Anyone in business will tell you there is rarely anything more powerful in driving a sale than word of mouth marketing. Someone you know opening a door to a third party will produce a higher level of success over cold calling. Tracker, or to give it its full name 'Business Referral Tracker', has been specifically designed to maximise the effect of referral based business.

One version of Business Referral Tracker has been designed for single user activity, for more details visit www.businessreferraltracker.com

Multi-user, multi-site versions can be tailored for organisations of any size and could include as much vertical integration as required giving giving management the ability, on demand, to see key information that they need to determine the effectiveness of the work being carried out by sales personnel striving to meet targets and attain higher levels of client retention.

Within the system a Line Managers are able to view a summary of all those for whom they are responsible and the level of activity that is taking place drilling down to an appropriate level of detail as and when required. Likewise those at a higher level will be able to get a real time snap shot of relationship activity across the whole company.

That main shift is in recognising that the power of professional networking lies in the perception that is engendered in the first contacts that are made. The business contact receiving a call from the company has to believe that the company is seriously interested in what it can do for the client rather than a common misperception; what the company can do for itself.

Most direct referral giving comes on the back of someone who has used a service feeling that the supplier has exceeded their expectation in level of service provided. The LG01 system for referral tracking is designed to bring a referral strategy into sharp focus leading to direct action on a daily basis to make it work and provide a simple to read reporting measure via our dash board analysis tool. 

“Business Referral Tracker” ensures that users follow a structured approach to maximising opportunity contact with each client in order to secure direct referral to others they know.

This type of activity creates a considerable amount of highly useful data which can be standardised so that the collected information can be used to give evidence on which decision making can be based. This secure web based application provides all users with a standard way in which they can log the results of referrals that have been given or received or are linked to an initial referral received. Dash boarded at the bottom of the page within the system are targets they have and their own performance is shown against those targets.

Because this data is web based line managers are able to view all their sales staff summary stats within a control page which highlights where they should be devoting their time and energy to assist in highest return. Equally at National level the summary stats per line manager can be viewed in exactly the same way. At all stages drill down to the individual user detail is available.

Having established a standard data format for key information a very large database would soon be generated that would permit serious analysis to be undertaken to gain real insight into those issues affecting conversion rates and data / evidence based understanding as to the most effective techniques for generating new business. The addition of further contextual socio demographic data would increase the power of this dataset even further.

 

Q. What’s a referral?

A. There are a number of ways in which a referral can be defined:-

At its simplest it is the passing of a contact from one person to another.

At its more complex a referral is defined as being a qualified lead, where effectively a person recognises that another requires the services or products of someone else and paves the way for the two people to contact each other.
 

Within different networking circles different definitions may apply. For example within BNI (Business Networking International), the foremost referral networking organisation in the world, a referral is defined as being;

 

 “… an opportunity to do business with someone who is in the market for your product or service.  It is not a guaranteed sale, but an open door to discuss business.”

   
Q. What’s a linked referral?

A. A linked referral is a referral given by the contact to whom you were originally referred.
 

In Business Referral Tracker (BRT) Linked Referrals can be created and monitored in order to be able track the original source of referrals.  BRT will show where the original referral came from and all subsequent referrals. It is up to the user as to when they set up a new “original”.

Q. Can I base my tracking around an event or multiple events such as one-off networking meeting?

A. Yes! Effectively the event needs to be set up as a “Contact”. The contact name in this instance would be the event, or if you belong to a networking organisation just its name. You might want to add a date to the Name to differentiate.
 

Having established the event as a contact, a referral can be generated for each new contact whose business card was collected at the event. If a user wanted to be more selective then a note can be made against the newly created contact and referrals only generated when further action is taken. At that point the “From” contact is the “Event Contact” previously entered.

Q. Is there a limit to the number of contacts I can include in Business Referral Tracker?

A. No. Bulk quantities of contacts can be uploaded. In BRT 15 contacts will be shown per page, which combined with the search and sort functionality should allow a user to quickly find relevant contacts. If for whatever reason a user needs to view all contacts click on Export To Excel and manipulate within Excel.

Q. In Targets can I set time limits?

A. Yes! Start and end dates can be established when Targets are set. Once the end date of a target has passed the Target is listed in “Past Targets” as opposed to “Current Targets”

Q. Can I import contact lists into Tracker?

A. Yes! The data exported from your proprietary software needs to be exported as a CSV file, or converted to CSV after export. Once in CSV format download the “template” provided and sort your columns into the headings identified in the template. If there are no entries for a column leave it blank, but do not delete the column header.
 

Once sorted save the file and then return to the “Contacts” page in BRT, browse for the file and then click “Upload to Tracker”

Q. What search functionality is there in Contacts?

A. Non-case sensitive full search functionality is available. The Search function queries all of your contacts not just those on view.
 

A user can also sort on any of the Underlined Column headings either in Ascending or Descending sort order.

Q. Business Referral Tracker is web based, how secure is it?

A. BRT uses a secure HTTPS connection to provides a very high level of security.  HTTPS is the same connection protocol that is used by on line banking.
 

Q. If I link documents to referrals or events are they stored on the web?

A. Yes!  One of the major benefits of BRT is all the information is stored on our secure servers enabling you to access them from anywhere you can get on to the web.

Q. Is Dashboard automatically updated?

A. Yes! The Dashboard elements are updated in real time.

 

Q. How do I know the value of referrals I give?

A. Only by asking your contacts! BRT believed it was important to include this element; however the value of the referral business a user has received is crucial and can obviously be input by the user as a matter of habit.