What are referral services? This is a paid for service used by a business to either refer to them direct prospects that are actively seeking the company’s product or services, or that places them in an advantageous position within a closed market, per se, for that service or product. Simply put, it’s where you pay a bit to have a service tell you who is looking for what you have. This can greatly increase your ROI over standard cold calling, and should be looked on as a tool to be used, not the only way to gather new clients.
Most of these services, especially those that supply non-exclusive leads, are useless. I’m sure that almost everyone has had the problem of buying a leads list that has already been called on by the competition four or five times already, leaving both those prospects and your sales force feeling both annoyed and let down. Which is why choosing the correct type and kind of referral services for your company is of paramount importance.
Simply throwing money at something will work, eventually, but it works quicker and better for you if you have some basic data about your prospective referral service beforehand.
Where do they get their leads? From their own marketing efforts, or from an amalgamation service (takes leads/info from lots of sources and puts them together in one searchable database, like Monster) or are the leads supplied in some other fashion? To how many of my competitors have these already been sold, or will be sold to? Does this service have some sort of return or duplicate policy? How often will you receive updates/fresh leads from them? (Not necessarily the best choice having a service that supplies 200 fresh leads once every month if you have 5 salesmen to support with daily leads). Does this service give me thesupport I mahy need in other areas? (A client referral program etc..) Will their referral services be able to expand and grow to support more demand from me, as and when I need it? What are their current clients’ conversion ratio’s, for a similarly priced product or service as yours, when you are the referral services leads?
These and questions like them may seem obvious, as they are the questions you should be asking all your suppliers on a monthly basis, but too many people using a service seems to touch an “I trust You” button that makes common sense go away. Decide on whether to use a service by applying the most basic form of business equation – will I make more by buying and using this, or not? Then apply the same basics to whether or not the service is right for you – Will I get what I pay for and need from them?
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