In online marketing we talk a lot about “viral” marketing…where your product gets recommended and read or bought by an steadily increasing list of people who also recommend it and so on.

It’s like the doubling penny. If you double a penny every day for a year you end up with about 789 billion dollars by the end of the year (okay I’m exaggerating to have some fun with you but you get the idea).

Offline getting referrals from your happy clients can be even more powerful than viral marketing. Think about it. If every one of your new clients refers you two more clients before long you’ll have more clients than you can handle and hopefully more money than you can spend.

The biggest secret of getting a steady stream of referrals is to make giving referrals a condition of doing business with you. Here’s how you do it.

Some time after you’ve made an agreement and sorted out payment you have this conversation with your new client:

“Before we go any further I just want to let you know what you can expect from me.

“First you can expect that I’ll treat you with respect and I’ll deliver all the tasks on this list on the dates we’ve written down.

“As you know nothing’s entirely predictable in business so if I can’t do that I’ll let you know in advance.

“I’ll also spend a lot of my time thinking about and brainstorming ways I can help you increase your profits in your business and when I come up with an idea that I think can truly help you I’ll let you know.

“That’s what you can expect from me and I would just like to ask if you’d be kind enough to do a couple of things for me in return…”

“First I’ll need feedback and at times various forms of content from you at certain times and of course payments as we’ve written on this list.”
“Nothing’s entirely predictable in business so if there’s any problem with delivering the content or the feedback or the payments on time I’d really appreciate it if you’d let me know in advance.”

“Also after I’ve been helping you with your online marketing for a few weeks and you can see that’s its obviously working for you I’m hoping you’d be kind enough to do me one more favor.”

“I’d like you to call and recommend me to a few of your business friends who could also benefit from the service I provide.”

“Does that sound like a fair arrangement?”

You’ll want to practice saying this so it comes out smoothly and naturally.

When you do this most of your clients will be very impressed with your professionalism. First of all one of the most annoying parts of doing business with a new contractor is not knowing what to expect from them and what’s expected of you.

You’ve just told them exactly what to expect. You’ve also put in their heads the idea that you deliver by telling them that you expect them to be so happy with your service that they’ll want to recommend their friends.

And the chance of them agreeing to this request is very high indeed. This is the first step. Now what do you do to get the referrals when the time comes? You’re about to discover a few insider secrets that almost no one in any field knows…

Read More- How to Avoid Phone Tag Hell

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