Colleen’s Blog

In my experience, there are two key elements that intimidate sellers and keep them from asking for a referral: ego and fear. I think you’ll agree with me, salespeople have big, healthy egos. This isn’t a bad thing, because we are trained to believe that we can sell even in the face of adversity and when the odds are stacked against us. In fact, in order to really thrive in sales, you must be able to sell even when it seems as though the chips are down. <-- Click To Tweet On top of that, we prefer to sell by ourselves. Each of us consider our own methods to be the most effective. We also don’t want any help when it comes to executing these methods.

Let's talk about customer loyalty, after all, you need a loyal customer first before you can up-sell and have them buy more, right? While customer loyalty does lead to repeat business and more sales, most people have the equation backwards. The truth is the more people buy from you, the stronger the loyalty. The top 10% of breakthrough companies are not rewarded with remarkable success because their closing ratios on net new busloyalty. The longer a customer is tied to you, the longer they will stay a loyal paying customer.

Asking for a referral can be a challenging process. You might be uncomfortable asking for the referral, as well as worried about the best language to use so that you don’t sound desperate for new business.