by Tony Vidler 
If you want to generate recommendations from clients and prospects it pays to understand how it is a different process from getting referrals, and if referrals are “the gold medal” then recommendations are the “silver”. Not the ultimate perhaps, but well worth having, and arguable a little easier to get.
There are many things you can do to become somebody that others recommend, and in fact there are many things you should do constantly. something which is often overlook though is providing little tangible reminders of you and what you do that help prompt others to recommend you. Recommendations are powerful because it puts the advocacy process in the control of the customer, and most customers far prefer that. The downside is that it is a far more passive strategy and can take longer to pay off.
As with so many things in life it is the little things that can often make the biggest difference, including getting you those great recommendations from clients or prospects or centres-of-influence to ideal clients.
Using little giveaways that are not high value, but are still “nice”, doesn’t create any sense of obligation or guilt on the part of the recipient. Because they are not high value you can afford to give loads of them away and get a lot of mileage out of them. Being little and relatively inexpensive giveaways you clients and prospects are happy to give away what you gave them – especially if you make it clear they can have more of the little giveaways whenever they want.
Small and inexpensive can be remarkably positive and powerful marketing.
In this weeks video we have a good look at a real example of using little giveaways to create some tangibility, and positioning, and presence of mind – and how to use that to create recommendations from your clients and influencers to their friends and circles of influence…
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