If you find it painful to get advocates to refer new business, you must be doing something wrong. It shouldn’t be arduous for you or your customers.

In fact, you should make it easy, fun and collaborative to participate. According to Jill Rowley, Founder and Chief Evangelist at #SocialSelling, that’s the first step for building a great referral marketing program.

Make it easy for customers to tell others about your solution

How exactly do you go about this?

Jill Rowley's secret ingredient for referral marketing

Jill Rowley, Founder and Chief Evangelist at #SocialSelling

“Look at where you may have other potential customers in the groups and associations that your current customers belong to, and then make it easy for customers to invite people in their network to learn about your solution,” Jill says.

“When you do that, you make it easy, fun and collaborative – meaning that you do it together rather than sending them off to do it on their own without any input or help from you.”

Tap into human nature

Think we’re crazy to suggest that putting such a framework in place will grease the wheels of advocacy? Not if you consider that, as Jill reminds us, “It’s a natural tendency for people to want to help others.”

In fact, she says that “if the technology or services that they’re getting from the vendor are of benefit, people want to share that with others in their networking groups, within their own company or within their peer-based groups.”

In other words, your customers will actually be happy to refer you because they’re not only helping you, but also someone they know who is trying to overcome a challenge in their business.

Shift your mind-set

To encourage the likelihood of your customers becoming advocates, you may need to change your mind-set. Jill says the main reason her customers refer others to her is that she treats them as future advocates.

“I have eliminated the word ‘prospect’ from my vocabulary. It just doesn’t feel like a nice description of someone who’s going to ultimately buy from you. And I’ve replaced that word with ‘future advocate.’ Throughout their buying process with me, I’m thinking about how I can make that person ultimately successful – so successful that they’re an advocate of my product, of my company, and of me, Jill Rowley.”

It must be working! Today, Jill has a ton of advocates – just check out the testimonials page of her website.

More secret ingredients for referral marketing…

The No Fuss Recipe for Hot Referral LeadsThe No Fuss Recipe for Hot Referral Leads features valuable insight from five sales and marketing leaders, including Jill, who share their “secret ingredients” for a successful referral marketing program.

Download the recipe book to get your revenue cooking with the ultimate customer referral program!

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