Where are your referrals going?

Today I had the pleasure of coming across a terrific article by Biznik member Mark Silver (who, interestingly enough, calls himself a Business Tenderizer) about what he deems "the Bermuda Triangle of Business Referrals."

I'm sure you've experienced this - I certainly have. Your clients adore you, and send you this lovely e-mail about how they've referred so-and-so to your business because they think you're the bees' knees (really - do bees have knees? Am I spelling it wrong, or is that really how it's spelled? Anyhoo...), but nothing ever comes out of it. No calls. No e-mails. Or worse, the people who DO call or e-mail are The Wrong Sort - those folks who have a great idea, but not enough money to actually afford what you could do for them.

So what do you do? You make it easy for your clients to refer The Right Sort to you, and make it easy for The Right Sort to get over the fear, uncertainty, or other things that might be preventing them from actually calling.

My friend Joanna Scaparotti of My Solutions for Stress was a great example of this. She does Reiki and wellness coaching for busy professonials, and I'd been getting fairly frequent Reiki sessions with her for a few months, after which I got an e-mail titled: "Where can I find more people like YOU?"

The e-mail went on to not only tell me how fabulous I was as a client, but it also shared the specific traits that she was looking for in potential referrals, and gave me an easy way to get folks in contact with her so I could share referrals.

Even though this was an e-mail sent to multiple clients of hers and not just me, Joanna's tone in the e-mail was professional, it was personal, and it made me happy to offer her services to anyone I came across who fit her profile.

To read the full article, click here. To learn more about Joanna, click here.

As for me, yeah - I know I've been a bit lax on the blogging thing, and I promise that I'll get better soon. Fortunately, I've had a ton of work in, and I'm working on getting deadlines out the door for a while. But no worries - there's more in the pipe for the blog.