Strengthening Your Employee Referral Program

Referrals are vital to the growth of your business. If you doubt the need to have a referral program for your business, consider this: a dissatisfied customer is likely to tell 12 people about their bad experience and those 12 people will each tell 6 others, while a perfectly satisfied customer will likely tell only a few friends who will generally tell no one. By implementing an employee referral program, you can turn as many employees as you would like into recruiters for your business. Using business cards as a way to engage clients is a helpful and inexpensive way to strengthen your employee referral program.

Business card printing is one of the most inexpensive forms of advertising there is! Even with options like full color, folding, and plastics, business cards are only a small part of the advertising budget. It makes sense then to incorporate them into your employee referral program.

• Create a special business card printing design that will only be used to refer customers to your business.
• Maintain your brand identity on this business card printing design.
• Choose what reward you will offer employees for clients / employee candidates they refer.
• Limit the number of referral business cards you distribute to employees.
• Convey a special honor when giving employees the referral business cards.
• Choose dependable employees to be part of the business card printing employee referral program.
• The business cards should have your contact information as well as the name of the employee who does the referring.
• Provide feedback to participating employees on the success of the program.
• Give participating employees appreciation and public acknowledgement for their contributions.

 Finally, lest you think I am recommending you leave a dissatisfied customer out in the cold, the first order of business growth is to create satisfied customers. If issues arise, be sure to settle them promptly and exceed customer expectations whenever possible. Customers who experience this quality of customer service from your business will usually become great recruiters. Once the issues have been resolved, you may want to extend the offer of referral business cards to these customers.