When it comes to building a wildly profitable referral program for your home improvement business, most companies come up short, then wonder why.

Hate to break it to you Mr. or Ms. Business Owner...

Getting random referrals here and there is simply NOT a referral program.

That’s called getting lucky.

If you’re the type to buy a lotto ticket and pray, that’s fine.

But you’re an entrepreneur or business leader of some sort so I’ll assume you’re more of the type who creates your own future - not the type to hope or wait for luck.

And let’s be real... lotto tickets are for suckers.

When there’s no rhyme or reason to how the referrals were obtained, there’s no scalability or predictability.

Now don’t get me wrong... any referral is a great one.

But the gold mine lies in knowing exactly how you got that referral.

It’s 10x more powerful than getting random referrals because it allows you to create a repeatable process to generate referral business.

A new predictable revenue stream.

Instead of one-off referrals you never hear from again...

I wrote this article to share 4 tips to build a wildly lucrative home improvement referral program by putting your customers first.

These are insider trade secrets learnt from multiple $10M-$50M home improvement company leaders and the founders of a $500M enterprise.

The math is simple... Earning more “raving fan clients” and giving them a reason to talk about you = exponential increases in referrals. Crazy, no?

Contractors often think “If I just offer them $200 for any referral who buys, they should definitely refer us”...

And 95% of “referral programs” are introduced during the sale or upon final project completion, then never mentioned again.

There are two elements of the program contractors must address if they want to build a wildly profitable customer referral program.

First, consider the offer.

What do people really want?

Second, consider the method of delivery.

People don’t refer who they don’t remember. How memorable are you?

This highlights 2 glaring problems.

1. A $200 referral for each customer that buys is a tough sell because there’s no guarantee their referral will buy so that diminishes your clients likelihood to refer.

2. When the program is presented during the sale or upon completion of project, that’s a great time to introduce the referral opportunity because the prospects emotions are high on your company/product. Referrals can come from this, but what happens in 3 months when they totally forgot the sales reps name and vaguely (if at all, let’s be honest) remember the name of your company? Referring their window company is likely one of the last things on their mind three months down the road. So how are you staying top of mind?

Here are 4 needle-moving tips to instantly pump a round of metaphorical steroids into any referral program, while making sure that your customers don’t feel harassed and it still pays you dividends:

1. Offer tangible incentive for a referral whether they buy or not, say a $100 gift card for each referral then another $100 if they buy instead of $200 up front. There are plenty of other fun ways to spice up this offer.

2. Offer free repairs. This helps get back in the house. Free repairs are often a powerful way to rekindle a relationship with the customer and generate referrals on the spot.

3. Send quarterly texts, emails and voicemail campaigns out to existing customers explaining the referral program and offering free repairs, just in case they need your help, AKA another referral opportunity.

4. After any competed project and any service, leave a personal letter to the neighborhood explaining how you helped their neighbor and how you can help them with a strong offer and call-to-action.

If you take the time to implement these 4 pillars into your referral campaign, kick back and watch the referrals flood in.

Welcome to your new Home Improvement Referrals On Demand Program.

Cheers to scaling impactful home improvement companies.

Matt Gorgolinski

P.S. - want us to do all the heavy lifting of creating the referral program, the content, a proven letter to the neighbors and staying in touch with your customers for you?

Book a call below with our team to learn how we can help you build the referral program of your companies dreams!