Little touches- If you’ve heard me speak about building referrals you’ll know that I say that there are three ways to tackle the task.

  1. Asking each client, customer or patient with a “By the way” or “Incidentally” or “Tell me” and following up with something along the lines of “Is there someone you know who might appreciate the same help that I’ve given you?” You use those three prefacing phrases because it softens the question and produces more amenable responses.
  2. Having a system whereby you write or email each of your clients, customers or patients regularly to ask is there someone they know who might want your services (along the lines of the famous “I must be stupid” letter and offer a reward as thank you.
  3. Make them say “Wow!” by doing something that is memorable and has them telling their friends about it. By the way, that’s doing something positive not negative which will guarantee everybody knows about you but doesn’t want your services.

I had an example of real “Wow!” service when I stayed at The Langham Hotel in Melbourne recently (in my opinion it is one of the top hotels in Australia). When I hopped into my car after Valet Parking had retrieved it, there was a bottle of water on the dash with a note.

The photo reveals what it said. I reckon that this touch was magic and the way they made it happen was wonderful.

The question is what do you do in your business to make people say “Wow!” and their dealings with you memorable?