Referrals On Auto-Pilot 64 Powerful Referral Programs On Auto-Pilo… · great job this person does for you in return for them doing the same for you. You can then pay the cost for

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Referrals On Auto-Pilot

All rights reserved Copyright 2006 Contractorselling.com

64 Powerful Referral Programs

By Joe Crisara

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1. 100% Money Back Referral Program

Hand out coupon cards to your customers. Have them write their name on each card coupon they hand out. Tell them to give these to their friends.

When their friends use the coupons, ($15 to $25) coupons to purchase with your company then you can credit the original customers account, send them a voucher or gift certificate for future service or just write them a check for the same value of the coupon. You can also vary the me-dia to deliver this on by going to a magnet or note pad or other way to produce a coupon.

Everyone wins, the new customer gets a discount, the original customer gets a reward and you get new customers.

2. Acquire a Business For No Money Referral Program

Get out your old phone books or go to the library and look back at the chamber of commerce member lists throughout the past 10 years and call all the companies that do what you do. Many of them are out of business and have NOT sold their phone numbers to anyone.

Just call the phone company and acquire the number and you now have the benefits of all the advertising that this company has done over the years for FREE without pay-ing one penny!

This is a great way to start a new part of your business. When I as an HVAC company went into the plumbing business, I looked through the old phone books in my closet and instantly acquired 4 new companies within minutes!

All the plumbing companies I “acquired” had FULL PAGE ADS! I was receiving 15 to 20 calls per day with these ads. When people called, I just informed them of the truth. That the company they called had closed and not even bothered to leave a forwarding message so I felt the need to help these customers with my service.

3. Everybody Loves Pizza Referral Program

This is a system that I developed with help from my friend Wayne Dament from Waynes Pizza in Third Lake, Illinois. He told me that he made around 300 pizzas per day between all of his locations. These branches of his just hap-pened to fit my service area. I asked him how expensive the pizza boxes were and if he would like help from me in paying for those boxes. Of course he said yes and the pizza referral program was born. We each agreed to hand out each others coupons to our customers.

Because he had more customers each day than I did, I paid an additional $75 per month to Wayne for his employees to staple one of my season flyers to his pizza box or bag with each purchase. I eventually had HIS boxes printed with my logo and coupon on it. Plus, when we had tech meetings Wayne GAVE us free pizza to the techs for the great job they did in selling his company. Talk about a win – win!

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4. Cross Endorsement Referral Program

Do you have an accountant or an attorney? How about another friend in the trades like a carpenter, plumber, HVAC, cleaning service or electrician? Or ANY business that you use like PC or copy machine repair. Would you or do you use their service?

If so, then simply write a letter of endorsement to your clients saying what a great job this person does for you in return for them doing the same for you.

You can then pay the cost for each other to mail this to your respective customers. You can even write your own letter from your friends’ point of view to make it easier for them to get started.

5. Employee Discount Referral Program

Think of any business that has a lot of employees. Places like manufacturers, hospitals, your suppliers, banks and many others. Let these companies know that as an added benefit for them to offer their employees, any of their employees can use a discount card that you provide them for free diagnostic or a planned service tune up or just a planned service price on the repair. The CEO of the company will look at you like you just dropped gold into their lap.

I knew one company that had his sister-in law working for a major airline in the area and they distributed this info into their 3,000 paycheck envelopes once a month. Talk about finding your prototype customer. Hmmm, a busy professional where time is a premium for them looking for premium services... Jackpot!

6. Center Of Influence Referral Program

Think of the most influential people in your area. You know the ones everybody looks to for ad-vice and trusts their opinion like it is fact. Send a pizza over to the firehouse one a week to pay for lunch for the local firefighting team.

When they have a question about a faulty furnace, or find a carbon monoxide problem in some-one’s home, who will they think of? YOU!

Buy lunch for other centers of influence like maybe your hair stylist once a month. Ask them if you can leave some flyers on the counter at their shop. You’re IN!

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7. Homeowners Association Referral Program

As your techs find themselves in different communities or subdivisions, have them tune in as to whether the area has a homeowners association meeting or regular mailing. Gated communities for senior citizens, condo-miniums or just more upscale communities often do a regular monthly mailer to the residents.

Simply find the person who writes this community newsletter and ask if they can include a page about a discount that you are offering to all of their residents. Offer to pay a portion or all of their mailing costs if they are not sure what to charge you.

I know one contractor who appears in 34 of these small community newsletters. In one case he told me that they have a full page ad for only $67 per month and in goes to over 600 residents. He augments this by showing up at association meetings to do a talk on maintaining the heating and cooling systems for this community. He tracked over $200,000 from just one of these com-munities.

8. Church Bulletin Referral Program

Ask local churches if you can help defer the cost of making up their bulletins by paying for the printing. In the case of one company I know, the church gave him their congregation mailing and phone list.

The contractor augmented this effort by offering a special deal on fall and spring maintenance for the members. You can take over your area church by church.

9. Youtube.com Viral Marketing Referral Program

Make a short video about your company using your web cam and post it on youtube.com. You can then imbed this video on your website so it entertains potential customers looking for some-one in your area.

Don’t forget to include a card or poster with your company web address on it. Also name the video with your city or county in the title. Something like “The New York City Plumber.” Make a funny skit about the challenges of finding a good contractor in your area.

Remember, this does NOT need to be a professionally recorded video. Just turn on your web cam and start talking. You don’t have to like the way you look, you just have to do it. It’s free and it reaches millions of people.

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10. Trouble In the Neighborhood Referral

Whenever your techs find a problem in a certain community that is common among all residents, offer to package the solu-tion as if you ALWAYS see this problem and you have fixed it many times. Even if this is your first time finding it.

I have many examples of this type of marketing. One thing to remember is to get a testimonial and a picture of the problem if you can so that others in the neighborhood believe what you are saying. Here are some examples of stuff I have done in this very profitable area…

- Summerfield Homes Special Report – Why your room above the garage does not heat or cool at all. Have you given up on this valuable square footage? If not call us now.

- Ravinia Woods Special Report – Home energy problems in Ravinia Woods that are costing you thousands extra in utility bills. Call us for answers.

- Cambridge West Special Report – Why your pipes may freeze in your garage ceiling this win-ter. Call us to find out why this may just happen to you. (show picture)

11. Friends of Your Parents Referral Program

How many people do your mom and dad know? In my case it’s plenty. My mom is like the “Church lady” who knows everything about what is going on at the church. Her phone is ringing like Grand Central Station with requests from everything like altar flowers to the chicken dinner.

If your parents are active seniors then give then a special discount card for their friends to use with your company. Who loves you more than your mom?

You know they love to brag about you so use this power in your marketing mix.

12. Homecoming Referral Program

I remember when I was in high school and playing for the local football team the Mundelein Mustangs. I was sitting on the bench as usual when I heard an announcement at just before halftime. The announcement was, “Post game pizza for the varsity team is being provided today by Mitchell Heating & Air. Let’s all give the folks at Mitchell our best cheer! Ready? Give me an M, give me an I.”

I eventually went to work for Mitchell about 5 years later and I asked my boss what that cost him. He said nothing, since the local pizza place, Lomas-tro’s, owed him money for service. There were over 2,500 local fans at each of those games. “What does it spell?” MONEY!

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13. Look Ma New Furnace Referral Program

Create a postcard from photos that are taken of your customers using or standing or kneeling next to your product or service. Give the cards back to the customer to send to their family or friends.

Of course the postcard has your website address on it and any other offer that could result in a referral being generated for your business. You can create seasonal postcards like Christmas or Memorial Day if you want to complete the effect.

14. Put Your Two Bucks In Referral Program

This system compensates customers for sharing their list of friends with you and allowing you to send a personalized endorsement letter from them to their list of friends.

For every friend that they put on a list to allow you to mail an endorsed letter from them, your customer receives some type of compensation. It could be

two dollars (hence the name, “Put Your Two Bucks In”) or some other type of compensation. If you do this try to use cash, always pay your referrer with crisp $2 bills.

15. Restaurant Waiting Area Referral Program

You know the kind of place I’m talking about. On Friday nights and Saturday mornings there is a huge waiting line rolling out the door. Why not give these people something fun to read. You could either sponsor a comic book or make your own newsletter for them to peruse while they wait.

Another twist on this is to put up a sign up box for a contest to win a free furnace or a/c. Or maybe just a seasonal tune up contest could be run. Go collect the names each week as you have now found people who at least WISH they could have your product or service.

16. Free Information Seminar Referral Program

The Free Information Referral Program lets you offer free advice during slow hours. “Free ad-vice clinic tickets” that contain specific code numbers are sent to your friendly non-competitive business friends to hand out to their clients.

The tickets can then be used to make an appointment with someone at your business to offer free advice using the code number during hours. Each free advice appointment is a maximum of 15 – 20 minutes in length.

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17. The Extended Warranty Referral Program

The extended warranty referral program gets potential referrers to agree to give a certain number of referrals if specific performance terms are met in the contract (agreement). In order to enter into the agreement, the re-ferrer must agree to give you referrals. This could include any service or warranty you could offer.

For example, you may extend a warranty on an installation for 6 months for each time a name is listed up to 10 names. This would give you 10 new clients to sell to and they would get a 5 year warranty on the install.

18. It’s a Beautiful Day In the Neighborhood Referral Program

At the end of your job or sale ask the customer for his testimonial using our testimonial form and letter. Create a mailer using this letter with their testi-monial included about how great of a job you did for them. Ask them if they would like you to write the letter for them if you have to.

For an even more powerful spin on this approach, take a picture of your cus-tomer and ask if you can use it in your ads. Make sure the picture is VERY close of their face so their friends can recognize them easier.

You will be surprised with the response you get to such a powerful promotion. Surprise your cli-ent in the end with a free gift for participating in this high form of flattery referral program.

19. Your Choice Referral Program

This is simply a referral postcard that is sent to your best customers that offers them a choice of three rewards as an incentive to send you referrals. The referral postcard is sent out on a planned periodic basis.

It can include choices such as a free media filter or water filter replace-ment, free change of salt in their water softener, free light bulbs, battery change for their smoke detector and much, much more.

20. The Barber Gets Rich Referral Program

Give an incentive for barbers and hairstylists to give your referral card out to peo-ple who come in for a haircut or hairstyle. The barber or hairstylist receives money for each card that is given out to customers.

Just have them make a list of names, addresses and phone numbers of people they handed them out to and you will give them two dollars. They can receive even more money when someone brings the referral card in to your business and

buys your service. Tell them that first $50 you make is theirs.

The referral card has a place for barbers and hairstylists to leave their name on the card so you know who gave out the referral card. Of course you can think bug and use this with any busi-ness that is friendly to you.

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21. Princess Diana Referral Program

Lady “DI” or Princess Diana was famous for writing notes to people to enlist their help in the causes she was part of. You can do the same. This is basically a “Thank You Card” program in which all your employees are responsible for sending handwritten, customized thank you cards to your customers.

The program would include everyone who has interface with your custom-ers such as salespeople, technicians, Dispatchers and Csr’s. And yes YOU the owner are re-sponsible as well. Provide letters, envelopes and stamps to the people who are sending the notes. Or just have them give you the notes and you can mail them so people don’t just take the stamps.

The Thank You card should have a note that asks the recipient to tell others about your greatest challenge. That challenge of course, being that you need their help in finding and keeping great clients like them. If they were you what would they do? Ask for any ideas they might have in finding customers like them. Think about it. If another trade person told you he needed your help keeping busy, wouldn’t you bend over backwards thinking of a way to find work for them?

22. Share a Door Hanger Referral Program

I know you already know about the 6 pack or 12 pack door hanger system as made famous by Charlie Greer and Tom McCart. But here is a new twist. Instead of putting only one coupon on the door hanger, why not put one from three different businesses.

You could have one from a plumber, one from an electrician and one from an HVAC company.

The power of this program is that ALL three companies are handing out these door hangers and not just your company. This triples the effect of this marketing every day and will supercharge your results.

23. The Email List Sharing Referral Program

This is a program in which you and other complimentary business (or businesses) sponsors a drawing for a free vacation by leaving a box to sign up each others clients email addresses in each other’s place of busi-ness and at other conventional places like the mall or restaurants.

The winner(s) of the drawing is notified by email rather than direct mail so not only is their physical address and phone number is requested, but their email address is requested as well.

Then the complimentary businesses share the prospect list that they’ve generated with each other. Maybe give all who enter a free gift like an e-book that is sent via email.

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24. The Bulletin Board Referral Program

The system starts by getting a group of complimentary businesses to develop an advertisement board that displays advertisements from each member of the group and to position the advertisement boards on a wall inside each participating group members business.

This can be as simple as a bulleting board with all of your cards on it to something like a pre-printed poster with the names of all the businesses listed. Another variation is a calendar spon-sored by a couple of businesses where the names are listed in each month. Again, this maxi-mizes the distribution of the calendar.

25. Help A Charity Referral Program

Charities love referrals. With the this strategy you approach a charity and get a list of their corporate donors.

Then approach those donors that market to the same customers that you do and offer to help them fund their charity donation by donating a percentage of sales that result from the patronage of their employees to the charity in the name of their company. This same strategy could be used with any church or organization.

26. Thank You Coupon Packet Referral Program

A thank-you coupon packet is a great way to say thanks to your customers, provide a valuable service to them, partner with other businesses and in-crease the distribution of your brand name all on auto-pilot.

The way the program works is that you and a host of businesses get to-gether and create a “free gift” packet of maybe 20 to 50 different free gifts that you all distribute to each others customers. The key is that the customer has to call you or visit your business to get the free gifts. Also, the gifts must be something of value with “no strings attached” as a way of just getting to know you.

For a heating company it maybe a box of filters or an electrician it maybe new batteries for all the smoke detectors in the home or maybe a free smoke detector. Use your imagination. Re-member this can NOT be a selling piece.

The coupon packet will vary depending on your type of business. I suggest using a folder to cre-ate your packet. On the outside of the folder should be an effective and professional design with the words “Thank You.” Inside the folder should contain all the relevant paperwork associated with their purchase as well as all necessary information to make sure that their after purchase experience is pleasant and well informed. This information should go on one side of the folder only.

The other side of the folder is where you will put your coupons or gift certificates of value. Pieces of value from all of your local merchant friends can include anything that your customer will enjoy receiving. Such as a free appetizer at a local restaurant, free dry cleaning, free pizza

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or any service or product that you use and believe in.

These thank-you packets work because every company that is represented in your packet will reciprocate by including your piece of value in their packet.

Therefore, you are quadrupling your exposure to customers from complimentary businesses in exchange for giving your customers something that they perceive as a gift.

27. Create Your Own Website Networking List

For less than $10 per month you can create a website with all your local business partners listed on the site. Make a small paragraph tell a bit about each business and also include a link to you websites as well.

Get a url that best describes your local list like ServiceLindenhurst.com if you happen to live in Lindenhurst. Publicize this site with places like the chamber of commerce or any of the businesses that are listed.

An easier version of this is to find all the websites of the local businesses that are in your net-work and just share links. If your local plumber has a site and you do heating, why not share a link if you are not in competition?

A good cooperative link on a website is more than just an advertisement. It must be something that would interest a customer. Examples include interesting tips, suggestions, or examples of how the customer can enhance their experience. For example, having an HVAC company and an Electrician provide “homeowner” tips could add value and augment the experience of buying a new home.

28. Lunchtime Speaker Infomercial Referral Program

These next two ideas I got from a man I really admire by the name of Tom Richard ( http://tomrichard.com ) who is a world class sales trainer. Tom writes, “You have valuable information that people would love to hear about. When you provide service first and you provide it without expectation of something in return, a return is exactly what you will get.

Office buildings love food -- especially free food. The lunch-and-learn program is a guerilla mar-keting strategy that has been proven successful. The lunch and learn program is an educational lunch program for an office that would be sponsored by you or your company. The office per-sonnel would gather and eat lunch while listening to your talk on something both valuable and interesting. Do not try to sell them anything; this should be treated as an opportunity to share valuable information that they can use.

The best contact to set up these lunches is the office manager. Most times the office will provide the lunch and you will provide the talk. If they do not provide lunch, you will be able to negotiate for a local restaurant to provide the lunch for free in exchange for some signage on the lunch table and their information in your packet that will accompany your presentation.

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Topics will naturally vary depending on your profession. If you are a financial planner you can give a talk on “10 things you can do now to guarantee financial security,” “investing tips for the non-investor,” or anything else that is both creative and interesting. After the mini seminar, ask “If anyone would like to hear more about (topic), just drop your business card in the basket at the front.” You can also have a mini- book prepared on the subject and offer to send it free to anyone who is interested. You will leave with an established reputation in the field as well as a small stack of qualified leads with whom you have already established rapport and credibility.”

29. Be a Guest Columnist In a Newsletter Referral Pro-

gram

There are networking organization newsletters, non-profit newslet-ters, and internal company newsletters. These newsletters are al-ways looking for guest columnists that will provide a relevant and an interesting article.

This technique is similar to the concept of the lunch and learns. Seek out these newsletters and offer to write a column. When they run your column, you will provide valuable and interesting information. By doing so, you will be getting your name out into the community as an expert in your field. By having a brief bio at the end of the column, the readers who have an interest will have the information necessary to contact you for further information.

You may even direct them to your website to download a small mini-book on the topic where you will capture their information for proper follow up. Again I want to thank Tom Richard for this great idea. To see more of Tom’s stuff go to http://tomrichard.com

30. The Give Me a Piggyback Ride referral Program

This referral program is a direct mail venture that allows you place your advertisement in a pack-age, bill, or magazine that goes to your target market.

You can either find a business or partner that already mails invoices to your customer area. Think about the professionals that you use on your staff like your accountant or your lawyer or your doctor or anyone else who mails bills to customers. You can offer free service to these people in exchange for them stuffing your piece in their mailer each month.

There are also brokers that will help you locate “insert programs” offered by companies that market to your tar-get market in which you pay a fee (such as $35 per 1,000 drops) for inserting your marketing collateral. The best part of an insert program is that it gives you an implied endorsement from the company that is sending the pack-age, magazine, or bill.

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31. The Pay My Bills Referral Program

This program is nothing more than sending a business card or flyer out with every bill that you pay. This program is based on the hope that your vendor may know someone who may be in need of your service. If you don’t ask, you don’t get. Plus you ARE mailing it to them. You might as well your ad. It’s free.

32. Please Pay Your Bill Referral Program

If you send out any invoices to customers or commercial customers let them know that they can deduct $20 off of this bill if they can schedule you or deliver you a new customer. What does it cost for you to get a new client? Send out a sheet with 10 blank lines with a $10 deduction off the bill if they are filled up with names, addresses and phone numbers.

33. Dead List Referral Program

Let’s face it you probably have several customers on your mailing list that have not bought from you in years. Offer to trade your dead cus-tomers with another business in exchange for other company’s dead customers.

After all, what do you have to lose? Just because these customers do not buy from you, maybe they might from your friends. You can even do this with your friendly competitors. You may just be able to breathe new life into them.

34. Second Chance Dead List Referral Program

If you feel uncomfortable giving up your dead list to your competitor or other friendly business, then simply pickup the phone and find out why they stopped using you. Make this call as a market study and do not try to sell people.

What you may find out is the most valuable information you will ever find. You could pay thousands of dollars paying a company to do this or you could just do it yourself. Ask the customer if it is so far gone that you could never recover them.

Not knowing why a customer left is like being the only person who doesn’t know a secret that everyone else already knows. Many customers will give

you a second chance or they will tell you that they have tried others but they were even worse than you. This is a low risk thing to do and usually turns out good if you take action and call. It shows you are concerned about customers.

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35. Free Giveaway Referral Program

Many think that the use of the word is ineffective in their mar-keting mix because customer’s are immune to the “too good to be true” message that it sends. Well you are right and wrong. The use of the word FREE in marketing can still be effective though if framed in the right way. As usual, it is not the word, but HOW that word is used that makes it create a response or not. Here are some ways to make FREE create the response you want...

1. Use it as a way to give information - You can do this by advertising a "FREE SPECIAL RE-PORT" on why your drains run slow and what to do about it. You can people can and tell them that the report is free and you will bring it over or deliver it.

This even makes a bigger impact if it is more focuses on a certain area of town with a common problem. Such as... "FREE HUNTINGTON RIDGE SUBDIVISION SPECIAL REPORT" Why are all the sewer drains breaking? Call us for our free report to save thousands.

2. Use pre-recorded message voice mail - You can set up voice mail info boxes where they can call and receive this FREE info and listen to the reason why a pro like you must come out and look eventually.

3. You can offer a FREE gift or maybe a drain treatment, extended warranty or something WITH the purchase of your service.

4. Give FREE advice - You can offer to give advice for no charge. "Talk to a plumber FREE before we come out!" Then as usual this will result in you selling the call.

5. Make an informational audio or video and give it away free - You can talk right into your computer and record a short informational message that you can then burn onto a cod and give to people as an audio business card with some free plumbing, HVAC, remodeling or electrical tips.

36. Saved The Day Referral Program

If you don’t think what you do is newsworthy, you are wrong. The fact is that your local newspaper is starving for your human interest article so they can print it in the paper. The mistake to avoid here is to not directly promote your business in the press release or it will come off as self promotional.

What kind of article are we talking about? Well the types of things that the news would print or broadcast are all around you if you just keep your ears and eyes open. At one client of mine, we had a woman come in and asking the

company for a donation to the Alzheimer’s fund in memory of her late husband who passed away from the disease. We not only donated but told her if she would pass out some flyers that we would make for furnace tune ups in her travels that we would donate $20 for each tune up that mentioned the fund.

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We also made a press release that started, “Local Contractor Helps Fight Alzheimer’s” and it was indeed printed in 16 papers in the Milwaukee and Racine County area in Wisconsin. The company eventually scheduled 127 tune ups and donated $2,540 to the fund. Of course we took pictures of the contractor and the woman who started it all with the “Oversized” check and did ANOTHER press release which was also printed in the same papers.

37. You’re a Radio Star Referral Program

I was in Tennessee working with a client of working with a client of mine who was running an ad at 6:45 am on a local radio call in talk show. I thought his approach was great. He would basi-cally call in and chat about his services with the host for about 2 minutes giving a bit of free ad-vice on everything from hvac, plumbing and electrical jobs in people’s homes. I was doing sales training in the field with techs that week and we ran across a couple who religiously listen to this show.

We wound up doing $5,797 in repairs at this home and this couple was thrilled to finally get all this work done. It dawn on me to tell my client that he should mention this couple on the air next day as to thank them for their business. Then we both had a stroke of genius. We thought why not bring them on the show and let them talk to the host about the service they had received directly?

We did and the segment lasted 10 minutes. The DJ and the couple were gushing about how great my clients business is to its’ customers. My client now does a “Customer success story of the week” segment on air where he brings a new customer on air to tell their story.

Today he is well on his way to becoming an icon in the local market because of this approach. Remember, no one can tell your story better than your competition. Just get out of the way and let them tell it.

38. The Email Signature Referral Program

This is a program where you ask clients and anyone you can think of to in-clude a sentence about your company in their email signature underneath their name so it automatically goes out when they send emails to their friends. Tell them that each person that mentions them as the source of ref-erence will result in a $25 check or credit on their future services. Also, don’t forget to add this line to all of YOUR emails as well. It will be a good chance to network if nothing else.

The line could read something like…

Friends, don’t forget it is time to get your furnace tuned up. Call Joe at Comfort Services at 888-884- 8748 and mention tell them I sent you to receive a free carbon monoxide test (reg. $79) when you purchase a tune up for only $89. Hurry the offer ends September 30th, 2006.

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39. The This Space For Rent Referral Program

This is a program that will allow you “rent” space with another local busi-ness in exchange for services or even money.

One client of mine did this with his locally owned True Value Hardware store. Basically he had to do about $1500 in repairs at their shop and the owner of the store asked my client if he had an interest in setting up a permanent booth with a display of a furnace or a/c unit with a box to sign up for free information on new equipment.

My client waived the $1,500 and has now had the booth in the store for over 3 years now. He now has a full time sales person at the store gathering leads and it is now his number one source for leads for replacement. The great news is that he doesn’t pay a penny but does free tune ups and service for the business. Wow!

40. The Group Neighborhood Buying Referral Program

This an ad or letter that you send to a neighborhood that you send out two to three times stating that your people will be holding a “Cambridge West or whatever name of the subdivision is day.” Your trucks will be in that neighborhood for that day only and if at least 12 people order tune ups on that day you will do them for half price or some kind of discount.

Another variation of this is that when your sales people or techs are in a home in a certain subdivision, they could tell the client that if they can get another client from the same neighborhood to replace their equip-ment or order their tune up at the same time that they would receive a special group discount.

41. Use My Conference Room Referral Program

Promote the use of your conference room to other local businesses for meetings and such. Tell them that they must schedule this in advance so you be sure to keep the space open.

You can also consider other assets that you have that customer may need. Things like having your neighborhood use your shop as a school bus stop shelter. Or if you have a large property you can hold neighborhood block parties or birthday parties on your vacant property.

What you will get is that business and all of their employees coming to your business with a chance to get to know you. You can provide welcome packet to all who come full of coupon or gift certificates to use with your com-pany.

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42. The Frequent Buyers Punch Card Referral Program

Many stores in my town—pizza shops, cafes, bookstores, movie houses—offer some sort of frequent buyer program. Most of them punch a card and give you a free item when you reach ten or twelve punches. One store aver-ages the ten highest purchases over $10, and gives a credit for that amount—a policy that definitely encourages higher spending!

Airlines were among the first to develop frequent-buyer programs. But many other businesses have joined in. And why not? If ever there was a win-win scenario, this is it. The program is about rewarding customers who patronize you frequently. You get far more business with es-sentially no marketing outlay, and they get a discount.

43. The Transaction Referral System

Many companies have a referral system that their customers never even know about. Why? Because they never tell them they have such a program. In this re-ferral program you just send out a card after every service, sales or installation transaction letting your customers know that they get $10 cash if they refer any-body and $50 if it turns into a bigger job.

Just have someone at your office hand address each post card as they file your service tickets away or print out labels from your computer program each week sending the card out to every customer you went to this week.

44. The Stack Up Your Services Referral System

This is a program that I got from my great friend Juan Cardona. Juan told me that when you give planned service, it is more tangible than just giving money. I can see his point. Basically Juan gives a customer one more year of heating or cooling planned service for each customer referred to him.

My suggestion is that after a customer has amassed 5 years of planned service, you start giving them $50 gift certificates that they can use for any of your services.

45. The Park Your Truck Billboard Referral System

If you are blessed to have a lot of trucks then you can use then as billboards. Of course this effect is maximized if you park all of your truck in a line end to end while you have a weekly meeting with your techs at let’s say a local restaurant in town.

I recently moved to Los Angeles where there is a company called Payne HVAC. They have little orange vans with black letting and they look pretty cool. I don’t know

if it was a company planned meeting or not but one day they must have had 20 trucks parked on Beverly Avenue in front of a local greasy spoon. There were thousands of cars passing by on the way to work all looking at these vans parked end to end. Talk about repetition.

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I don’t know the company, but if I had to think of a company from the area, they are the first one that comes to mind.

46. The Pick Up Your Appliance Referral System

Old stove or refrigerators are difficult for people to get rid of in this day and age. You can offer to pick up appliances for people in your area for a minimal charge or free if you have the resources.

Make this announcement in the local paper in a press release for spring cleaning. Or you can announce this to your chamber of commerce or other business group.

Another variation is to require the person to purchase a tune up or planned service agreement in return for the pickup instead of paying.

47. The Raincheck Referral System

Many car washes will give you a raincheck to get your car re-washed if it rains within a week of the day you had your initial wash performed.

You can do something similar by offering to guarantee your maintenance or re-pair using this method. You can do this by letting customers apply the previous purchase toward a larger solution if they want to within a certain timeframe like 90 days.

Basically, if you have offered many options but your customer chooses the lower option than they can think about it for 90 days and trade the lower solution toward the more complete and costly option.

48. The Vulture Referral System

Do you know a company that has recently gone out of business in your area? Make an advertisement offering to cover these customers planned service agreements if they have purchased one from the com-pany that has gone under.

You can also offer to cover any repair warranty for parts only within one year of the repair they had done by the out of business company. Think about how much it cost to get a customer. This is a very in-expensive way to gain market share.

A controversial variation of this program is mount a direct attack on a company in the area that you know is in trouble or that the community is having trouble with. Offer to help straighten out anything the other company has screwed up. You can either mention the other company or not. Don’t worry. The customer that is getting screwed with bad service will know who you are talking about.

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49. The Second Opinion Referral System

I got this one from a company that was a shrude competitor of mine. What they did was offer a free second opinion on any repairs that a customer was considering.

I remember many cases where our techs condemned heat exchangers and the customer called them for a “second opinion.” You know the end of the story. They got the job right from under us.

What did I do to combat this issue? I did what any good company does when you see a great idea. I copied it. Of course it wasn’t too long until we were taking jobs from them. When I saw this competitor at association meetings we would both have a laugh over the customers we got from each other.

50. Start a Small Business Referral Group System

A friend of mine David Frey in Texas told me about this one. You just make up a flyer inviting local businesses to become part of a referral group in your area. Let them know that their will be a meeting of the group every month on the same day such as the first Tuesday of every month.

Also let them know that there will be only one business in every category allowed into the referral group. Make sure you create a referral board that

votes in any new members who are allowed to join.

This is a great way to become a center of influence in your business community. You can even approach you chamber of commerce and see if they will sponsor the group. Only include small businesses that need customers into the group. Do not allow superstores or others manufactur-ing type businesses into the group.

51. The One Hour Holiday Gift Referral Group program

You can approach your networking group or other select busi-nesses that you know, like your accountant, your attorney and others and offer to give them 20 free “1 hour” gift certificates to their clients for a holiday gift. Many businesses never take ad-vantage of one of the biggest assets they own. That asset is their spare capacity.

Airlines do this with standby tickets which are free to their em-ployees and a cut rate to frequent flyers. If you are sitting around with no calls coming in, would-n’t it be better to be in front of a real person who has a problem AND who has been endorsed by someone they know?

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52. The How’s Business? Referral Program

This magic phrase is probably asked by customers, vendors, bank-ers, and just about everyone who comes into contact with you and the employees of your company hundreds of times per week. What is your answer? Usually, you or your employees lie and say that business is going great.

What do I mean by saying that your employees and you are lying? I mean that you are NOT doing that great. If your customer or others perceive that you do NOT need help getting other customers then they will NOT provide them. How SHOULD you respond? Let’s try a new way…

THEM: “How’s business?”

YOU: “You know, I glad you asked that. The guys and I were just sitting around talking the other day and we realized that our biggest challenge we have is getting great customers like you. Hey, you’re a smart guy. If you were me, what would you do to find great people like you to do business with?

Then just shut up and listen to some of the greatest ideas you will ever hear about how to get business. Many of them are listed here. Where do you think I got them? My customer’s that’s where. You should do the same.

53. The Coupon Book Referral Program

Give past clients two coupon books. Each offering a free consultation with you about the topic of their choice – drain cleaning, kitchen or bath remodel-ing, landscape lighting, Indoor Air Quality, Saving Money on Utility Bills, How To Cool Your Second Floor, etc.- Ask them to pass one of the books to a family member, friend, or colleague.

Print coupon books and have your techs distribute these books. Also, you can distribute them using your networking group or other professionals that you do business with.

54. Hold a Referral Contest Program

Tell your customers that on top of the other referral programs that you offer that you are holding a customer referral contest. The winner of the contest wins an all expense paid trip to an exotic location such as Las Vegas, the Bahamas or somewhere else more local such as a local re-sort.

Make sure when you award the winner that you do a MAJOR press re-lease in the local papers trumpeting that your customer has won. Your local paper loves nothing more than to publicize a winner in the local community. This is per-haps the easiest way to get free publicity in the local paper. Don’t forget to let radio and televi-sion stations know about it too.

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Another variation is to hold a contest for employees for the same thing. Whoever brings in the most customers each year gets another 5 days of vacation paid or a year of medical insurance paid FREE! It’s a sure winner.

55. Donate Your Service To a Raffle Program

You know how the boy scouts or little league or other local charitable organizations are always looking for a donation? Why not give them a free service like a tune up, or a planned maintenance agreement for them to raffle off.

I used to donate free thermostats that would have to be installed by us to the church my parents belonged to. We got many great customers from this arrangement. So much so that I began donating 6 of them to give away and to have us install. Once my service tech was in front of them, he sold other items like humidifiers, air cleaners and maintenance as well.

56. Disaster Recovery Referral Program

There are disaster recovery businesses that specialize in restor-ing fire or flood damaged homes to their original state. They also now do things like mold and radon mitigation as well. These busi-nesses are the masters of referral marketing. They have called on thousands of plumbers, hvac, electrician and remodelers to ask if they could do talks with their employees.

I would recommend getting involved with these companies as a way of finding customers who REALLY need your service and right now. Once you get in their network and perform your ser-vices with quality and speed you will get repeat business forever. Stay away from companies that do not value speed and quality and are only shopping on price. These companies will roll your services into their quote to insurance companies and know how to negotiate. Also, these companies are famous for giving YOU $300 to $500 for leads that turn into jobs for them. I have seen many companies rack up over $10,000 per year in referral fees they collect.

57. Scout Team Referral Program

One plumber I know would offer a $500 finders fee directly to the sales people of other construc-tion related businesses in their leads turned into jobs.

What he did was meet with sales people for drywall firms, electricians, hvac sales people, painters and the sales people at the home centers that sold kitchen and bath supplies and fixtures directly to the public. He offered a finders fee directly paid to the sales person that found a lead and booked it with his company.

Invariably the sales people were asked if they knew anyone who could in-stall the materials. This is where they would set up an appointment for the

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customer and the plumber to meet at the home. Waning: This works best for leads directly with home owners and not with contractors.

58. Paid Testimonial Referral Program

An HVAC sales person that I know gets a written testimonial on every sale he gets. He uses this thick stack of testimony to sell his jobs and diminish reluctance of customers to trust what he says about his quality.

After all the work is done, the customer is happy and the job is paid for, he pulls out a $50 bill and asks the customer for a letter of testimony. If the customer writes a testimony on the spot he gives the customer the $50 bill for their time. He has told me that many customers refuse the money. He gets a testimony every time and then takes a picture of the customer and creates a customer of the week advertisement in the local paper. Note: He tell the customer the week before that they will be in the paper. The customer then looks for the ad and tells their friends that they are in the paper.

59. Pick Up the Phone Referral Program

I think that nothing means more to a customer that refers you than just to know that you appreciate them doing so. In that vein, have the owner of the company pick up the phone to personally thank customer for referring cus-tomers.

A variation of this is to personally visit a customer to say thanks and maybe bring over a gift like a restaurant gift certificate or flowers. Remind these peo-ple about the biggest challenge that you have is in finding and keeping great

customers like them. Then ask if they know anyone else.

60. Pardon My Dust Referral Program

A plumber I know sends out a letter to homeowners on the same block using a radius mailer stating what is going on when they do a dig up the sewer job. He offers a 50% off a service diagnostic and a free camera job to anyone who responds while his trucks are there working on the dig.

This could also be used by anyone who does multiple day jobs in a home such as a comfort system installation or a remodeling or electrical renovation.

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61. Employee Bonus Referral System

Several companies in many trades are going to the practice of paying their own employees up to $50 for any customer that they bring in and schedule with the company. The key is that they must schedule the job and the first $50 of the job is theirs in cash.

One company I knew told a prospective employee this information during a job interview and the next day called to schedule 17 new customers for $79 furnace tune ups before she was even hired. Yes, the company hired her and had seventeen $50 bills for a total of $850 in cash wait-ing for when she arrived.

They presented the money to her on her first day in front of all of the current employees. That week, the company did a record of 63 jobs all referred by employees during a slow week in March and did an incredible $83,465 in sales from those jobs.

62. Up, Up and Away Referral Program

A comfort consultant waits two to three days and then sends a huge balloon bouquet to the customer’s place of work to say thanks for the job.

Invariably all of the person’s co-workers insist on wanting to know who sent the balloons. The sales person provides 50 referral coupon cards with the balloons so that whoever wants to get a new system or service done on

their current unit can call him directly. He says that he gets at least 6 new leads a month this way.

63. Home James Referral Program

An owner of an HVAC company I know, who gets referrals from several other service contractor friends of his in un-related trades, sends a limo once a month to pick up his top referral producer and meets them at the local Prime Steak House for a first class lunch.

This does cost him but he tells me that the buzz he gets from the employees at the company where the limo shows up is worth the money. They all want to know who sent the limo?

64. Business Card Referral Program

This is a common age old practice to let everyone know that you value referrals. On the back of the business card simply let customers know what’s in it for them if they refer a client to you. Use a statement such as, “Give someone this card and they receive a $25 discount off their first

call. Have your friend mention your name and you will receive $25 in cash too.”

Also it is good practice to give the new client the same discount that you are giving as a referral fee so everyone wins.

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