Hey. Welcome back. Last podcast, we talked about becoming more referable and how creating a feedback system in your business allows you to become more referable. Simply by asking, you’re setting yourself apart, making yourself more referable because people trust you that you’re going to follow up and ask for their feedback, even if they’re too busy to give it to you. Now, if they provide that feedback, that says to you that they are that much more engaged with your business. They are even more likely to refer you, simply because they took the time and energy to provide you feedback. Now, obviously, best case scenario is they give you that feedback and then you give them the opportunity to go and review and share their experience online in the form of a review on these different review sites where they’re essentially referring you business 24/7, 365. Putting this process in place enables you to become more referable in their eyes.

What I want to do next is kind of jump into the five best practices that a small business can implement inside their business to continue to make themselves more referable and get more out of this feedback system that they have created inside their business. What I want to do is in the next couple podcasts is go through these five best practices, okay?

The first one is to always, always when a customer comes through your door is ask them how they heard about you. Now, this may seem intrusive, but if you’re asking it in the proper way you can glean so much information from it that can greatly impact your business and help you save money, scale your marketing in the areas that you need. Because it’s going to give you the insights that you need to understand, in terms of who or what is generating the most business for you. By simply asking them how they heard about you, they can tell you a whole bunch about their entire buying process, which allows you to get inside their mind and sort of understand where they’re coming from, what the issues problems that they’re having inside their business, so that they can help you solve those problems inside their life and make you that much more engaged with helping them find a solution.

When you ask them that, you’re trying to figure out where did they find you. Did they go to Yelp first, or did they go to Yelp last? Did a friend refer them? Who’s that friend, maybe that’s an opportunity for you to start building rapport by relating to that person. As well as if somebody’s heard about you on one of these review sites, that’s a great opportunity for you that thank all those people that are giving you review in front of this customer, showing them how much it means to you when somebody takes that time and effort, setting the stage for possibly them doing the same activity because they know how much you, as a business owner, appreciate it. By doing that, you’re going to be able figure out where do I need to be spending my time, energy, money, and resources in terms of marketing, growing my business, and also setting yourself up later on to become even more referable by encouraging them to share their experience they’re about to have with you online.

Stay tuned for the next best practice coming up.