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Traditional Referral Training Doesn’t Work
Most salespeople, professionals, managers, trainers and business owners have been trained to generate referrals in the traditional manner--the old, “do a good job and ask for referrals.”
Unfortunately, this method of referral generation just doesn’t work very well. Oh, sure, you get an occasional name and phone number or two, but most of these referrals are about as good as opening the phonebook and picking a name at random.
Why? Because the whole traditional format of asking for referrals creates more problems than it solves.
The traditional method of referral generation creates these problems:
- The salesperson, professional or business owner is uncomfortable asking because they know the client is uncomfortable with the request. Consequently, instead of actually asking for referrals, they either simply don’t ask or they “suggest” rather than ask. They say something like: “Joe, if you happen to know of anyone who might be able to use my services, would you give them one of my cards?”, or something equally weak such as, “Joe, don’t keep me a secret.” And they leave a stack of cards that most likely go straight to the trash can
- The client is uncomfortable with the request because they feel they have been ambushed at the last second with a totally unexpected and unwelcome request.
- The client has had no opportunity to get comfortable with the idea of giving
referrals
- The client has had no opportunity to think of whom to refer.
- The client has not been given a reason to refer anyone.
- The client has no idea of what a good referral for the salesperson is.
- The client has not been given an objective method of determining whether the salesperson has earned the referrals.
Clients assume that whomever they refer you to will be more demanding and more critical than they themselves have been. You must have a referral generation process that overcomes the above issues and gives them the comfort and assurance that you can and will live up to the referred prospect’s expectations and that you will not put the client in an embarrassing position.
You can live with the traditional referral system--or you can learn how the mega-producers overcome these issues and generate their huge volume of high quality referrals.
The PWWR Referral Generation Systemtm isn’t magic--it is simply a disciplined, effective, proven process that eliminates the above issues and replaces them with a proactive process that generates a large number of high quality referrals from clients and prospects.
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