Talking Out My Rs - Referrals, Reach, Reputation and Recovery

I was doing a bit of project planning, reviewing the last year and timetabling following up leads and one thing in particular struck me - the number of sales leads we have compared to a year ago. This in turn got me thinking about why that is the case, so here are a few thoughts.

• It appears that the economy is recovering

The news says that things are on the up but I'm not sure that's had an effect for us yet. Maybe there is an increase in the intagible "business confidence" and as a result some of those potential clients are looking to spend money when they were not a year ago.

• We have been around for some time now so people know we exist

This is definitely the case. We have more clients than we did a year ago and this means more satisfied customers who recommend us to their business contacts which means more sales leads and even more clients. There is a snowball effect with this.

• We do a lot of work on Social Media

Obviously we run our company social media accounts and whilst we do tell people what we do we also engage with people and try to help them including puttingvthem in touch with other businesses who can help them. We also help run the accounts of 2 CICs, Palace FM and Jack in the Box, to help raise their profile. Our big social media effort goes into @ClevelandHour on Twitter which is simply used to promote local businesses, organisations and events. It may seem counter-intuitive a times as competitors are promoted on there but we have picked up business via the account, passed business to other local companies and helped people form partnerships.

• We are part of a referrals network

I'm a member of BNI which is a business referrals network with our group meeting every Wednesday morning in Redcar. It's not everyone's cup of tea and I had a meeting with the father of one of our member's who said "you're also a member of that cult". It's very structured and at times seems a little strange but it is all professionally run and most importantly, it works!. 

It's clearly about getting the right business people together and the organisation provides the structure to make it work plus some great training to help your business operate as a business more effectively. I've already changed a few things that are having an effect in turning sales leads into business, after all I'm a geek primarily and learning to do the business part as I go along.

What has it done in terms of generating business? Well our group has been launched for 2 months and we are passing 40+ referrals (that's 40+ real opportunities for new business) each week. We have had a small number of new web projects from other members and their contacts. I have a couple of contracts directly from visitors, one of whom has joined another new chapter. We have also purchased the services of a number of members and visitors plus become a regular customer of another local business who visited us. We now purchase our server space from them which has resulted in some good business for them plus saved us £100 per month compared to our previous supplier - so my membership is paid for ever!

We know BNI isn't for everyone and we have also turned down membership from a number of businesses that we didn't feel were of sufficient quality to take part. BUT it works, so if you are a QUALITY local business and want to grow then come along and take a look at what we do. 

On Wed 20th Nov we have a Visitors Day to open up to more local businesses to see how we can help you. Give me a call on 07739 408745 for more details.