One of the best ways to grow a highly successful business is through Referrals - people who come to you through word-of-mouth recommendation from an existing customer.

Customers who come through Referrals are the best customers you can get. First of all, they're FREE. Secondly, they tend to be your best spending customers. They spend more with you than a normal customer because they come through the door to feel good about you because someone has recommended you to them.

Here's the big secret of success with Referrals.

Pretty much everybody gets referrals. But almost without exception, the referrals are accidental. In other words, the business owner does nothing to get them, other than providing a good product or service to the customers they have. They are in no way being proactive in getting referrals.

You need to ask for Referrals.

If you're getting Referrals at the moment without asking for them, what would happen if you proactively asked for them.

You need to have a system in place for getting Referrals. The absolute first thing you want to do is have a referral culture in your business. A referral culture involves your customers understanding that referrals are a core part of how you grow.

So have a conversation with your customers when they first become a customer of yours. You can say, "l build my business primarily through word-of-mouth recommendation with individuals like yourself. If I do a great job for you, would you be willing to recommend me to friends, family, and colleagues?'  Who's going to say no to that?  This might seem like a small point, but here's what I've seen over the years.  If business has one in ten of its customers bringing in referrals, without trying, when they proactively ask, that number can go up to three or four or five out of ten.

That's an increase in Referrals of 200% to 400%. Scale that out across the year and it can transform a business.

Just putting that concept of Referrals in peoples' heads, literally implanting that idea in their mind, will increase referrals on its own. If every customer that became a customer of yours next week brought one person into your business, and then that person brought one more person into your business, you'd never have to do any marketing or advertising again. That is the sheer power of referrals.

People generally accept that they should have marketing campaigns in their business, meaning you promote a specific product or service, and you have a marketing campaign that consists of things you send through emails, a website, online videos etc. You may also call or go to see your customers to get sales. That's a marketing campaign in a nutshell.

But just as importantly, you also need a marketing campaign purely for Referrals.

Send your existing customers to a page on your website asking for referrals. Perhaps offer rewards, bonuses, or vouchers if they give you a referral. Why wouldn't you send emails to your customers two or three times a year asking for this? You can send a letter to your 100 best customers for somewhere between 50 and 100 pounds or dollars. Why wouldn't you do that a couple of times a year if that brought in 3, 6, or 19 new customers?

So you want to have what we call an 'Internal' Marketing campaign. You want to have an Internal Referral marketing campaign running across the year to get you the Referrals you need.