Refferal Program

Sami Kahn Niazi
Sami Kahn Niazi Member Posts: 2 Navigator

How to build a successful Referral program which is not only effective but brings in results.

 

Would anyone like to share their experiences and the challenges they have faced for refferals.

Comments

  • gurd3v
    gurd3v Member Posts: 70 Expert
    First Anniversary Photogenic
    edited July 2020

    I would think this goes hand in hand with how your sales and marketing team operates. Here's what I mean.

    Our marketing and sales team generates interest for a demo at a high rate and closes deals quickly. That said, we found that if we get a qualified lead (for us, any small private medical practice), we have a very good chance at demoing and closing that lead. All we need is their name, email address and phone number.

    With this in mind, we created a model where if a customer referred a colleague or friend to us that qualified, we would extend a small credit to their monthly bill. This model works for us because our sales and marketing machine can support it. 

    Let's say your sales team has a longer deal cycle or a lesser lead to demo conversion rate. You might have to change the economics of the credit to the customer or put more qualifiers in place for the customer to earn the credit (i.e. not just contact info, but customer showing up for demo).

    Thoughts?

  • Alex Turkovic
    Alex Turkovic Member Posts: 61 Expert
    First Anniversary
    edited July 2020

    Referrals in my experience can be difficult to establish without having strong cross-functional buy-in and agreement. This type of program has broad impacts to revenue generation, forecasting and staffing considerations across finance, marketing, sales & services - not to mention the training that has to be done so that frontline employees know what's what. 

    It sounds like you are talking about customer referrals vs. partner referrals. The latter (in my opinion) should be handled by a bespoke partner sales team which can strategically target specific partners and handle contracting implications.

    My advice on customer referrals is to keep it as clean and simple as possible so that it's easy to communicate, enticing enough for customers to want to refer new clients and doesn't require spinning up new additions to the tech stack. One-time billing credits per referral is a great way to go and relatively easy to forecast and implement (for example).

  • Archive User
    Archive User Member Posts: 24 Thought Leader
    edited July 2020

    Working across large Enterprise Businesses, with multiple touch points, referrals can be challenging, to get customers internal sign off can be a very long process, the relationships you may have built may not have the authority to sign a referral off. 

    Just like we as CSM's want to be able to showcase our successes to our peers, so do customers want to be able to showcase their successes to their peers, to illustrate the value they have received by investing in particular products/services etc.    

    I start with helping our customers showcasing their achievements in a small way, for example, amongst their Dept/Team leaders.

    Customers are just as eager to showcase the business outcome they have achieved to their senior stakeholders as we are to illustrate that to our peers.

    Start small, work with your contacts that need help showcasing their story to their peers, work with your internal Marketing team to help your customers map out their journey, use case reviews, challenges they faced, how they over came those challenges etc by investing in your products/services to help achieve their desired outcome and showcase ROI