If you are looking for ‘easy’ sources of business then I suppose ‘referrals’ aren’t going to be your cup of tea….but then again, if you are looking for easy sources of business then you aren’t likely to find the answers here at all.

In one sense, getting referrals is the most valuable source of leads for your business as recommendations are pre-qualified leads with a head start on any rivals for your business. By their nature a referral may be an introduction of your services to someone to whom the search for solutions has not yet happened. In such cases the position of strength in being backed up by a powerful ally is added to in connecting with a prospect at the very beginning of the sales process where alternatives to your services haven’t been researched. A referral at such a stage in the sales process gives a wonderful opportunity to become an established and important mentor to the new prospect and also a favoured candidate to winning new business. The importance of developing relationships from early stages in the sales cycle can’t be over emphasised as it is with most relationships – the more time involved in dealing with a prospect the more value can be given into establishing the business ties between sales person and purchaser. Referral selling is a means in which a chain of meaningful relationships can be created because of the very nature of getting early introductions to new prospects before they have started to look for alternatives.

Now to the difficult part. Getting referrals isn’t easy and requires a constant dedication and a continual source of value to your current client base. Not every client you dedicate your efforts into helping is going to produce referrals and some may never do so.

Firstly, if we look at the process of generating a referral one must have a happy client to get the referral from, but that won’t in itself get a referral. Your happy client must be voluntarily willing to produce the recommendation and also to champion your cause in getting the new business – which bizarre as it seems isn’t always a natural inclination in some customers. If you ask for referrals, then your client may not know the right prospects for your business at the right time… and when they do know someone right for your business it might not occur to them to pass this detail on to you.

One way of getting a referral is to make the objective of getting recommendations a part of your clients work as well. If your client sees getting referrals as beneficial to their business then there is more likelihood of focusing their attention in a way beneficial to you. This is never more so where you are dealing with customers who have partnerships with other companies and individuals. Partnerships, organisations and networks of business alliances are mutually beneficial in referral selling because if you add value to one organisation then the value you add to the next impacts on the first. Therefore, it is within the interests of the first client to get you to add the same value to any of their business partners as it will have a direct benefit to themselves as well.