Yesterday, as I was driving back home from my afternoon appointment I was thinking about how powerful this concept of a Power Team can be when it's really done well. It reminded me of one of my most successful and rewarding projects from when I worked at Procter and Gamble...we had a small power team...me (Marketing), a sales person and a finance person. We were all top notch and we worked as if we were attached at the hip and launched a whole initiative in 3 months - from concept to execution w/ a sales kick off meeting. We recognized right away that we were a Power Team and how together we were way more effective than any of us individually. They started to call us the Dream Team.
So back to reality...
Yesterday's customer is looking to do some dustless sanding & refinishing. As luck would have it, he is a Handyman. He's been doing this for 30+ yrs and has a lot of repeat and referral business...in fact, he doesn't do any marketing at all anymore - he has enough referral biz. Compared to my jobs, Handyman jobs have a much lower average job size, but there are many more of them...so they get many more calls (in shear #'s of people). He mentioned to me that he gets plenty of calls (and they are high quality leads) for refinishing work, and he's not giving them out to anybody. (huge opportunity - right?).
He used to refer them to people, but the ones he liked/trusted have retired (or gone out of business) and then he recommended some that weren't so reliable (the biggest issue being that they didn't return phone calls/didn't have good follow up). And, of course, this is a bad reflection on him, so it was just easier for him to stop referring people. (Now, hopefully this will change because I think he can help me and I can help him).
But, anyway, I was thinking about this on my long drive home. This is not a new concept...it's something I've been doing and know I need to be doing more of (i.e. recommending complementary partners) This really is a win-win-win. A win for your customer, a win for the person you refer and in the long run a win for you because over time that person will refer biz to you (not to mention that your customer will be happy and more likely to come back to you again and/or recommend you.
There's another benefit...in some cases, it' helps me close the sale faster. So, for example, if I'm installing tile in a bathroom and they need a plumber to remove and reinstall the toilet, if I have a great a reasonably priced plumber, my customer can use that person and close on the whole deal faster (vs. having to wait for them to find a plumber and who knows if that plumber is going to do a good job or delay the job).
So, think about the 3 types of referrals you can give most often (for me, that's usually a painter, followed by plumber, and sometimes a carpenter or GC). I get plenty of others such as carpet cleaner, cabinet person, decorator, handyman, window treatments but the others are more frequent. For a real estate agent, this might be mortgage broker, real estate attorney and inspector.
Then, think about the ones that can give you the most referrals. (Think also about the ones that give you the highest quality ones). For me, that would prob. be painters, restoration companies, real estate agents.
Then, figure out what you can do to strengthen you referral network. Start w/ your power team. 3 or 4 members that you can give/get referrals to/from. Think about opportunities w/ your current customer/clients. Add them to you speed dials on your cell phone. Make sure you have extra biz cards. Get together w/ them and brainstorm on ideas. Maybe you give each other's customers some sort of discount or value added service. Lead by example and start trying to accelerate the leads you give.
Comments(21)