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Posts Tagged ‘referral services’

What are referral services? This paid for service used by companies to refer to them direct prospects that are actively seeking the company’s product or services. You might pay a bit more to have a service tell you who is looking for what you supply. This can increase your ROI over cold calling, and should be used to gather new clients.

Many of these services, are not that great and leave a lot to be desired, like the ones that sell general bulk leads. The problem of buying a leads list is that has already been called on by the competition four or five times already. Which is why choosing the correct type and kind of referral services for your company is of paramount importance.

Putting money towards something eventually might pay off, but it works quicker if you have basic data about your prospective referral service before you start.

Where are these leads coming from? 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? When and how often will you be provided with new leads from them? (Not the best way to go if 200 fresh leads are provided once every month if you have 5 salesmen who require daily leads). Will this service support me in other areas? (A client referral program for example..) Will their referral services be able to expand with a higher demand? 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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