Having a referral program that you’re excited about is such a powerful tool. 

If you’re excited, your clients are going to be excited. 

If you’re NOT excited, your clients aren’t going to give a shit. 

My clients are super pumped about the referral program, and they KEEP talking about it for YEARS after their sessions. I have multiple clients who have referred me over 10 people over the years. One of my client has sent me over 20 referrals! 

Based off my $5500 average investment, that one client has helped me gross over $110,000. 

It is important to note that this referral program is built to work for my business, but can be easily altered to work for YOUR business! There are a lot of referral programs floating around out there, and no matter which program you adapt for your business, it is only going to work for you if you customize it so that you are excited about it.

If you are not excited about your referral program, why would your clients be excited about it? 

This is a multi-part system, and I think that is what makes it work so well. Randomly dropping a one-liner about your referral program will not gain you much traction. The bread-crumb trail I have created will make this a much bigger part of your client experience. I love rewarding good behavior, and I absolutely love working with referrals. Usually when someone is referred to me by a past client, they book easily and they usually spend like the client who referred them! 

I do same-day reveals for my clients, but this program can be altered for your business if you are doing reveals days (or weeks) after the session, too.

This system also works if you are not currently doing In-Person Sales.

You will definitely get more out of this referral program if you are chatting with your client in person about the referral program. I talk to my clients on the phone 2 times before their session (booking phone call and pre session consultation), and I send them a series of emails to prep them for their session [see my full client workflow here:

]. I save all of the referral program stuff for after the shoot. 

A few reasons.

For one, I want my client to fully invest in their session with me for their first shoot. I want them to value the experience so much that they will spend all of their money on it. So that when their friends ask how much it cost, they tell them what they spent and say “it was so worth it.” This way, the friends they refer to me know the investment and don’t question the value. 

Second, their friend has to hold their session and their ordering appointment and pay in full for their images before the original client can redeem the referral credit. It wouldn’t do my clients any good to get the referral information before their shoot. I book 4-6 months in advance at least, so it takes a while for referral credit to be able to be redeemed. 

Third, I also don’t keep any of my clients images that they don’t purchase from their shoot, so it’s not like they can spend the credit on a past session. The referral credit is really only valid for booking a future shoot. 

Anyways, let’s get to it!