One of the main reasons people who could refer you business don’t do so is that they “don’t think about itâ€. They’re busy and have other things on their mind. Unless they have a legal need, they don’t think about you or your services.
Out of sight, out of luck, me bucko.
You can change that, and get more repeat business and referrals, by doing the following:
1) Stay in touch with them
The easiest way to do that is via email. One of my subscribers, an associate in a firm that severely limits his ability to do any marketing, told me that he now emails his clients and prospects and referral sources every two weeks.
He writes about legal matters, and also about what he’s doing in his practice and, I suppose, in his personal life.
He’s staying “in their minds and their mailboxes†and getting repeat business and referrals, and lots of it.
He tells me, “It has worked like a charm. When you write email blasts “right where they live” you are reaching out to them, and many think it is personal. You establish your credibility. You establish a reputation.â€
2) Talk about referrals
Another reason you don’t get as many referrals as you could is that you’re not talking about referrals. There are many ways to do that, but one of the simplest is something I suggested to the lawyer mentioned above: put a blurb at the bottom of your emails asking the recipient to forward it to their friends, colleagues, etc., who might like to receive his updates. Spell out what those people should do if they want to be added to the list.
People read your wisdom, tacitly endorsed by the friend or colleague who forwared it to them. They like what they see and want to see more. They ask to be added to your list. You stay in touch with them and they hire you and send you referrals.
Wash, rinse, repeat.
You can make this work better by using an autoresponder to manage everything and offering an incentive to join your list–a report, ebook, or a collection of some your best prior articles–but you don’t have to.
3) Make it easy to refer
Many clients and contacts come close to referring but don’t do it because they don’t know what to do. Do they tell the referral about you and give them your number? Do they send the referral some information about you, and if so, what should it be? Do they tell you about the referral? If they do that, what will you do?
Of course, when it comes to making it easy, “forward this email” is about as easy as it gets. Your contacts don’t have to refer people to you, they can refer them to your content and then your content refers you.
Get this if you want to learn how to get more referrals
