Referrals are an important part of the sales process, whether you represent a small company or a large enterprise. A positive, third-party recommendation carries more clout and goes a longer way to getting interest and closing a deal than any promotion or advertisement.

When it comes to referrals, most sales leaders think " ... Sure ... just get them." But the effective sales leaders are the ones who have a strategy for getting and managing referrals, as we learn in this issue of Promotional Consultant Today.

Joanne Black is the owner of No More Cold Calling™, a business that she founded in 1996. She believes that no matter the advancements in sales and communication, the basics of referral selling remain the same. She says that referral selling is the biggest competitive weapon of any sales organization. No other marketing or sales approach comes close to the results you get with referral sales strategies, because decision-makers will always take meetings that are suggested by sources they know and trust.

In her recent article, "The Formula for Sizzling Referral Sales Strategies," Black shares these tips for creating a referral strategy.

  1. Referral Strategy Development: Referral selling becomes your No.1 outbound prospecting strategy and integrates into your sales process. You commit to measuring both referral activities and results, and you hold sales reps accountable for both.

  2. Skills Building: Asking for referrals is a behavior change. Reps learn how to define the business reason for a referral and how to ask for referral introductions to their ideal clients.

  3. Implementation: Salespeople forget 87 percent of what they learn during training if there's no reinforcement after implementation, no assessment of skills learned, and no measurement of success. Sales managers must coach and reinforce referral skills to ensure it becomes a habit.

Current clients are your best source of new business. They know first-hand the value of your products and services, and the expertise your sales reps can provide. Well-served clients will introduce your team to qualified prospects who agree to meetings with just one call. Those clients will sing your team's praises and "sell" your company to exactly the type of prospects salespeople want to meet.

But most clients won't think to do it unless they're asked. And your team probably won't do that unless it's part of your sales process. Hold your team accountable, and ensure that they are asking for referrals. And once you gain those clients, they will lead you to even more clients.

Source: Joanne Black is America's top referral sales expert. Her first book, No More Cold Calling™ , is still the top sales resource for many successful salespeople with its process-driven approach to increasing sales by turning friends, clients and colleagues into your own private sales force. Her newest book, Pick Up the Damn Phone!: How People, Not Technology, Seal the Deal, makes the case for breaking through the digital barriers that makes every transaction impersonal and using real conversations as a salesperson's key business differentiator.