 | Don't Play Where's Wally With Your Marketing | Referrals can save you 25 hours a month ... | Posted on: 12/03/2014 By: Jacky Sherman |
Ever played Where's Wally with your children? It's a great way to while away the hours on a rainy day, or when you're stuck in the airport because of delays. Have you got a few minutes right now?
Let's try my marketing version called 'where's the client?' Time yourself on how long it takes you to find all 12 clients in each picture!
You may have found that a fun way to spend a few minutes. If your marketing is like the first picture, imagine how much longer it is taking you to find the ideal clients for you that I talked about last week. Maybe that's not so much fun?
On average it is calculated that it takes 8 hours to find and take them to the point of closing a sale. So, to get 12 clients takes 96 hours. Test it out on your own business and include all the wasted sales time from prospects who said no or never returned your calls.
On average it takes 15 minutes to refer someone, so to get 12 clients, it has taken your referral partner 180 minutes, or 3 hours. If you're reciprocating, then it's taking you only 3 hours to find them 12 clients too.
It doesn't take so long because your referral partner already knows the person they are referring to you and, most likely, talked about you as part of a conversation they were already having. And you're 3-4 times more likely to actually close the sale too!
"The better your referral partner is briefed on who you want to meet the nearer this gets to 100% closure."
I can hear you saying "but" all the way from here! Yes, you do have to spend time on your relationships with your referral partners. You've got 93 hours to play with though, so let's break it down assuming you want 12 clients each month.
Start at 93 hours
4 partners 1 x 2 hour face to face business strategy meeting per month = 8 hours 85 hours left
Going networking to meet people who can help them. Say 3 x 3 hour meetings a week that's 9 x 4, or 36 hours per month. 49 hours left
Take your referral partners to the football to say thank you. No additional time cost, you were going anyway! Still 49 hours left
Work on your referral marketing skills. A full course of instruction is 36 hours over 3 months and I'm assuming you haven't done that yet? That's 12 hours per month. I know from experience that this time saving will not happen without this development. 37 hours left
What are you going to do with that? You have 12 sales meetings to close, of course; say 1 hour each. Your referral partner has already done most of the warm up for you so it is usually a shorter meeting. 25 hours left
Your call!
Diary your referral marketing activities and training into your working week and then spend the remaining 25 hours you've saved to either work on other aspects of your business or to play the real game of Where's Wally with your children at the airport!
"Stop playing Where's Wally all week and focus on your referral relationships instead!"
If you'd like some help developing your referral relationships then call me on 07970 638857 or click here to ping me an email. Do leave me a comment below with your thoughts.
Until next time ...
JACKY SHERMAN
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