4 Ways to Proactively Generate More High Quality Referrals

Salespeople will often tell you that their greatest source of high-quality leads is referrals. And who could blame them? Referrals are often pre-qualified and they tend to offer warmer introductions and more natural pitches.

Which makes me wonder why, in their next breath, those same salespeople will admit that they don’t have a consistent formula for creating referrals.

Yes, it’s true. Most salespeople approach referrals reactively, choosing to wait for those hot leads to fall into their laps rather than proactively creating a process for cultivating them.

Why is that? In my experience, there are two key reasons why salespeople are hesitant to ask for referrals:

1.     They’re unaware of how important proactively sourcing referrals is.

2.     They fear being rejected by (or bothering) existing customers.

Neither reason is a good excuse.

Asking for referrals should be part of your normal sales and account management processes. With a good system in place, you can create a steady stream of referral prospects and let your existing customers know how important they—and their referrals—are to your business. In my book, that’s called a win-win.

So, stop making referrals an afterthought. Instead, make generating them a core part of your sales routine.

How can you do that? Here are four tips for more systematically producing high-quality referrals:

1.     Identify four perfect points to ask. Knowing who to ask is only one piece of successful referral-gathering. It’s also important to identify the natural opportunities in your sales process to ask for referrals — for instance, customers expressing how happy they are with your company, or customer discussions about the incredible value you provide. If you can identify those perfect points and ask for referrals then, customers will be more open to providing them. Determine which four points are your best and integrate them into your processes.

2.     Create additional natural opportunities for asking. The last thing you want to do is ask customers for referrals every time you talk to them. That can get annoying and you might actually end up harming your relationship with existing customers. Instead, be sure to create genuine opportunities to ask for a referral (for example, quarterly business reviews or project closeout meetings).

3.     Determine the most comfortable way to ask that fits your style. This feeds off of the previous point about referral requests needing to feel natural. Don’t try to use some other salesperson’s script when you ask for referrals, because it will end up sounding awkward or forced. Try different phrases until you find a few that are comfortable and effective, then make them your own.

4.     Give yourself a referral objective. How many referrals do you want to get from customers every month? How many do you want to supplement your pipeline? Setting a goal and holding yourself accountable to it will force you to incorporate a referral sourcing program into your typical sales routine. It will allow you to better measure the sales results of the referrals you receive and the lifetime value of the customers who provide them.

The bottom line is that while you might receive referrals organically without having to prompt customers, you can’t afford to simply sit around and hope that they conveniently appear on your desk.

Instead, it’s entirely possible that you could be getting many more of them if you had a proactive referral generation system in place. Once you do implement one, I’m confident that you’ll get more comfortable asking for referrals and you’ll find yourself with a steady flow of warm prospects.

Now, what salesperson wouldn’t want that?

Kendra Lee is a top IT seller, prospect attraction expert, author of the newly released book, “The Sales Magnet” and the award-winning book, “Selling Against the Goal” and president of KLA Group. Specializing in the IT industry, KLA Group works with companies to break in and exceed revenue objectives in the small and midmarket business (SMB) segment.