How To Turn One Customer Into Two… Then Into Four… Then Eight… And So On….
A New Client Used A Letter I Wrote 9 Years Ago…
And Referrals Started Pouring In.
Here’s The Letter… And An Explanation Of Why It Works.
Written by Rich Harshaw.
Note: This article is part of Monopolize Your Marketplace’s ongoing “Client Success” series. All of the information is real and current; please respect the privacy of the companies mentioned; they don’t want to be overwhelmed with questions and comments.
I’d never seen the guy before. I didn’t recognize his name or his company’s name. I wasn’t even sure what the heck he was talking about.
Yet he excitedly walked up to me before a seminar in Denver recently and announced that, thanks to me, he had gotten more referrals in the last three weeks than he had in his previous thirty years.
Who are you, again?
Turns out his name is Mike Liverant, and unbeknownst to me, he was actually already a client of mine. He had signed on with us just a scant four weeks before the seminar, and apparently one of my Senior Consultants had helped him write some letter that was getting him referrals like nobody’s business. He was so excited that he was having a hard time telling the story in an intelligible way. Since the seminar was about to begin, I told him I’d talk to him later.
At the end of the day, he produced the letter. It was printed out on an ink-jet printer and didn’t look particularly “professional.” I started reading the letter, and I instantly recognized the letter. I had written it myself some nine years earlier as part of a referral package that I developed for my clients.
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Chasing Referrals Won’t Work. You’ve Got To Create A Systematic Approach.
What Sasquatch, Dolly Parton, And My Brother-In-Law Jared
Can Teach You About Getting Referrals
My brother-in-law Jared is a big dude. Like Grizzly bear big. Like lumberjack big. Pretty much like Sasquatch big. Big enough that he calls me “Tiny” even though I’m a fairly average 6 foot tall, 180 pounds.
So I was a bit surprised when Jared improbably announced he was going to begin training to run a half marathon… and asked if I wanted to join him. That’s how I found myself with him on an early July morning sweating out what was supposed to be an easy 40 minute jog. Afterwards, when I asked Jared how it went, he said he felt great—except he felt a shin splint coming on, which he blamed on not having the right shoes.
In business, this is the perfect setup for what you’d call “The Referral.” Sure enough, he asked, “What kind of shoes do you have? I need to get some new ones.”
He shouldn’t have asked. Can I just tell you, I love my running shoes. Nike Zoom Vomero. I found them at Academy Sports & Outdoors priced at $109 and instantly fell in love with them the moment I tried them on. They were so soft, so comfortable, so incredibly awesome; I seriously considered wearing them out of the store like a 5-year old with a new pair of Buster Browns. Okay, I did wear them out of the store.
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