Guest Blog by Hazel Walker

Today’s post was written by my good friend Hazel Walker.  I hope you enjoy the post!

Referrals can come to you from many different directions. Some will come from people you meet at networking events, some may come to you from your customers, and others may come from your trained Referral Partners. You will never know where they are coming from if you do not take the time to track your business.

Every time someone calls, ask the simple question, “How did you hear about us?” Open a spreadsheet and track every customers or prospective customer’s response.

This simple task will allow you to identify where you may want to spend more time or money. If you find you have one person who is acting as your advocate you will want to find ways to thank or reward that person.

Maybe you find that all the time you have spent at a particular organization has not paid off as well as you thought, but the place where you have been volunteering has had the added benefit of being a gold mine of clients. Now you will be able to make a sound decision about where you are spending your time.

Until you start tracking, it’s all guesswork and you may be ignoring some of your best sources.

So, start the New Year out right, track every single referral. Track who gave you the referral, what organization it came from and the value of the referral. At the end of the year, you will be able to make informed decisions about who to thank, what organizations to stay involved with, and how much money you are making in your networking activities.