According to a marketing survey conducted by Texas Tech, 83% of satisfied customers are willing to refer products and services. But, only 29% actually do.
In other words, most law firms are only getting about 1/3rd of the referrals from people who are willing to give them. Apply this statistic to your law firm and you’ve got an opportunity to dramatically grow your business simply by increasing referrals from clients who are already willing to send work your way. We call this the “referral gap” and one of the primary ways we serve our clients is by helping them close this gap.
Below are four strategies that will help you close your referral gap. Then, download the report for five practical internet marketing systems you can apply to drive referrals.
Referral Strategy #1 – Educate your referral network. Your network needs to know two things in order to send you referrals: first, they need to know how you help your clients, aka what kind of work you do for them. And second, they need to know what type of clients you’re looking for – who’s a good referral?
Referral Strategy #2 – Narrow your focus. Focusing in on a single practice area, or at least a group of related practice areas, is a good business move on many different levels. It’s helpful when it comes to generating referrals for a few reasons, not the least of which is that focusing on a single practice area makes it easy for your network to remember what you do and recognize opportunities to send you work.
Referral Strategy #3 – ASK for referrals. You’d think this would be obvious, but I exchanged emails with an attorney a few months back who stated that “I would never ask for a referral. That’s not how I do business.” That’s an exact quote. In my opinion, that attitude demonstrates that he doesn’t recognize the value of the work he provides for his clients. Asking for referrals isn’t about begging for someone to send work your way – it’s about communicating the ways in which you improve the lives of your clients. If you don’t ask, you’re going to miss out.
Referral Strategy #4 – Build systems to stay top-of-mind with your network. This is probably the single biggest culprit when it comes to missed referrals. We are all busy and we’re constantly bombarded with distractions. Text messages, email, Twitter, and so on. No offense, but there are a lot of people who you’ve met that have probably forgotten about you over time. Including potential referral sources!
The good news is that you can leverage the internet to make this happen predictably, effectively, and with a relatively small time commitment. Get the full report to read more on these four referral strategies, and also learn five internet marketing systems to make it happen.
