Referrals from Perfect Strangers

Is it possible to ask for a referral from someone you don’t even know?

Yes it is: here is a tactic for generating referrals that extends your ‘reach’ beyond your immediate circle of contacts.

This is based upon a well-proven principle in sales and marketing, the rule of ‘reciprocation’ (to find out more about this see ‘Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion’, by Robert B Cialdini). Basically, if I do something for you, and it benefits you, then you will feel under some obligation to reciprocate in some way. It’s what makes the world go round.

The tactic works like this:-

1. List a number of potential business contacts – 5, 20, 100 or whatever is a manageable number for your business – contacts that serve a similar market to you, by customer type, size and location perhaps. These are the people and companies that you are going to approach because they will have contacts that could be helpful to your new business drive.
2. Approach them by post or e-mail and say that as part of National Referral Week you are contacting a number of businesses of which you think highly, and that you have clients and contacts that you could refer to them.
3. Ask them to complete a form, which you enclose, where they can enter their contact details and, say, 20-40 words on what they do and how you should introduce them to your own contacts. As an example for the reader, write a similar entry for your business.
4. You should receive a positive response and feedback from some of these prospects. On the basis of ‘reciprocation’, some of the companies you have approached will feed some leads to you. They may be interested in using your services too, where it is relevant. Your approach influences the nature of the relationship: you are not just selling, you are potentially a valuable business contact and intermediary.
5. To maintain a relationship, there may well be people you could introduce to these new contacts you have approached using the data in the forms that have completed and returned.