 | 5 Tips For Quality Management In Your Referral Marketing | How many of these are you following? | Posted on: 08/10/2014 By: Jacky Sherman |
The wonderful thing about my job is that I learn from my clients whilst they are learning from me. I've been reviewing my referral marketing plan and came to the part when I looked at my image ...
Usually, a wriggle moment for most of us. You know, that uncomfortable thought that maybe you're not as organised and efficient as you'd like to be, it's probably stressing you out and maybe others are noticing?
So I thought I'd take the approach that one of my clients Ellen Willoughby of All About Quality presented in a recent short talk. It has made me take a good hard look at the quality of my own systems and processes.
So I thought I'd share with you her advice and apply it to your referral marketing:
Define, define, define
Before you start be clear about what you mean by quality. Spend some time on what a quality system would look like to you and share it with everyone involved.
Everyone working from the same page means less confusion and less mistakes which increase time, reputation and money.
So what does a quality referral system look like to you? What are you doing to get referrals? Do you have a plan? Why are you doing that? How did you decide those were the right things to do? Who else is involved? Who are your referral sources? Are you team involved too? Where do you do it? Network groups, social media, down the pub? When do you do it? do you have a routine, specific time allotted to focus on your referral sources?
Take control, be pro-active and take responsibility for achieving results
This increases your ability to take full advantage of the opportunities. Don't hope referrals will happen, make them happen by your actions.
However referrals are all about relationships and as that means trusting others it does carry risks. Build into your plans how you will manage those risks. If your referral sources are not referring you or referring you poor quality referrals go back and check your actions, you've probably missed out something.
Get organised
This stops you wasting time looking for things or forgetting them. It improves communication and reduces errors. Review your business processes. Is your diary always available when you're talking to people? Does your CRM record referral information? Can it accommodate relationship building activities? Does it produce the relevant reports for you to check if what you are doing for people is resulting in referrals and more importantly sales?
Do you have a referral acceptance process? Do your referral sources know how best to introduce you. Do they know how you will turn that into a sale?
Ask for help
Don't be proud and call in help for the areas that are not your strengths. This allows you to spend time on the things that make you money and that you enjoy.
Outsource your routine activities, PA, telephone answering and bookkeeping. If you are having unproductive meetings that seem to be going nowhere, ask someone to facilitate. Referral briefings with your referral sources can really benefit from an independent chair to ensure the meeting is productive.
If you have any problems, consult a specialist. You don't have to be an expert in everything. Many of you reading this will be specialists but do you use other specialists to help you in return?
Use your internal team and referral sources to problem solve with you. They will give great feedback and can often come up with innovative solutions you wouldn't have thought of. Then they are motivated to help you resolve the problem too.
Stay Calm and Positive
Taking the tension out of referrals makes others feel more at ease with you. This increases their willingness to help you. It also keeps you healthy. If you have difficulties with anxiety or stress, get some help in how to manage it. If you have a problem see it as something that needs resolving and not a reflection on you.
All this is simple advice that most of us know yet on our own we can find it is not easy to put into practice.
If you'd like some help putting this into practice I'd like to recommend Ellen's Framework Day. It might be just what you need to get you started and reduce that wriggle factor when reviewing your business.
If you know someone who is frustrated with the results they get from their networking why not refer them to me? My process is for you to call me on 07970 638857 or email me and then, if I believe I can help, we'll agree how to introduce me.
Until next time ...
JACKY SHERMAN
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