Get Referred by your mentors, peers and other experts Claim Your Profile
  • 1 Star2 Stars3 Stars4 Stars5 Stars (No Ratings Yet)
    Loading...
  • by Net Pro Referral
  • 0
  • 30 Aug 2018

The Lies We Believe About Referrals

referral program

Referrals are one of the most desired sources of new business for many. Through referrals, the business grows with trust and profundity.

If generated properly, referrals alone is enough to keep your business growing. Referrals bring to you the prospects who are already in need of your services and who are already in a trustworthy relationship with you as they have known about your business from another person they trust. So, in a sense, generating referrals should be the main goal of any business as it encourages you to constantly improve your quality to keep impressing your referral sources as well as the referred prospects. That way, your referral sources will keep automatically broaden without any additional marketing gimmicks.

Although most of the businessmen know the value of referrals and try to earnestly generate referrals, there are some lies and myths about referrals that keep posing threats to their business referral program. Here, we will discuss a list of lies we believe about referrals to save you from the negative impacts that those lies and myths can have on you referral promotion ideas.

Lie No. 1: A Warm Lead Is a Referral

Many of us wrongly believe that a warm lead is a referral. But in reality, it is not the case. A warm lead is a prospect whose contact details you have gathered from a source via email or other means. The lead does not know about you yet and you are neither sure whether they really need your services or not. As a result, a warm lead remains just a contact for you to make a cold call to and find out whether they will be interested in your products and services. Whereas, a referral happens when one of your connection willingly forwards you a prospect after knowing about their definitive needs for your products or services. So, if you wrongly believe a warm lead as a referral then you will only get a negative idea about the power of true referrals.

Lie No. 2: An Introduction Is a Referral

Another such lie about referrals that if you believe have the ability to jeopardize your business referral network is that an introduction is a referral. An introduction is just a connection made to anybody via any of your existing connections. The person may be in no way in need of your services nor interested in your business. The person may have the potentiality to become a new business but their needs are not yet identified. On the other hand, a referral comes to you after knowing that you have the solutions to the problems they are currently facing. So, it is a hell lot of difference there.

Lie No. 3: Word of Mouth Is Referral

Another in the list of lies we believe about referrals that cause damage to your referral promotion ideas is that word of mouth does the work of generating referrals. This is very far from the truth. Yes, word of mouth spreads the word of your business to many of your prospective clients but it falls short of becoming a full-fledged and dynamic referral. Word of mouth means that one of your existing satisfied customers says positive things about your products and services to others but stops right there. There is no further investigation on whether there are any authentic needs of your products nor any further forwarding of prospects to your business. So, if you think that spreading the word of your business is enough to generate referrals then you might be up for a major disappointment.

Lie No. 4: You Have to Ask to Get Referrals

Another glaring lie that most of the referral guidebooks will tell you is that you will not get referrals unless you learn to ask for them from your existing customers. Although asking for referrals can be a part of your referral generating strategy if you can manage to do it in a proper manner, most of the times it makes it even harder for your business referral network to refer you. It is so because when you ask for referrals explicitly, it gives an impression of added work and responsibility on the shoulder of your network and they get repulsed by it. On the other hand, if you focus on generating referrals organically instead of manufacturing them, you will get improved results.

Lie No. 5: We Need a Huge Network

Due to a widespread myth about referrals, the thoughts of generating referrals for most of us inevitably brings the thoughts of having a huge network. We often take it for granted that for generating a constant flow of referrals, we have to spend a considerable amount of time to grow our network to a large extent. However, it is not exactly true. Although growing your network has its values for your business and can bring referrals for you, it can also drain a lot of time and energy from you if you give it that much focus and this, in turn, can hamper your overall business. Instead of solely focusing on growing your network, you should earnestly focus on your core referral sources and keep a close knitted community among them. In this way, your referrals sources will keep growing without much effort from you on constant networking.

This list of lies we believe about referrals contains the prominent five of the lies and misconceptions there are about referrals. There are many more such lies, myths and misconceptions about referrals that we will discuss in future. Hope, this list of lies will help you to better understand the truths of referrals and to increase your referrals.

Join our professional network for free!

Comments (0)

Leave a Comment