by Catherine Brown

It always makes me happy to learn something about business from someone else and not have to “reinvent the wheel” in my professional life. Last week I was preparing for a board meeting by running Initial Call’s sales numbers for my presentation, and I used some of the very same reports that we provide to our clients on a regular basis from the sales databases we keep for them. Thanks to a sales team that puts in great notes (and SF.com technology), I could determine Initial Call’s costs to generate business both from cold calling and from client referrals.

I continue to be thankful for the many client referrals we get each year; it is so much less expensive to keep clients happy and work from their referrals than it is to generate new business from scratch.

I would like to investigate how other businesses ask for referrals, if you have any information you’d be willing to share on how you’ve found it’s best to ask for referrals, please email me at cbrown@initialcall.com.