Raking in Referrals

Getting customers to refer you is the number one business fantasy. Actually getting customers to refer you is the number one business challenge. Nicole Wicks at ReferNow aims to close the gap.

Referrals are every marketer's wet dream. They are powerful, personal, profitable and dirt cheap. Referral customers come in wanting to buy and eager to engage with your brand. It's your game to lose. And its a lot easier and cheaper than trying to efficiently find, convince and close new customers. If you can just get 15% of your happy customers to tell their friends ... who knows how much goodness can result?

But in real life, referrals require customers and businesses to step outside their comfort zones and act pro-actively;.an impossibly difficult task. Customers have to love you so much that they're willing to put their ego on the line for you. Its a very high bar to jump. Many of us have been teased friends who were astounded that we liked a particular brand or who were disappointed by the reception they got or the actual goods and services after such a big buildup.Nobody wants to be a shill or a salesman and many of us have already developed a complex mental system for sorting and filtering the recommendations of friends, relatives and co-workers to optimize politeness and screen out bad taste or different sensibilities.

For employees asking for a referral is a second close; one that could possibly undo the money sale that just transpired. Nobody dares to appear "pushy"and many salespeople feel that customers need to bask in the glow of a purchase and maybe even actually use the product before you hit them up for a referral.

So while it seems like a logical thing to do; it rarely gets done. Enter ReferNow.com a platform for small and medium sized businesses eager to capitalize on happy customers for either  referrals or repeat business.

Based on "the psychology of people" and "old school good manners" this site offers businesses a tool -- basically a software and reporting set-up -- for driving referrals and repeat business for $148/month by making it "as simple as possible for our customers and their customers,"  Nicole claims.

It works just the way you might imagine. The business solicits an e-mail address from a happy customer. Then using the platform to track and report things -- you send the happy customer an e-mail containing an offer that he/she sends to friends. When the friends respond they are directed to a hosted landing page and -- bingo -- a unique code is triggered. Both the new customer and the referring customer get points which they can redeem for stuff, presumably good stuff and stuff they want. Each participating business determines what the stuff is though Nicole advises them to offer something unique or a little extra by saying, "a referral customer is a free customer, so don't be stingy."

So far in the quest for referrals, they've learned:

• The price of referrals is a function of industry and is related to the buying cycles
• Cash is everyone's favorite incentive. A $25 Gift card = cash.
• Electronics -- as incentives -- are yesterday
• Customers like locally-based rewards

Working with 100 plus clients, the site, in its start-up stage,offers platform access,concepting and consulting. The cost is low because ReferNow aims to be the little guy's simple CRM tool. The platform can handle 150,000 unique users so they're aiming high.  Reports are exportable to Salesforce.com and SugarCRM.