How did I discover this?

I credit this technique to a former gym owner/trainer who happens to be pretty savvy at marketing!

He would do something extremely clever when someone was calling into this gym for the first time.

He would put them onto a free class or a free private training session. While he was on the phone with them, he would say,

"Okay, great. I have your appointment booked for Tuesday at 7:00 PM. Make sure you bring a change of clothes, a water bottle, and whatever else you need!

And I'll tell you what, Jim... do you have any friends or family members that's that want to join you? We'd love to have them come in too!"

And 90% of the time these people would either say,

"Um, yeah, yeah. I think I have someone..."

Or there would be people that were much more enthusiastic and would reply,

"Oh yeah, definitely! I'm allowed to bring a friend?!" and he'd reply, "Yeah, absolutely! Bring a friend! Bring, bring ALL your friends if you want!"

Of course you're not having people come to a physical location, you are most likely arriving at your customer's home or office.

So instead of asking a prospect if they have friends who could accompany them, you ask if they have friends who could benefit from this service.

The Script

This particularly works well if you receive a job inquiry from outside your serviceable zone.

So let's just pretend that you get a phone call and someone asks, "Hey, I would love to get my house cleaned... I lived in ___ city." and that location is outside your service area.

What you could tell them is,

"Your location is a little bit outside of our serviceable zone, but I'll tell you what... We have a policy where as long as we have two homes in one location, we'll extend how far we'll travel out.'

'So do you have any friends or family members that you think could benefit from the service? We'd love to provide a great service for them too!"

And now you've done two things.

One, you've potentially earned yourself more business, just from this referral.

You've also established the rule of reciprocity where now this person is going to feel inclined to give you at least one or two (or more) referrals because you're offering to service their home when you normally don't.

So that's the rule of reciprocity. It's very powerful!!