

B2B referral sales systems – the outbound growth engine most startups never use - SteliE
http://blog.close.io/how-to-do-referral-sales

======
andrewcross
This:

“It seems like we're a great fit. I'm excited. Before we go any further
exploring a potential deal I want to bring up that we're fully focused on
building world class technology and on servicing and supporting our customers
to massive success. What that means is that we're not investing in marketing
and sales as heavily because our happy customers are referring us to others
who could benefit from our product. Does that sound like a fair arrangement to
you?”

What a great way to phrase the ask. Switches from you pressuring them for the
referral to making them want to help.

~~~
hajrice
This is very typical way of approaching sales and arrangements in the sales
world. Sandler sales and a lot of other sales techniques / principles apply
this, and I've seen it work wonders

------
ivankirigin
Steli and I just chatted about this one, and I love it.

I help make YesGraph, a referral recruiting tool. We're just getting started
ramping up sales, so something like referrals that keeps the new leads warm is
wonderful. Plus the marketing message that we are all about the referrals
writes itself.

~~~
SteliE
Never seen a case where referral sales makes more sense than at YesGraph :)
Excited to see the results you guys are going to get from implementing this!

------
jsonne
Fantastic post. I did a rough version of this for a while and it works great.
One thing I didn't think of was closing the feedback loop like you suggested.
Usually I did that myself through the form of a casual gift (beer, etc) but I
can see your way being much more effective.

Its really amazing how well this works too. I recently made the jump from tech
to advertising, and I actually built us to ramen profitable doing exactly
this. The trick was a bit of pro bono work at the beginning to light the fuse.

------
esharef
Hey Steli, quick question: You suggest we should ask for the referral right
when the customer makes the purchase. In the case of a SaaS solution (like
ours) they haven't experienced the product at all right when they make the
purchase...isn't it better to wait until they have experienced the product to
ask for a referral (eg when they've had a success on the platform)?

~~~
SteliE
Yeah that's what most people think (and sometimes it's the right approach).

For most SaaS apps your customer had a chance to experience the product on a
free trial of some sorts.

If they are convinced enough to buy many will be ready to recommend.

Asking for it at that point only shortens the referral sales cycle (you don't
have to schedule a separate call for this since you're already talking to
them) and once you've closed the positive feedback loop they can start giving
you more referrals (and at that point they've probably been a customer for a
month or two).

Starting earlier just makes this gain a lot more momentum faster.

------
23andwalnut
What do you think about having this process automated? The initial ask can be
an automated email and if the person wants to do a referral they can grab an
email template via a link included in the email. I'm asking because many
businesses don't speak to their customers unless they have an issue or a post
purchase question....

~~~
SteliE
Yeah that's a fair point. If you don't talk to your customers today it might
make sense to automate this via email.

Most likely you will have a much lower success rate since the biggest point of
conversion in the approach outlined in the post is at the "2nd ask" (which is
hard to do via email).

But it's a lot better than not asking for referrals in the first place :)

Would love to hear what kind of results you would see doing this!

------
veesahni
How applicable is this approach for a low-touch B2B SaaS business? We don't
have active sales communications with customers, it's more of a value creation
during the trial period.

I have noticed that customers referred by their friends (without us asking)
move through the process very quickly. They already trust us.

~~~
SteliE
You might wanna try sending customer lifecycle emails to customers after a few
weeks pitching them on referring you to their friends and see how well this
performs.

I don't have first hand experience in automating this via email. My experience
has been exclusively with phone sales so far.

------
dsugarman
what about referral incentives?

~~~
SteliE
oh that's a good point! I need to edit that into the original post :)

I've found that in B2B you don't want to "pay" for referrals and that people
are more likely to make them when they feel like they are providing value to
their network without any selfish incentives.

Once in a while someone will ask for it and it's up to you to decide if you
want to give people a discount or something else for helping you close new
business. I personally think that's reasonable when asked but wouldn't offer
it upfront.

~~~
dhfromkorea
Really interesting insight, Steli. Did you ever offer a discount up front to
get reluctant customers to introduce you to a new business[1]? If so, could
you share how it turned out?

[1] those who likely know a business to introduce you to and are seemingly
willing to do so, based on the maturity of the relationship with you and them.

------
BorisMelnik
kind of angry this got found. use this all day everyday as my entire system.

------
sbhere
Does B2B refer to "business-to-business" in this case?

------
iterable
nice one Steli

------
notastartup
what's the tech behind the close.io app? looks like a thin layer client such
as node-webkit running bootstrap or HTML5 of some sort.

I wonder how it's doing the VOIP and Email.

I absolutely loved the demo video on close.io, it's the only demo video where
I knew exactly what was going on because they slowed it down.

~~~
philfreo
Thanks for asking! I wrote a blog post about it:

[http://blog.close.io/the-tech-stack-behind-close-io-sales-
co...](http://blog.close.io/the-tech-stack-behind-close-io-sales-
communication)

~~~
notastartup
Wow thanks for the answer!

Where do you host the backend? I think Flask is a great choice, it is easier
to deal with than writing a backend in Node.js.

