Setting Up A Referral Program

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It's Louis Massaro and welcome to another episode of the Moving Mastery Podcast.

All right, what's up guys? So before I head home for the night, go get some dinner. I just got done with five coaching calls with private clients where I work with them one on one to advance their business. And you know, a couple times today referral programs came up, right? It's something that I do teach in Moving Sales Academy, the online course as well as the seminar. Alright, so you know, with your referral program, everybody wants more repeat and referral customers, right? Like I said today, I spent a lot of time with my private clients. Five different calls today and you know, two of them, we were going through their marketing ROI report and kind of looking through what, you know, what lead sources are profitable, what lead sources aren't profitable. And we, you know, it's obvious that the best lead source you can get is a repeat customer or referral customer. Right. Because they're free, you're not paying for them. Right. But we need to be more proactive in finding them. And you know, there's a lot of people go out and look for these referral partners. They look to bring on realtors and mortgage brokers and apartment complexes to start referring them moves. But most people, including myself when I first started, right? I mean, one of my 10 rules of a profitable moving company is go pound the pavement. However, you know, as I learned later on, if you're going out and you're establishing relationships and you're talking to people and you're, you know, making those connections, but you don't have a solid referral program in place. In other words, you don't have it organized in, you know, exactly how you're going to maintain it and keep track of it, how you're going to make those payouts to the people that are referring you moves. Because it's not just about getting the moves from them, it's about and then referring, you know, like saying you're going to give them something, you'll give them a kickback or whatever. You need a structured program. And I've seen it happen too many times where, you know, people with really good intentions are like, hey, listen, I need to get more moves. I want to go, you know, network with some realtors, I want to go network with some mortgage brokers, I want to go network with some home builders, I want to go network with some storage units, some apartment complexes and they get fired up and they go out and they start pounding the pavement. Right. Kind of like I did when I started And I see it fall apart for people, right? The whole effort loses steam and it loses momentum because there's no program behind it to support it. So, you know, the idea is that you want to have the referral program in place, Alright, I know it might sound like, of course I do, but hear me out here. If you've ever gone out and you've ever, you know, again made the connections, you're like, hey, you meet a realtor, you go do a presentation at a real estate office, you go into apartment complex, you talk to them, you bring them some donuts, whatever it is, if there's no solid process for keeping that going, it's going to fall apart, period, right? You might have some people that still trickle in and send you some business, but if there's not a strong process in place, it's gonna fall apart, right? So I have a program that's called the Moving Points referral program. It's something that I used to help establish a referral program my company that allowed us to, you know, really fuel that, right? Because it's not about, you know, hoping and praying. Like, I hope I get some repeat customers, I hope they refer business to me. It's something that you could essentially add fuel to, right? But like anything, if it's not structured and it's not organized, it's going to fall apart. So, you know, if you think about it, you think about the people in your program, you know, we automatically, we start thinking about, you know, again, the realtors, the mortgage brokers, the apartment complexes, the home builders, the storage units. Those are the people we start thinking about immediately. But the reality is anyone can be in your referral program. Meaning, you know, I used to have, I mean, because we had the referral program structured, right? It's called the Moving Points referral program. Because we had that structured and it was organized, right? We knew how to keep track of them, we knew how to pay them out. They knew what they were getting, what they, you know, the prizes, the money, the gift cards, all of that was laid out and very crystal clear in the program that all I had to do was go feed it, right? So I had, you know, teams in all my different cities, right? So like one person in each city that would go out and, you know, bring in more referral partners. However, you know, even places that I would go, people would know and say, oh, you're in the moving business, you have a moving company? Yeah, they would refer me moves. Like I had waitresses at restaurants that I don't know where they, I Don't know if they asked everyone that sat down at their table, like after they asked about the appetizers, if they were moving. But she sent us a bunch of moves, right? I had my barber sending a bunch of moves. You know, anyone can send you moves, right? And you'll be more inclined to start pushing that and talking to people and giving them your business card. And on your business card on the back, there's a. For them to sign up for your referral program if you have it structured and if you have it organized, right? So, you know, it's something that, you know, once you have that referral program in place. By the way, if anybody's on here right now, let me know. You know, if you want to go and get more, give me a thumbs up. If you're like, hey, I could use more repeat and referral business. I just want to make sure that this is a topic that, you know, is important to you, right? I mean, it's Friday night here, I'm ready to go eat some dinner and. And I want to make sure that I got this message to you because I just, again, I got off the call with my private clients. We were going over this with two of them. And you know, again, it's also something where you don't want to.

You don't want to.

Go out, meet people, get them in your program. The program falls apart, right? There's nothing worse. How many of you have, you know, started a new initiative, right? You get fired up about something, you're like, hey, I'm going to start this new thing. I'm going to get it in place, I'm going to get it going, and you get it going for a while and then it kind of falls apart, right? It's not you. It's not that you, you know, don't have the motivation. It's not that you don't have the focus. Chances are it's that whatever that was didn't have its system in place, didn't have a process in place, right? It's the same thing for your repeat and referral customers. So if you want to fix this very simply before you go and, you know, you could basically.

You know, go out there and start bringing in people and recruiting them to your referral program. You want to make sure that you set up at least a simple, simple way to organize them. You know, you could do it in an Excel spreadsheet. There's software programs out there. You can do it, but you have to structure it, okay? You have to understand, where is it that they're gonna get the.

In other words, where your referral partner is gonna come from. How are you gonna track them? Right? Are you gonna assign them numbers? How are you gonna track them in your CRM to know when to pay them out? What is that payout schedule? When can they expect it? Are there prizes or is it just, you know, gift cards and things like that? What Lay out the whole structure, okay. More importantly, how you're gonna keep track of it and who's gonna be in charge of it. Right. You wanna remember if you've ever seen me teach the mover's profit circle, okay? The mover's profit circle basically starts off with marketing, then it goes to sales, then it goes to dispatch, then it goes to your movers. Then it goes to customer service, then it goes to networking. Alright? So networking, even though it's one of the first things that I did to get my business off the ground in the movers profit circle and what I believe you should do now and what works for my clients, that should be done after everything else is in place. Alright? This is something that you know before you go out and start networking, you need to make sure your marketing is on point. You need to make sure your sales process is all on point, right? There's no sense in going out and getting new leads and getting people to come in if you don't have that process where you lead people through to get the job booked. Then your operations, right? From your dispatch to your movers, how you're controlling the men, the trucks, the inventory, making sure customers are happy, that all needs to be taken care of. Reporting on the movers and the claims, that's part of the movers profit circle, right? Then you go up to your repeat and referral customers. How do you get more of them? Right? How do you get the customers that already move with you once to come back and move with you again? I teach that at moving sales academy. It's called the re engagement campaign. And then you start working on your referral program. All right? So I would say that you definitely, definitely need to just start by saying, all right, I have this program in place because here's what it's going to do for you. Here's the number one thing that having a referral program in place and literally get out a piece of paper, write it down, just kind of outline what you're going to do, how you're going to pay them, how you're going to keep track of it.

And once you have that, that builds your confidence to say you know what, I could just go out there now and I could have it on the back of my business cards. Hey, join our referral program, right? People want to make extra money out there in the world, right? You know, I don't care if it's an Uber driver could be driving around Ubering people and say, hey, you guys need to move. I know a great moving company. Anyone will refer you if you want, are on point with the way you pay them. You pay them quickly, right? And it's very transparent as to how the program works. That's how you'll start building up a referral network. Listen, I hope this was helpful. I hope that if you have tried to retain some referral partners in the past and maybe it's kind of fallen off or you're like, yeah, that's something I need to get back on. Set up the program. Set up the actual referral program first, then go and feed that and watch how that starts to bring in the business. Alright guys, have an amazing weekend. I'll see you later. Talk to you soon.

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