense of goodwill. Here are some tips:

• Be generous with your time and expertise with your existing clients.
• Offer to help your clients with their needs, even if it doesn't directly relate to your services.
• Ask your clients how you can help them grow their business and offer to make introductions to potential clients or partners.
• Keep in touch with your clients regularly to stay top-of-mind and demonstrate that you value their business.

By using reciprocity to create more referral opportunities, you can build stronger relationships with your existing clients and generate more sales appointments without having to offer incentives.

Stop Waiting, Start Asking!

By investing a little effort in building and nurturing an active referral network, you can turn your existing clients into a powerful source of new business.

Remember, any marketing initiative should have a goal, a defined process, and a way to measure outcomes. Your referral generation program is no different. Determine what your closing ratio for referrals looks like. Define your goal for client acquisition. If you close 1/3 of referrals and you want to add 10 new clients this year, you need to be referred to 30 people this year. Instead of waiting for the leads to come to you, find 10 clients you can ask for a referral. Spend time on LinkedIn to see who your current clients know. Ask each of them to refer you to three people that you believe would be a good client for you.

It’s as easy as it sounds, so don’t wait to get started! If you need a little guidance, Richardson & Richardson is always here to help.

About The Author

Carrie Richardson has built three seven-figure businesses over the last eight years, including Managed Sales Pros, which she successfully exited in 2022. She is the co-founder of Richardson & Richardson Consulting, a strategic consulting agency that supports the I.T. channel. Carrie spends her free time adventuring with her husband and business partner in their off-grid conversion van, Penny.

Richardson & Richardson helps entrepreneurs achieve and realize their vision through installing strategic operating systems, creating and documenting processes, and helping with leadership development and team accountability.