Take customers out to dinner?

[BerksLawn]

Do any of you reward your customers who help you get other customers? Well this one guy we started cutting his and picked up 5 more on the same street. He also has got us 5 other ones and going out to estimate a 2 acre yard tomorow. If we get this yard we will more then likely be getting a ztr:D FINALLY. He's a nice man invites us to his memorial day party and has even offered us Baltimore Raven tickets. We are pretty good friends with him now and if he's home he will always have all the toys up and even give us soda on hot days. Even bought us ice cream one time the truck went by. If we only had more customers like this. Anyway my dad is thinkin of taking my mom, him and his wife out to dinner. Any thoughts?

Thanks,
Steve

[fireball]

Lunch or dinner, it is still a good idea to show customer apreciation. Of course I like to eat well and when you go somewhere really nice, you are going to spend in the $70.00 plus range per couple which may be your monthly profit for that particular job.

Our offical policy on job referrals is that the customer referring get a 15.00 credit on their monthly bill, wether we get the job or not. They cannot get more than one 15.00 credit per month(cause some customers become super salesmen when they realize that they can make their lawn bill go away)

[Toroguy]

A customer gets me five more on the same stop I will take them to dinner in a limo. One night of fun for a weeks mow tab that wouldn't have been there without the referral. Let your accountant figure the thing out... and go - man - go!

[crew]

Amen to that, two toros. I used to ask my customers for referrals and seldom got any - until I offered $40 off the next invoice.
You have to keep the wheels greased.

[Brickman]

If you get that many referals the guy must be a heck of a sales man. I have tried incentive for referrals. Didn't work, but then what I was offering was chicken feed compared to what you guys are talking about. That was when I NEEDED the work. Now I turn work down all the time. So there isn't much point in paying for some thing that I will more than likely turn down.

[Bunton Guy]

I stay as far away from my customers personal life as possible.

[AGG Lawn Maintenance]

Fireball how about 10% off for each referral if you close on the deal? Even if you cut one house for free you pick up ten customers. Referrals beat any form of advertizing hands down.
Say for example the customers bill is $100 a month if they get 10 customers to sign its free for just that month. So the ??? is would you ratther have $100 or $1000. This works very well for us.
Travis:D

[mowerman90]

For every referal I get I send the refering customer a "Mow Money" certificate good towards any service I offer. Kinda corny, but hey, it works for me.

[Patrick Harvey]

mowerman90,
What an excellent idea! I love your picture on the bill, LMAO:D
Thank you for sharing it. Im workin on mine tonight!
Patrick Harvey
Harvey Lawn Care
Providence, KY

[Sean Adams]

In general, people love doing business with friends...or at least people they perceive as friends. Providing bonuses, incentives, thank you's, gifts, etc...all fall in line with excellent customer service practices.... Taking a client out to dinner...maybe...just make sure you remember to invite the husband too...Don't want to get fired because of your "generosity"

Sean Adams

[JimLewis]

I agree with Sean and The Toro Man. I'd definitely reward a customer like this!

First of all, we offer a free month of service for every lawn care customer who is referred to us. So with our company, this guy would have just gotten 5 free months. I have one customer who's gotten 3 free months in the last year.

But if you don't have such a policy, and even if you do, it can only help to take them to dinner.

As a rule of thumb - the more a person feels good about you, the more business they will do with you and business they will send your way. Going out to dinner, golf, boating, etc. can only help.

This is what a lot of contractors (and especially LCOs) don't understand. Almost every client who calls is trying to size you up and get a feel for you. It's critical to become good with people, a good salesman, a good listener, and be able to read people. That's why I always prefer to give a bid in person if I can. If I can meet someone face to face my chances of landing the job go way up.

And the more time I can spend chatting with the prospective client, the higher my chances of landing the job. Of course, you can't just sit around and loiter. But if I see something I can bring up I do it. (e.g. "Oh, you golf?" ...... "Oh, you have kids? Me too! How many? How old?" ...... "I see you went to OSU, so did I! Where did you live on campus?" etc.....)

Sorry, I am getting off onto another [related] topic here. I just thought I'd throw this stuff in as a tip for new people maybe reading this.

[LawnLad]

I would rather keep my personal life and business life as separate as possible - and don't want to be too close to my customers. I would rather give the customer a discount or coupon for referring business - send a thank you card with each new customer referred, and send a gift basket or ball game tickets, etc. Whatever is in your budget.

I don't know that I want a customer knowing how I choose to spend my money. If you take someone to dinner, it really gives you a chance to see one's buying and service attitude. Are you really going to be yourself? Too many opportunities for differences of opinion to come up when the meal isn't cooked right, the service sucks, you spend "too" much on apetizers or dessert or drinks. One can evaluate or form opinions on money management from an experience like this - will the customer think you are cheap? Frugal? Wasteful? A spend thrift? If you don't manage your money well in his opinion, he'll begin to question his bill and wonder if he's overpaying so that you can live your "extravagant" life style. It's not a reality - but perceptions are their own reality. Hence the reason I keep the relationships professional only.

[gogetter]

I would definetly reward him for the extra work he has provided for you, but I would make it in the form of a gift certificate to a nice restaurant and a thank you card.

[JimLewis]

I understand where LawnLad is coming from but I disagree that it's really a concern. I don't think most sane people are that judgemental. I know most of the people I work with are not. And if this guy is just throwing business your way I find it hard to believe he's gonna all of a sudden take a dinner out as meaning anything other than it is. And to be honest, if I had a client start to judge me because of a "lavish" dinner out, I'd start to question THEM. That's a little too snooty and presumptious for me.

For someone to make assumptions and judgements about how I spend my money based on a dinner out is bordering rude. But like I said, I don't think most people are like that. I think most people appreciate things like this. I know I do.

I like the gift certificate idea too, as gogetter suggested. That is definitely a good option. I've done that several times over the years.

It's all up to you. You know this customer better than we do. But if it were me and I felt the person was pretty cool and I had a good feeling about their personality, I'd take them out.

I'm going golfing with a great client of ours in a few weeks. He's spent $4k with our company this year alone. I know for sure he doesn't see it as me being overly "lavish".

[tlcservices]

are you all stupid? you work FOR these people. if you make enough to take them to dinner i dont understand. i would like alll my clients not to waste 10 mins per week bs with me and just ask ME to eat at there house and we can discuss anything they want

[JimLewis]

are you all stupid? I Guess so. :rolleyes:

[Toroguy]

:rolleyes: It's called reading comprehension...comprehend?

[fireball]

AGG, I know where you are coming from. My only comment is that when you motivate customers financially it becomes less a referral and more like a sales promotion. The perfect example of this is MCI friends and family program. Look at the MCI customer base today. When you have customers who are motivated by money saved, the customers that they bring tend to be motivated by price and not the exceptional service that you provide. Another sell by one of their friends and they are gone.

Now, have a perfect stranger come up to one of your existing customers and say to them "I admire the job being done on your property, who does it? What a ego boster for your customer, he/she just had a perfect stranger tell them that they are getting their moneys worth. The adjectives that they use to describe you and your services will be far greater than if they are trying to sell you to someone who really doesn't care

[JimLewis]

fireball, I don't really think it works that way. Your post seems to suggest that when we offer a reward for referring customers that they will become super-salesman geeks for us and start randomly soliciting others on our lawn care service, even without the others showing an interest. I don't think that's the case.

I'll concede that when they know there's going to be a financial incentive they're going to be a little more encouraging to others and maybe brag a little more about their "lawn care service" when asked. But I don't think they purposely go out and try to hard sell their friends and neighbors just to get the referral bonus.

I am pretty sure most of the referrals we get are a result of "Hey, your lawn looks good. Who takes care of it? How much does it cost you?" rather than "Hey, let me tell you about our new lawn care service!!!"
The referral bonus we provide may create more of an incentive for them to go get one of our cards right away. But I don't think it makes them go overboard, as you suggest.

At the very least, I could envision what you suggest happening on rare occasion by some overzealous people. But I don't think it's very common and in 5 years of offering a referral credit I've yet to experience it.

Currently, I get a referral bonus from my lasik eye surgeon ($200), my ISP (one month free) my Satellite TV provider ($20 off my bill) and others. And I haven't gone out of my way to refer any of these services to my friends and family. But when someone mentions their thinking of eye surgery I will say, "Hey, check out Dr. Teplick. I went to him and he did a great job." or if they mention they're thinking of getting satellite TV I will say "Well, if you end up signing up for the Dish Network, tell them I referred you. I'll get some sort of bonus." And that's about it. I think that's pretty normal.

[fireball]

Jimlewis, I wasn't too sure if I was explaining myself but you got the geist of it. My point is that you have to control the financial reward, having an openended 10% will let people run with it. A lot has to do with our markets. Portland has sane people and things are spread out, you can get around. Philadelphia is a far more complicated market. You could spend hours going from one side of Philadelphia to the other so you tend to try and get the next door neighbor instead of going to see some dear friend who only lives two miles away.

How much is lasik surgery out there. The first surgeons out here were getting $2,000.00 per eye. Now the scrubs(yes there are scrub surgeons) are charging $595 per eye . It has been interesting to see the attacks on each other. The 595 guys give you the illusion that it is 100% succesful. The high price guys point out a small failure rate and why would you trust your eyes to K-mart.

Our Dish Network here does not do referrals. They will be lucky to have anything left after the phone/isp companies get done with them installing fiber optic. Actually they are my heroes since they get to charge people $50.00 per month for something that floats through the air for nothing.

[JimLewis]

Ok. Well that makes sense. All of our lawns are centered in a very dense 2 city area and our lawns are close together. So I guess it makes more sense for me.

As for Lasik, yes, there are a lot of cheapskates out there. I had a VERY high amount of correction (-13.5 in one eye and -11.5 in the other) along with -1 in each eye of astigmatism. So I wasn't about to let any scrub surgeon mess with my eyes. In this range, the success rate is only about 60-80% with one surgery. I didn't want to have to go back so I found the best surgeon I could. He used to be the head resident at the Mayo clinic, was one of the first in the country to perform the procedure, and has over 10K surgeries under his belt. It cost me $4,500 and worth every penny!

[Tony Harrell]

Just my opinion, I'd rather just ask them and send them a thank you card. I have an excellent rapport with my customers and they even ask me how my business is going and send people my way. About taking them out to dinner, people can get offended at the slightest thing. Heck, if I get to know them that well, they might offend me.

[m&m]

i know this is off subject a lil bit, but does that lasik really work good for long term...........thinking bout doing it myself

[crazygator]

And now we know why some of us never have to struggle to find new customers, and others have to scratch for every one they have. Its all customer service. If you dont do it or have it, you will struggle.

This applies in every business, not just ours. Look around, the ones that succeed are the ones that stress customer service through out their entire company. Maybe you should try it, it just might work for you too. :D

I say take them out to lunch or dinner and have a great time. And enjoy all the other business they will throw your way after the fact. And good for you having a good business sense with your customer service!

[BerksLawn]

Well now that I see my old post came up I guess I should tell you all what happened. Well we never took him to dinner we were going to but we no longer cut his lawn. He said it was nothing we did wrong and he loved the job we did but his 13 year old son is cutting the grass now because he needs the money to play paintball. Nothing wrong with that I guess but it dont look as good without them stripes, but we still trim the bushes. But I think its right if you have a customer that treats you good you should treat them good back and your business will grow. We now have tooken the signs off the truck because word of mouth is good enough for us now and we have more then enough work. Well we would if it wasn't for this darn drought. But I think every company needs to have good company service and your business will grow, believe me ours sure has.

Later,
Steve

[bob]

DON'T take them out to dinner. I remember a thread about a member who decided to have a cook out for all his customers. He had bought enough food for 90 people. He picked one of his customers up and the rest were suppose to meet him at a park. Guess what, nmo one showed up. He donated the food to charity. Stay way from your customers personal lives.

[SLS]

The client who brings me an accepted referral gets one free cut (a $40 to $50 savings in most cases) per incident.

They are happy to save the money and I don't have to worry about whether they would prefer chow mein or burritos.

This Christmas I will be sending my 'favored' clients gift certificates to Cracker Barrel. Seems that everyone around here likes that place....especially the "old folks". :D