If you provide a service for homeowners or call on businesses located in office buildings this tip will give you a way to turn an advertising message into a referral message.

When your service technician visits a home to do some repair work, incentivize them to hang some door hangers on surrounding homes. Now, of course, everyone does that right? Well, the key to making this work is to also leave a space on the door hanger for the technician to write a note. “We just completed some work for Ted and Betty at 1933 and they thought you would like this 10% off coupon.” – all of a sudden you’ve got a referral.

You can also fire this approach up through the mail. Get a criss-cross directory that lists homeowners by street and every time you schedule some work, send a letter to surrounding neighbors with this same coupon type message. Better still, give Ted and Betty a 10% discount and quote them singing your praises in the letter.

You can take this same approach in an office building. “Hi, I was just upgrading Acme Accounting’s network and they thought you could use this 10% off coupon.”

Put your printer to use creating all kinds of these leave behinds but make sure that you leave space to turn them into referrals.