OK, Steve, now you have me interested. On one hand a few days ago you said only give your Cheerleaders Value Added Service PLUS a hand written thank you note. But I also note you promote giving a “kickback” with the Jon-Don “Free Spotter for Life” program with Jon-Don’s Spot-Out program. Is it because you are raking in big bucks on your Spot-Out commissions????
Forgive Me in San Diego
Good question, Forgive Me, but the answer is no. Because the key to the “Free Spotter for Life” program is to “throw your bread on the waters” so that it will come back to you many times more in loyal Cheerleader referrals. (Plus while I do take credit for inventing the Free Spotter for Life” program AND for bringing it to Jon-Don I don’t receive a penny in commissions on it.)
Kickbacks are given because of an action (referral) by the client. We strongly recommend you give the spotter to the customer without reservation and only then MENTION that you would appreciate any referrals.
Customers do so much better without any overt pressure from you. But once again, whatever floats your boat, my friend.
Steve Toburen
P.S. Remember, if you are targeting your marketing correctly, you should be cleaning in homes that whatever you could offer them in a kickback/referral fee/commission is nothing compared to the “good feelings” you can give just by treating the customer as a feeling human. (and by doing a good job). We call this Value Added Service in SFS and just maybe you’ll actually have to come to the seminar to learn HOW to do this stuff.
Steve has a good point about the demographic you choose and how they respond to the referral bonus.
Since we began tracking our referral rewards last year, we had 62 referrals. We dilligently sent them all a card letting them know how much reward money they had with the option to hold on to it as credit for a future cleaning or let us know if they wanted cash and we’d send them a check. We give a 10% of the job ticket for a new customer referral.
Of the 66, only 28 actually redeemed their certificate. 5 of the 28 applied it toward cleaning and the other 23 for cash. These numbers include 7 referrals from a carpet retailer who we knew from the start out on the reward, so it kind of skews the numbers a bit.
The cash ones that we did pay out that weren’t to the carpet retailer averaged over $50. Some were as high at $250! (which goes to show you the type of homes we are in…that was a $2,500 job) Imagine the good feeling it creates for the customer to receive a $250 check. They certainly are telling the rest of their “high ticket” neigbors about us knowing they can make extra couple hundred bucks so easily!
It seems if the $$$ amount is significant enough, they took the time to cash in. That being said, they do have a year from the time the certificate was issued to use it so there is potential for us to be redeeming more. However, we suspect if it’s not done right away, it will be forgotten and expire. (Howard Partridge has more concrete data on the average “redemption” for programs like this. He’s been doing it for many years and only pays out a fraction of the referrals he receives).
My point in all this, is that it just goes to show you that they don’t care about the $$ reward or we would have paid out a lot more of the referrals. As Steve said, they are referring us not for the $$, but the “good feelings”.
We still feel it’s a nice gesture and a way to keep “font of mind” to our customers when they receive their certificate in the mail from us.
Hope that helps!
Meg