If you’re selling a service, learning how to get referrals to your business is SUPER important. And here’s why…people who come to you as a referral are your best leads in your business because when people are familiar with you, they’re more likely to say “yes” to working with you because people trust the judgment of their friends, family members, and colleagues.

If someone who’s a friend of one of your past clients and they hear about you through that person, their friend will automatically be more warmed up to you, than a random person who discovered you for the first time ever in life on social media. So by the time this type of person gets to the discovery call stage with you to chat about working together, they’re already 95% sold on working with you because they heard about you from a friend!

So because of this, your goal as a business owner should be to get as many referrals as possible.

Getting referrals also helps you save time in the long run because it’ll cut down on the amount of marketing you have to do to get booked out with clients. As a totally new service provider, who's starting from scratch, you’ll have to do a lot of online marketing to get your name out there and build up your client base.

But once you start to get a good amount of clients and they’re sending you referrals, that’ll really cut down on the marketing that you’ll have to do to book enough new clients. So if you’re looking for a light at the end of the tunnel to eventually be able to stop being on the hamster wheel of constant online marketing, having a good referral process is your answer to that!

So here's how get referrals to your business…

The Most Overlooked Strategy on How to Get Referrals: Create an outstanding client experience!

You really, really want to impress your clients when they work with you because giving your clients an amazing experience is one of the best strategies for how to get referrals.

Creating a good client experience is really about making sure you and your clients are on the same page, communication-wise, as you’re working together. To do this, make sure you let clients know how to get in touch with you when they need help.

And decide how you’ll organize the information between the two of you as you work together, like if you’ll use a project management tool, like Asana, or another tool like Google Drive.

Your clients should always know what step you're on during their time working with you because you should have a full step-by-step process laid out for them, too.

You can clearly communicate all these things to your clients in a welcome email with a link to a client welcome page that tells your clients everything they needed to know about how to get started with working with you, after they pay their deposit and sign their agreement. On the welcome page, you could also list any other first steps they need to take to get started working with you, like filling out an onboarding questionnaire, submitting any files to you upfront, or anything like that. And finally, include your “office hours,” so clients can have realistic expectations on when they’ll hear back from you when they ask you questions. This puts clients at ease from the start and it helps prevent any miscommunication as they work with you!

You should also make sure you’re giving clients some type of update at least every week to keep them in the loop on what you’re working on.

When you execute these strategies to create a very strong, organized client process, people are extremely impressed and they cannot wait to refer people to you! This is one of the most overlooked secrets on how to get referrals.

Incentivize past clients for sending you referrals.

You’re much more likely to get referrals, when your past clients receive something in return as an incentive for sending you referrals.

So send your clients some kind of gift card or other gift that they would like, based on what you know about them. This could be an Amazon giftcard, Starbucks giftcard, etc. that’s at least $50 or more in value. And announce this incentive to all of your past clients via an email, telling them about your referral program.

When clients see there’s something in it for them, they get excited about the possibility of getting a free gift, making this is a great strategy for how to get referrals.

Ask for referrals on a regular basis.

Our past clients are busy and they have lots of other things to do besides remembering our referral programs. So since you never know if your past clients have come across new people who may need what you have to offer, you want to make sure you build asking for referrals into your business practices on a regular basis, by checking in with past clients every three months.

You can check in to see how they're doing via email, and then ask if they know anyone else that they can send over to your referral program and remind them of the incentive they’d get if their referral signs up to work with you.

This will help you kind of stay top of mind and it’ll remind your past clients that you still exist and your referral program is still available! This helps you keep fresh referrals coming into your pipeline on a regular basis.

Oftentimes, people tell their clients about their referral programs one time and they never even check in with their clients about it after that. And that causes them to falsely assume that referral programs don’t work. But they DO work and you have just remind people about it!

Those are the three strategies on how to get referrals! It’s not complicated, at all. It just requires a great client experience, so your clients enjoy working with you enough to send other clients your way. And from there, you’d decide on a referral incentive to send past clients who send you referrals and remind your past clients about it every three months! It’s really that simple.

Need help learning how to attract high paying clients online? Download my free guide via the banner below on the 5 steps to attract more high paying clients!