How to lose referrals with ease

Finding and inspiring people to refer you is not always that easy. Losing the prospect of more referrals from established sources takes very little effort at all. 

I was out with friends last week. I knew that they had referred some very good business to a mutual contact of ours, and he had gone on to win the contract. I mentioned that I had spoken to our mutual contact the week before and helped him with some introductions which would help him deliver to his new client.

My friends were disappointed when I told them this. They had helped him by referring the business, why had he not approached them for help with the connections? In fact, as the initial referral was their client, they would have expected him to keep them involved throughout. 

Not only had he not kept them informed and involved. He hadn't even thanked them properly. 

This reminded me of a talk I gave some years ago. I outlined a simple approach to generating referrals. The system is based on three actions:

Find your Champions

Inspire them to refer you

Thank them

Having outlined each stage and how to implement them as a strategy I finished the talk. After the formal event was over a number of people came over to congratulate me on the presentation and thank me. I was amazed by the response. I expected people to be focused on the new ideas for finding people to refer them or the insight into what makes people refer. 

They weren't. The overwhelming feedback was that they valued the reminder to thank people who referred them, it was something they simply weren't doing. 

It's often the smallest, most obvious, things that we forget that can have a huge impact on the success of our business. My friends said that they were much less likely to refer our mutual contact again as they were left feeling so dissatisfied with the way he had treated them with this referral. 

It doesn't need payments, it doesn't need gifts. Sometimes all it takes is a phone call or a card. 

It just takes a 'Thank you'.