I often ask clients how they’ve heard of us through email, however, after reading some of the great comments in here, I think I’ll add a “how did you hear about us” field to my contact forms.

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Name recognition is important isn’t it? I think vehicles with logos on are brilliant for that too. I often went for my shopping in one of the vans so everyone going in and out of the supermarket would see the logo.

That’s one thing I learned to do a long time ago. When we would advertise, I wanted to know if our advertising dollars were paying off. As it turned out, most of our referrals come from satisfied customers. For that reason, I was able to decrease the amount of money we spend on advertising. Now we’re using advertising more for name recognition than anything else.

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It’s great that your clients are telling you who referred them though. It will make life much easier for you. Congratulations.

But I hadn’t been asking on a regular basis if it wasn’t volunteered. There was only one person who didn’t tell me by way of preliminary and talks with a graphic designer led me to believe he found out about my through a recommendation on the designer’s site. Though it’s possible that it was the other way around, since we both have PF blogs, the client does PF, and we each have recommended the other. That’s why I’d assumed it was through my blog.

Anyway, thanks for the tip. I also try to thank people for recommendations.

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The section on client materials asking people to note where they heard of you is a great idea.

I totally agree with keeping the relationship wheel moving. It’s so important in business. I’ve been in the situation a few times, where I’ll think I’m building a relationship with another business.

Then I wind up referring a few people, don’t get any thanks and never hear from them again. And often, those are businesses that could have returned the favour of referring people back to me.

And I guess it does stop you from referring people – you do begin to feel used. And it does make you wonder exactly where their business will go.

It sounds like you’ve really got yourself organised and know how to treat referrers and also not throw marketing money down the drain. Good for you.

I include a section on client materials that I develop where I ask people to note how they heard of me.

I had recently met a friend of a friend who is a freelance writer. She started sending me quite a few referrals and I made sure that I showed her my appreciation. It is important to keep that referral wheel moving, I agree.

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Not so sure about the confidentiality thing though – I’ve never heard anybody describe that as a problem that would prevent them from saying thank you to a referrer.

I think that if the customer and the person they’d referred had been discussing your service to begin with, it’s probably a given that they’re not treating it as confidential.

I’ve had a few people not thank me for referrals. And it’s not like it bothers me a lot, them not saying thank you. But in some cases I’ve referred dozens of clients to folk who didn’t. And I’ve thought – well why bother? Maybe they can’t handle the extra business.

Maybe it would be an idea if you asked your clients if they minded you thanking the referrer, then you have no worries.