A while ago I was inspired to download some mind mapping software, as I’ve heard it can be great for helping to think through new ideas. While I haven’t used it nearly as much as I thought I would, I found one great use for it — tracking client referrals.
I’m using Blumind to do this, primarily because it has a “portable” version that I can install in Dropbox and keep things synced across computers. It works quite well.
As our client base at Green Mellen has grown, we’ve often asked “do you remember how xx person found us?” and have to dig through emails to recall the trail. I thought it’d be neat to map them all out, and Blumind has been great for that. I simply add clients as sub-topics to the client that referred them to us and the tree slowly branches out. Below is a look at a large chunk of it (not all clients are in there yet), with the names blacked out for privacy reasons.
As you can see, there are two clients in the upper left portion that have sent us a ton of referrals. From a business perspective we work hard to stay fresh in their minds and keep them happy, and from a personal perspective we often thank them for what they’ve done and work hard to send appropriate referrals back in their direction when possible.
This has been a fun little tool to use. It’s neat to be able to see where your clients are coming from. In our case, it’s humbling to realize just how many are coming from word-of-mouth; it shows that clients are very happy with the work we’ve done, but it also helps to keep us working extra hard to make sure everyone is satisfied with the results the’re getting.
Have you ever built a visualization of your client list before? How did it work out for you?
