About the best incoming phone call a small-business person can get is one, which comes from referral from a happy customer. This means that the person on the phone is friends with or has an acquaintance with someone who already does business with that small company. And if the person they are doing business with was not happy they would've gave a terrible review instead of a wonderful review which prompted the new potential customer to call the first place.

It is important for small-business owners to recognize these calls when they come in and make sure that they handle them properly because these will be future customers. Some small businesses, which fail to recognize these incoming calls may actually turn off the customer who has called and that potential customer may call their actual customer who has referred them. This is terrible in that it will prevent future referrals from the happy customer and these small businesses did not get the advantage of having a customer become a customer who called the phone.

It therefore makes sense to teach all of your employees at your company to recognize these calls when they come in and to treat the person who called in from a referral as an actual customer. It is important consider them as your best customer you've ever had, as they quite very well could become. I hope you'll consider the philosophy of incoming telephone referrals and customer conversions in your business. Think of this in 2006.

Lance Winslow

Currently Lance is retired at age 40 and is running an Online Think Tank Forum while traveling North America. Perhaps considering something extremely challenging to do that will exercise his mind and utilize all his experiences, observations and skills. Any ideas?