Referals

CALLSPC

Looking for ideas on how to generate referals and what type of reward to give.

Mike Finley

You will get the contrarian answer

Jason

I don't offer customers referal fees or payments, just a big thank you that you appreciate our work enough to recommend us to your closest friends.

We do offer compensation to our employees and sub-contractors. We setup seperate deals with different persons depending on the time they work with us, their experience, and previous referals.

One sub-contractor, we will bump his approx. hourly rate.
An employee, we will offer a bonus of a percent of the job (2-5%).

I wouldn't offer customers a deal because you are looking for repeat customers, not ones that are shopping for the bargins and more deals.

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Think Global, Shop Local

Grumpy

Right after the customer signs the contract with you is a good time to ask for a referral. Right after you ask the customer if they are satisfied and they pay you for the work completed is another good time to askk for a referral?

"Mr Customer. Do you know two or three people who may be in need of my services?"

I will pay for a referral but I don't advertise that fact.

A carpet cleaning company had called me asking if I wanted my carpet cleaned and said my Aunt and Uncle gave them my number. I said "Nope I have only hard wood floors. Thanks for the call. <click>" I promptly called my aunt and uncle. They said "If we gave up three names and numbers they'd knock $150 off the final bill."

mdshunk

Giving the customer a bonus or gift for referrals seems sleezy to me. Kind of reminds me of the Kirby vacuum salesman we once had in our house for a demo. With his breath stinking of onions and wearing an ill fitting and outdated suit, he said he's give us a free attachment thing if we could set him up a few appointments. He even went so far as to throw in the guilt trip saying that if we didn't, we'd be responsible for him being unemployed. Ever since that experience, perking the customer for referrals seemed low class to me.

Bjd

The type of work that I do is in the medical field, as we do a lot of nursing homes. Not the complete rehabs but the installations of special designed whirlpool bathing systems.

We also do design and installs of pre op rooms and dental suites.

On our residential end which ammounts to about 20% of our business reffarals are there but not as much I get from the commercial end.

Which is fine with me, as its kinda of hard to drop what your doing to responed to a small problem and then have to listen to the whining when they recive the invoice.

Word of mouth can have its good side as they will tel maybe 3 people, however you screw them and they will tell 12.

BJD

Trey

Here's what I do. I don't ask for refferals but I do leave a few of my buisness cards. If I get a refferal I do the job great and then I mail a thank you note with a $20 gift card to home Depot or the the like to the person who reffered me plus a couple more of my buisness cards. Once again this is all a suprise to my clients, I don't ask for names and I don't tell them if I get jobs they will get gifts, it's purely a thank you gift on my part.

CARPENTERDON

I agree 100% with Mike's statements. Postcards are an excellent source or advertising and getting referrals!

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Dimensional Carpentry & Custom Woodworking - Historic Renovations, Restoration, & Custom Log Homes