Vacation.com, North America’s leading travel services marketing organization, recently released “Customer Referral Programs: A How-To Guide to Help You Generate Better Sales Leads,” a comprehensive sales tool that member agents can download for free.

The guide provides member agents with simple steps to launch their agency’s own customer referral program, including how to determine which clients are most likely to refer others, when and how to ask for referrals, and ways to reward clients who bring in new customers.

“Implementing a customer referral program is an easy, low cost and effective strategy every agent should utilize to grow their business and increase brand awareness,” said Stephen McGillivray, Vacation.com’s vice president of Marketing and Public Relations. “This is viral marketing at its finest, as each new customer has the potential to promote a travel agent’s services to more and more people.”

Vacation.com created this new guide to assist member agents to grow their business. Referral programs are highly beneficial because they create a higher quality of leads than other sources. People are more likely to use a service that is recommended by someone they know, and referred customers are typically less price sensitive.

Furthermore, referral programs can be implemented with little or no cost. The guide details one such cost-effective approach through the use of social networking tools Facebook and Twitter, which can increase an agent’s sphere of influence when successfully integrated into their marketing plan.

“Facebook and Twitter have unique advantages when it comes to acquiring referrals. Our new guide does a great job informing members how to turn these two online tools into powerful, money-making engines,” added McGillivray.