At the Infusionsoft Customer Day in Denver this past Friday, Jordan Hatch, who covered a LOT of ground on some pretty advanced stuff by the way, pointed out that referral systems work a whole lot better when all the rest of your “Perfect Customer Lifecycle” is rolling smoothly.
In case you’re not up to speed, if you can picture the Perfect Customer Lifecycle as a wheel, there are seven spokes:
- Attract Traffic
- Capture Leads
- Nurture Prospects
- Convert Sales
- Deliver & Satisfy
- Upsell Customers
- Get Referrals
It’s a self-regenerating cycle or virtuous spiral, where your prospects turn into customers who are so happy about the experience, they bring others into it and those prospects do the same. If each customer brings in more than one, you can see how exponential growth is the natural result.
And as Dan Kennedy has pointed out, when it’s tough – read expensive – to get new customers, a healthy referral system is not optional – it’s the lifeblood of any business. I would add, it’s probably the one key measure of successful marketing.
Here are a couple of things you can do right off the bat to ramp up your referrals:
1) Look at your marketing through the prism of the Perfect Customer Lifecycle. To use the cycling analogy, like a bike mechanic, tighten and balance the spokes.
2) Set the expectation up front with your new and existing customers that your goal is to provide them with such an extraordinary experience that, they will naturally want to bring along their buddies who need or want what you offer.
Set these ideas in motion and there is no doubt you’ll get a bump in revenue and profit growth rates.
