It was about a month ago, when Steve, one of my coaching clients, was at an industry trade show. A fellow exhibitor, an old friend Andrew, stopped by and noticed that Steve’s marketing materials looked different.

They got to talking and Steve told his friend how much more new business he was getting with his new growth strategy.

That got Andrew interested, and before the conversation was over Steve had given him my contact information. Two weeks later Andrew and I scheduled a time to talk and within 39 minutes he had signed up to work with me to grow his business. Simple as that.

Ever get a referral?

I love them and I bet you do too. They’re usually 99% sold. They’ve heard good things about you and already know, like and trust you. All you need to do is give them what they want and sign them up.

So what’s the reason most business owners don’t get more referrals?

Simple. They don’t ask.

That’s it.

As Wayne Gretzky said, “You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.”

While there are a lot of ways to spend money on marketing, asking for referrals costs you nothing and can be the single biggest revenue generator for your business.

How big?

In my case, given how long most of my coaching clients stay with me, and that almost 100% of all referrals end up signing up, a single referral represents $25,000 to $100,000 in revenue.

Just to give you a point of comparison, I asked one of my clients to calculate the value of a referral for their businesses. For Mary, an IT consultant I work with, a single referral was worth between $100,000 and $200,000. Ten would add up to over an additional million or two million per year in business.

And guess how often she asked for referrals?

That’s right – never.

How about you? How often do you ask for referrals?

To help you get motivated, use the following two steps to calculate how much a referral is worth to your business.

1. Determine the average lifetime worth of a client for your business. This is the total amount a client spends with you over their lifetime. For example, you may only spend $75 at a time with Amazon.com but if you do this every month for the next ten years, your lifetime value to Amazon.com would be $9,000!

2. Calculate the realized value.? If you had 20 leads, you could probably close at least one. If you had 20 referrals you’ll close a lot more, usually 50-100%. To be conservative just divide the lifetime value of a client by two and that’s the value of a referral to your business.

What number did you come up with? $1,000? $10,000? $100,000?

3. Look at what this could do for your business over 3-5 years. At my previous digital marketing agency we mapped out a referral process and made it the foundation of our lead generation strategy. Using it, we grew sales by 400%.

What’s the biggest obstacle to getting referrals?

All you need to get more referrals is start asking! If you’re hesitating, just remind yourself what each referral is worth to you.

Remember people love referring others to people they know and trust, whether their a past client, LinkedIn connection, current client or marketing partner.

Understand that in asking, you are doing your clients a favor, giving them the chance to validate their purchase.

Ask. If you’ve got 10 happy clients, you can get 10 referrals. If you have 100 happy clients, you can get 100 referrals. And don’t forget to ask others you know too, including past clients, marketing partners and connections.

When you do this, you’ll see your business grow in leaps and bounds. I’ve seen it happen time and time again with clients I’ve coached. They use the referral/ask sequence and Boom! their business takes off.

Try it and see.

Want to scale your business and have more time for fun?

Let’s talk.