Letter of the Month

Well what about a referral card? Here’s one originally written for an accountant. The accountant sent it out with his newsletter to all of his clients and you can imagine what happened?

Lots of his clients rang up and said “That’s disgusting! That’s totally unprofessional! That’s dreadful!”

No, not one of his clients rang up and said that!

Do you know what most clients rang up and said? It was something like this “You know Mr Accountant, I didn’t realise that you wanted referrals because, every time that I come to see you, you are always so--- busy.”

That’s the problem for so many people in business. We are so busy that we neither ask for referrals nor set up the circumstance where our existing clients, customers or patients feel happy about referring people to us.

So when they rang and said, “I didn’t know that you wanted referrals” he responded with “Well now I’d be happy if you did refer people to me.” “Oh we will,” they replied, “But, by the way, we don’t want the reward. We’d do it for nothing.”

He’d anticipated that he’d get that response and he had the answer ready. He simply said “When you refer someone to us it saves us on marketing expenses and we’re just sharing some of those savings with you. If you really don’t want to keep the reward you can donate it to a charity.”

Guess what he found? Charity begins at home! Most of the people kept the money anyway. They probably said to themselves, “That’s the first time I actually got money from an accountant!”

Two things about that referral card…
1. A 10% discount isn’t much of an incentive for someone to try that accountant’s services and in any event you should never ever discount. (But better to offer a discount then nothing!)

2. Similarly five dollars isn’t much of a reward for somebody who introduces a client who may spend $1000 or so for years and years. Imagine what might have been achieved if the accountant had promised a weekend for 2 at a plush hotel, a night out for dinner, tickets to the theatre or some reward of more value in relation to the lifetime value of a new client.

Nonetheless, here’s what you’ve got to know. It worked! In one year that referral card generated 407 new clients and over $400,000 worth of fees.

That’s far better than recruiting a new partner and has none of the hassles!

The printer’s referral letter

Okay if you didn’t like them apples how about these apples? This is a referral letter from a printer that I came across.

There it is, great letter isn’t it? Well it’s never going to work for you unless you mail it.

Now maybe you don’t want to use that letter or the first letter or the referral card word for word. But, what you can do is use them as templates to write something you are happy with. However, just one suggestion, don’t tamper with them too much.

Why?

Because they work!

The snooty stockbroker’s referral letter

Now here’s a letter I wrote umpteen years ago when I was Marketing Director of a stockbroker in the days when they dealt only with “blue bloods” and then by invitation only. I wanted to increase the client base so I came up with a letter that asked:

In this case you’ll notice that I didn’t offer a tangible reward but rather a little piece of “hot news”. People love and value “hot tips” from a stockbroker.

Because the stockbroker for whom I wrote the letter really only dealt with
“upper crust” clients they didn’t want to upset them. They didn’t want the
letter to look cheap or “junk mail like”.

So it was written on very expensive handmade stationery enclosed in a matching envelope with an interesting stamp on it instead of being franked. The address was written in copperplate handwriting. It looked great--- almost like a letter from royalty! Perception is reality and the recipient’s reaction was determined not only by what the letter said but how and on what it was said.

Did it work? You’ve got to believe it.