Quality Sales Referrals

Sales representatives know it's very important to obtain sales referrals from customers. However, sometimes the best connected customers hesitate to give referrals to sales reps.

Here's how one insurance rep solved "the problem" and fills his sales appointment book for the first 2 months of each year.

Thoughout each year he keeps careful records of those customers who didn't give him sales referrals. Then, during the first two weeks of December he calls on each customer at his/her home and delivers a small gift. When invited into the customer's livingroom he looks around searching for holiday greeting cards. When he spies some cards he comments about how beautiful the cards are and goes over and picks up several. He reads inside the name of the sender and then diplomatically goes into "referral qualification mode" asking if the sender is a close friend of the customer, the sender's occupation, etc. In this way during December he obtains many sales referrals he otherwise wouldn't have.