How do I get customers and partners to refer business to me?
Short answer
Pay for it, and give partners a real reason. Business owners already love referring good vendors, so make it worth their while: $50 off a month per referral, or a flat $200 per sale. For referral partners, bring something they can't get elsewhere, like a free ad to your audience, instead of donuts.
Business owners love referring good vendors to their friends who also own businesses. You don't have to talk them into it. You just have to make it easy and worth their while.
"Business owners love referring good vendors to their friends who also own businesses, okay? Number one, we will pay them to do that."
How should I structure a referral program for a monthly service?
Here's the plan I put together for a $500 a month service. Every customer gets $50 off their monthly bill for each client they refer. Refer ten friends who need the help, and their own service is free.
The pitch to the customer is simple: go get me 10 more clients and I'll give you the service for free. To be clear, this was a structure I was testing, not a result I can show you yet.
What about a one-time sale, like software?
Pay a flat bonus per sale. For a niche B2B product sold into a tight community, I'd tell each new buyer: introduce me to your friends, and I'll give you $200 for anybody I sell. You make a little less on each referred deal, but free, warm leads get handed to you. Then you do it again with every new customer.
The hard part is the first few. In a tight community it's hard to get in front of people at the start. Once you're in and they like you, they just send you referrals.
Who refers the most?
Customers who don't compete with each other. When your clients are location-based businesses in different towns, a happy one has no reason to keep you secret. If Joe in one town hires me and loves me, telling his buddies in other cities doesn't hurt him at all.
I cover reaching many businesses at once in reaching a whole industry at once.
How do I get referral partners, not just customers, to send business?
Give them something they can't get anywhere else. I spent years in insurance. Every insurance agent wants mortgage brokers to send them deals, and so do the other 800 insurance agents in town. Bringing donuts isn't a reason to pick you. Everybody brings donuts.
An audience is a real reason. If you run a local newsletter with 10,000 readers, you can walk in and say: want me to run an ad for you for free this week? All I want is for you to be my referral partner. That's an offer the other 800 agents can't make. It's one more reason I think service businesses should own a local media brand.
Answered by TJ Larkin. From consulting and client calls, 2024-2026, and my years in insurance. Last updated .