What is a Leads Group or a Referral Network?

Leads Groups and Referral networks are marketing initiatives taken by local small business owners with the purpose to share sales leads, business opportunities and provide support to each other with testimonials, cross-selling, joint-bid, insider information and knowledge sharing.

Sometime leads groups are referred to as Leads clubs, Trusted Networks, Leads sharing Groups, Leads exchange Groups. Chamber of commerce mixers could be referred to as leads groups too.

Traditional leads groups and referral networks are made of 10 to 30 businesses owners or representatives.

Each member of a leads group act as an Opportunity Reporters™ for other members. Wherever they hear about a business opportunity, they immediately report it their leads groups members to consider.

Well managed leads groups meet regularly (minimum 2 times a month) to review the group’s performance in passing qualified leads, strengthen peer to peer  relationship, and furthermore give opportunity to each member to present his business in front of the group. As members learn more about each other  business, they will gain trust and be more eager to give referrals.

Leads groups and referral networks are very powerful tool to receive free qualified leads and business opportunities from peers. Additionally, members  share marketing and sales ideas as well as professional advice with fellow participants

2 kinds of leads are shared in a leads group or Referral network:

• Direct Leads or referrals -”A friend is looking for a SEO company”, or “I need a new car”
• Transferred leads or Referrals – “I’ve heard AcMe is looking for a new supplier of office equipment. Call John for more information” or “Ive found this need posted on craiglist.com”

Let see how a graphic designer, James Dean, acts as an Opportunity Reporters ™ for his leads group:

James Dean is a graphic designer in Los Angeles. He loves his job and clients. He knows deep down that when a client comes to him for a graphic work it’s because the client has a much bigger project. James knows well how difficult is it to find good services providers. So, He is always trying to help, asking his clients about their needs for services other than what he could provide directly to them. He asks about their business purposes and challenges. In this way, he collects precious information and send his customers to a network of trusted providers.

James send his customers who need website search engine optimization to SEO experts, his customers who need content edition to copywriters, etc.

The system works the same way for the Seo experts who send his customers to copywriters, copywriters who send their clients to graphic designer and so on.

The world of leads groups is changing fast. Most interactions are taking place online through social media. Old fashioned leads groups are losing ground, and more and more members are quietly questioning the benefit of annual membership fees and the value for time and money of the monthly meetings.

Members of old-style leads groups are joining online leads groups in droves.  The main reason is that they have the opportunity to obtain more sales leads and business opportunities with less effort, less expense, and less time wasted in social networking that has no immediate impact on their business.

Linkcrafter sits on the nose of this revolution. In less than 3 months, Linkcrafter became the #1 leads groups and referral networks utility in the USA and in Europe.

Linkcrafter is the first company to offer such a wide range of services without requiring additional advertising or social networking efforts. It is currently hailed as the fastest, easiest, and most reliable system for getting noticed and attracting more clients.