I’m kind of stuck and wondering what or how people track referrals? I am starting to call my customers for next season booking. I wanted to offer them a discount for a referral. But I dont want to give the discount unless the referral books a job. The offer is going to be constantly running and I want to make sure everyone get’s their discount and I get my money. IE I dont want a customer to give me a referral the morning of service and think they are going to get the discount. Heck I can give a business a ton of names, but that does not mean those names are going to purchase. So what’s some of the methods you guys are using to make sure your not getting cold name potentials? I would perfer to give them the discount after their referral has booked or been serviced. I don’t want to give them the discount for next years service for a referral from this year. Hope this makes sence.
I actually do this myself and it listed everywhere including my flyers and especially my website both for residential and commercial accounts.
Once someone calls from a referral they give us the name of the person who referred them and once the job is completed they get to chose between $25 amazon card, $25 walmart gift card or $25 discount on their next window cleaning job, most choose discount on their next window cleaning or a free clean with the commercial ones.
Both work pretty well and I do some nice size homes in exchange for the $25 referral, they are happy and I’m happy as most of my jobs tend to be around $450 and upwards anyway.
I highly recommend it, just continue pushing that side of things with your business when doing estimates making them aware… plus postcards reminders etc
My policy has always been that when one of my clients refers me for a complete inside and out window cleaning job, Upon completion of that job, they will be able to chose between three different types of gift cards.
A huge chunk of advertising dollars that I will spend this year will be postcards - referral based only. I want to eliminate calling my customers to ask for anything. The only calls I want to make is one to follow up to see if the job was done right or possibly just to thank them for their business.
I’m also looking into creating the gift card idea online where I send them to my web site for them to chose which way they want their $25.00
Something I’ve seen done and am contemplating doing myself, is to give someone 10% off for every referral they give you that books. They may even get a free cleaning, but you get 10 new customers. It sounded like a good idea to me. You could even print some business cards with numbers all around the border and mark them off each time one of the referrals books. That serves three purposes: First, the customer always has your contact info with them, makes it easier to call you for service. Second, why would the customer want to use anyone else when they have a discount coming to them? Third, you can get peoples attention by advertising free window cleaning (just make sure to mention the referral program). I think I’ve talked myself into this. Just my thoughts.
This is something I am working out now. I’m thinking of maxing the referral to 40% or 4 referrals. I do like your “Free window cleaning” pitch though and now you have me thinking 
I can’t take credit for it. I’ve seen it somewhere, just can’t remember where. My thinking on the free cleaning for the customer is this: Yes you have to clean a house for free, but take your average size house and multiply that by 10, and that’s what the customer gave you. I think it’s worth it.
