Be wary of client incentive schemes

 


 
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Client incentive schemes seem to be an appealing tool for leveraging better results from your business networking strategy. Work is referred your way, the referrer gets a little reward, and everyone wins - right?

Giving sales advice and business development tips in his new show on yourBusinessChannel, networking expert Andy Lopata suggests that client incentive schemes are not all they’re cracked up to be.

People who pay for referrals may be missing the wider point, he says in his sales advice. If you are having to pay a person to refer you, then there might be something seriously wrong with your current business networking strategy.

In his business networking advice on the show, Lopata explains what motivates someone to refer business, in an ideal scenario. To refer business, a referrer needs have total confidence in the quality and reliability of your products and services, and they need to be proud of their association with you.

Lopata’s business networking advice is to concentrate on inspiring this kind of confidence and pride in others. In time, this will bring referrals, more so than financial inducements.

After all, he says in his sales advice on the show, if one of your business contacts has real faith in you, why would they need money to be encouraged to refer you? And if they don’t believe in you, what amount of money could be worth the potential damage to their reputation of making a bad referral?

This is the problem with client incentive schemes and with paying for referrals in general. Lopata believes this also explains why they are rarely a very effective business sales strategy.

Start by focusing on the product or service you offer, says Lopata. Make sure it is worthy of referring. That should be the foundation of you business networking strategy.

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