Recently during one of my trainings I was given an excellent tip from one of the attendees for managing and increasing client referrals through Phorest's in-built referral system. I was really impressed by this method for its simplicity and ease of setting up and managing, and I kicked myself for not thinking of it on my own.
One of the issues I find with encouraging clients to make referrals is that it is extremely tricky. If you simply tell them you will reward them for making referrals, the clients forget and won't actually make them when it comes to the crunch of telling a friend.
Posters etc. around the salon are good reminders and may go towards increasing your referrals but some of my trainees had issues plastering posters around their salon and it doesn't always work as the customer still had to remember when they were no longer in the salon.One of the issues I find with encouraging clients to make referrals is that it is extremely tricky. If you simply tell them you will reward them for making referrals, the clients forget and won't actually make them when it comes to the crunch of telling a friend.
The simple method is to get client referral cards printed; it’s a simple card with your salon details on it, possibly saying client referral card, and a section where your customers can write their names and numbers on the card. You can hand 2 or 3 of these out to your clients and offer them free points for each one that comes back with their name on it.
The customer will simply take these away, write their name and number on the card, hand it to their friends and ask them to give it back to you when they arrive. You can then enter the free points on to the client's loyalty card and you know exactly which client it is as their mobile number is on the card, so you avoid the issue of giving free points to the wrong person.
If you want to order cards, the website www.vistaprint.com as the will give 250 free business cards to you when you sign up so it won’t be a large expense to implement, and if it gives you a large influx of clients through the loyalty system referrals, well then it’s only a massive boost to your revenue!
I hope this helps and would love to hear of any other ideas or experiences salons may have had with client referrals in the past.
Michael Geraghty is a Trainer with Phorest.com, a leading salon software provider in the UK and Ireland.
