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How to get referrals

Guest post by: Seth Godin

Article Overview: There's been thousands of pages written about this topic, but still, no luck. It's too hard.

How to get referrals

There's been thousands of pages written about this topic, but still, no luck. It's too hard.

Yes, we know that referrals are the very best way to grow your business.

And we know that asking for a referral is both scary but apparently the most effective technique.

And we know that excellent service is a great place to start.

But still, not enough referrals. How come?

First, marketers often forget to look at this from the consumer's point of view. Why on earth should I give you a referral? Yes, I know it's important to you, but why is it important to me?

And second, I have a lot to lose if I refer a friend to you. You might screw up, in which case she'll hate me. Or you might somehow do something that, through no fault of your own, disappoints. If I recommend a greek restaurant and my friend goes and they don't have skordalia, and she loves skordalia... oops.

And third, the act of recommending you isn't easy. It's not easy to recommend a tailor to make your co-worker look a little less shabby. It's not easy to bring up the fact that you have a great psychiatrist or even a particularly wonderful (but very expensive) shoe store.

Given the no-win nature of most referrals, you need to reset your expectations and consider a few ideas:

Make it easy for someone to bring up what you do (by changing the nature of the service or product).

Give your best customers something of real value to offer to their friends (a secret menu, a significant gift certificate). Once you do that, not giving that gift to a friend feels selfish.

Paying me to refer you rarely works, because you're not just asking for a minute of my time, you're asking me to put my credibility on the line.

Understand that low-risk referrals happen more often than high-risk ones, and either figure out how to become a low-risk referral or embrace the fact that you have to be truly amazing in order to earn one.

and

Be worthy. Not just in the work you do, but in your status in the marketplace. I'm far more likely to refer someone with a back story, someone who's an underdog, or relatively unknown. That's why saying "thank you" in deeds (not so much in words) goes such a long way.

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Article Tags: co worker, credibility, earth, excellent service, gift certificate, greek restaurant, high risk, marketers, point of view, psychiatrist, referral, referrals, secret menu, shoe store, tailor



Related Forum Posts
Customer Service - Great customer service, referrals and positive word of mouth are effective ways to promote your business. I've found that educating my customers about the sort of referrals I want is very valuable. While this sort of promotion can be very effective, it is only one type of advertising that should be done. Of course, the amount of promotion that you need to do depends on the amount of business you need to generate. Chris
20% increase - One of my businesses uses a system to help business owners manage customer relationships and encourage more referrals. I'm finding that this economy is making business owners take a second look at their business and it's assets (aka customers) to see how they can leverage them. Make those Customers (one-time sale) into Clients (repeat sales). I'm finding them more open to having this discussion with me and the results are speaking for itself. Everyone I've worked with so far has seen at least a 20% increase in sales or referrals within 4-6 months all done by managing an existing relationship.
Forum Referral Program - Hi Evan Have you ever thought about inserting a "Referred by" field into the forum sign up process? This field could help track the sign ups that have resulted directly from a forum member inviting someone to join. Under the user profiles you could also include a "Number of referrals" field that shows how many members a particular user has referred to the forum. You could then run a competition every month for the highest number of referrals but then again you would prefer quality not quantity. What do you think?
Re: March 19 Triple Crown Leaders - Well done GT with those article referrals!
Re: Best Internet Marketing Strategy - Looks like a fun event John - thanks as always for the referrals!


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