It's not your fault; but the way you've been trained to ask for referrals is pushy, obnoxious, and downright embarrassing. It does nothing to further your relationship and you hate it and your clients hate it. You've been trained to ask real clever questions like, who are the three couples you'd invite to a dinner party. Choke, puke, gag. If you're actually using these highly manipulative tactics stop it and stop it right now. There isn't any reason for you to stoop to these high pressure approaches to get the referrals you need.

The biggest thing for you to remember about referrals is that you have to earn them. Just because someone penned their name to some paper work doesn't mean you have in any way shape or form earned a referral. You earn a referral when you exceed a customer's expectations and that takes a little time.

Now there are ways to accelerate the process and make it something they voluntarily do without any hesitation. Think about why you recommend someone to the people you know. You do it because in your opinion they provided: more value than the competition, service with integrity, more quality in how they fulfilled their service, etc. If you take away nothing else from this article take this one idea and never forget it. Whatever everyone else is doing don't do that. And that absolutely means never approach referrals the way you've been trained.

One of the quickest ways to accelerate the referral process, provided you are capable of exceeding your customer's expectations, is to make something about your service so valuable that they'll want to share it with their friends. If you want to make prospecting a piece of cake start looking at how other service providers outside your industry market themselves really well, and adapt it to your situation. Viral marketing is one of the most powerful marketing tools ever.

Websites like YouTube and MySpace are prime examples of viral marketing. These websites get tons of traffic because they engage and entertain the visitors. Those visiting these websites blast all their friends directing them back to the website. You're probably a little confused about what the heck these websites have to do with you, referrals, and insurance sales at this point.

There's an easy connection here that you can make that will lead to unasked for referrals. Simply add enough value for your clients that they want to tell their friends about you. This could be through information, perhaps developing an entertaining to demonstrate how to get what they want, or maybe providing exclusive opportunities. When you've done your job right and you make it easy for them to share with the people they know; you've got a viral referral system bringing qualified leads into your sales funnel. Stop thinking like a boring insurance sales person and start thinking like a super successful insurance sales person.