Referral Features that give your sales team superstar status
Let me guess. You’ve been trying to ramp up your selling power? Naturally, you’ve already checked out the advocacy sphere and have decided that referrals are for you. Well, I have to say, you’re one smart cookie. However, while you now have discovered what advocates and prospects want from your referral program and the features you need to fulfill those wants in part 1 and part 2, you may not yet have considered what your salespeople want from your referral program to optimize their nurturing efforts.
But there’s no need to fret. At a recent tradeshow, Sarah the salesperson and I had a frank discussion and she let me in on what salespeople really want from a referral program.
“We want to be able to have our CRM integrate easily to quickly see referral leads and follow up with them,” said Sarah.
Of course, empowering your sales team to nurture referral and advocate opportunities is a top priority when trying ensure your referral programs success. After all, your referral program won’t just succeed on its own, it requires sales enablement to have the ability to nurture referrals into profitable customers and advocates into repeat referrers.
With the important part sales plays in your referral program, 5 sales referral desires were identified and 5 features were developed to spark you salespeople’s selling power.
5 sales referral desires fulfilled to turn referrals into customers
- Easily see and prioritize referral leads – Sales teams need to be able to attribute high-quality leads in Salesforce or other CRMs to a specific referral program in order to nurture and build their advocacy base.
A feature that fulfills this want: Salesforce Easy Integration
- Own your customer’s referrals – As the saying goes, rules are meant to be broken, and lead assignment rules are no exception. Salespeople want more lead, especially from relationships they’ve already established. Give your salespeople the power to break you lead assignment rules and watch you referrals flourish.
A feature that fulfills this want: Lead ownership
- Empower sales to recruit advocates – The more advocates sales can recruit, the more successful a referral program has the potential to be. Your salespeople want a referral program that enables their recruitment of advocates and facilitation of advocates through the referral process, including registering an advocate and following up on a verbal referral.
A referral feature that fulfills this want: Advocate Recruitment Tools
- Visible referral data – The full visibility of a referral’s data essential to nurture and guide the advocates to encourage continued referral action.
A feature that fulfills this want: Advocate Activity Dashboard
- Motivation – Salespeople always want to do their best. But sometimes your sales team needs a visual motivator to keep pushing the boundaries of success for your referral program. Leader boards that assign scores to a salesperson owned advocate activity taps into the competitive nature of your sales team to push them to reach their full potential.
A feature that fulfills this want: Advocate Scoring
By adding these 5 empowering sales enablement features to your referral program, you don’t only give your salespeople’s the ability to make their job easier, but deliver increased numbers of profitable referral customers and nurture advocates to keep referring.
With the addition of the salespeople’s user experience, 75% of the referral experience is covered, resulting in a drastic increase in your referral program’s performance. However, if even one user is left out of your referral program your referral results will be lacking.
In the final part of this 4 part blog, the wants and needs of the last user experience, the marketer, will be delved into and explored, so stay tuned.
In the meantime, discover how powerful obtaining all the right referral features can be by checking out these amazing referral statistics.
