$2million dollars of investment.

That's what Warmly, have just proven.

Referrals Are Some Of The Most Valuable Leads You Can Get

Here are a few statistics from Social Media Today:

  • 78% of B2B marketers say that referral programs generate good or excellent leads.
  • 60% of marketers say that referral programs generate a high volume of leads.
  • 54% say that referral programs have a lower cost-per-lead than other channels.
  • Marketers rate referrals as the 2nd-highest source of quality leads.

We all know that getting a referral through an existing customer relastionship is one of the best places to start a sales conversation. The hard yards of diligence have been done on your behalf.

"Beth wouldn't have introduced me to Alex if his solution or service was not great, she raves about it and him"

Of course, this is only the beginning of the sales process, and there is no guarantee you will win the business, but you are starting off in a much stronger position.

In the digital world, where 52% of the world's population is now on social media, everyone is connected to someone.

LinkedIn is now tracking at 706million members and growing. 

The only thing that is holding organisations back in all of this is a lack of understanding of the technology that is out there to uncover all of this. 

Then what to do with it.

Yes of course, there is CRM, but is that data up to date?

 Simple solution to this, check out Introhive - Mircrosoft and Salesforce have similar tech in their own stacks too.

Next is LinkedIn Sales Solutions Sales Navigator, enterprise edition. This gives you TeamLink and TeamLink extend. This creates a virtual map of your organisation relationships. 

At scale, it is a game changer. 

A 200,000 employee plus Consulting and Accounting firm has well over 10k licences. They can get to pretty much any CXO on the planet through their own referral network. FTSE 100, Fortune 500 and more. 

Look at what tech you can integrate LinkedIn data into via your Sales Navigator license in their SNAP programme.

Want to get more sophisticated? Check out RelSci - this takes relationship capital to the next level, helping you access the more opaque, private relationships.

Want to calculate what the potential value of your referral network is?

  • Assume an average deal size of $10,000.
  • Assume you have 1000 employees who can make one unique and relevant introduction through their network to start a sales conversation.
  • 1000 multiplied by $10,000 = $10million of additional pipeline.
  • Now look at your customers, can they make a referral for you?
  • Look at where you customers have now gone to, is that a referral opportunity?

If you are able to calculate your CAC (cost of acquistion) then you will be able to show savings here due to shortened sales cycles, for less marketing costs and prove the ROI on your technology investments to enable this. 

Happy CFO. 

This is a boardroom conversation, if they understand the potential business opportunity their employees have in their network, I guarantee the investment conversation will be easier.

Next is delivering a sales transformation / effectiveness / enablement programme to ensure that employees understand the Why and What's in it for me?

Measurement is key, you need a robust CRM strategy and sales operating model to track all of this.

When you start to prove this works, you will leave the competiton for dust.

Don't believe me? I will show you. 

Welcome to the world of Relationship Selling.