Referral Marketing Quotes

The only worthwhile idea is the one on which you take action.

You need to position yourself to your referral sources and your current clients as providing exceptional value and experiences in everything you do

Your network is the new professional safety net.

the sale is not complete until the customer is so happy that he or she confidently makes referrals.

A memory dart is your shorthand verbal business card. It is your identity implanted directly into the memory of your listener.

What we offer needs to be a clear and obvious fit for our customers. We need to help others envision exactly what they're buying - in concrete terms.

If you're going to err, err on the side of simplicity...assume that you have a very brief time to make an impression, and that you'll be allocated a tiny amount of memory space in overloaded and preoccupied brains of your audience.

As John Jantsch says in his book, The Referral Engine: Teaching Your Business to Market Itself, “Being recognized as a source of good information, including referrals, is a great way to connect with others. Think about how eagerly you responded the last time someone asked you for directions, offering up your favorite shortcut and tips for avoiding traffic. We all do it. Making referrals is a deeply satisfying way to connect with others, and asking for referrals is just the other side of the same phenomenon. I think the growth of many popular social networks can be traced to the fact that people love to connect and form communities around shared ideas.”1

While advertising was once used primarily to create a sale or enhance an image, it must now be used to create awareness about Web content. • While SEO was at one time primarily a function of optimizing a Web site, it must now be a function of optimizing brand assets across social media. • While lead generation used to consist of broadcasting messages, it must now rely heavily on being found in the right place at the right time. • While lead conversion in the past often consisted of multiple sales calls to supply information, it must now supplement Web information gathering with value delivery. • While referrals used to be a simple matter of passing a name, they now rely heavily on an organization’s online reputation, ratings, and reviews. • While physical store location has always mattered, online location for the local business has become a life-and-death matter.

16 marketing vehicles are: 1. Social media marketing 2. Blog marketing 3. Article marketing 4. Lecture marketing 5. Webinar marketing 6. Video marketing 7. Presentation marketing 8. Podcast marketing 9. Workshop marketing 10. Book marketing 11. Drip marketing 12. Referral marketing

The masses have been ridiculing and criticizing referral marketers for over 50 years. Meanwhile; these highly trained, ferociously dedicated

Here is a quote from marketingcharts.com in January 2013, referring to a recent research campaign into the best converting online marketing techniques. “The study, which examined more than 62 million visits, 215 million page views and 350,000 leads from more than 600 small- and medium-sized B2B websites during 2012, found email’s conversion rate to be 81% higher than the average (2.89% vs. 1.6%) and 42% higher than the next-best performer, referrals (2.04%). “Paid search (1.96%) also had an above-average conversion rate, with direct traffic (1.64%) closer to the mean. Organic search (1.45%) and social media (1.22%) were the lowest-rated in this regard.” It is believed that a database of 10,000 emails is worth more than $100,000 a year to your business, so the sooner you start collecting, the better.

Value comes not only from a transaction (revenue) but also from their role as marketers (referral) and content creators (retention).

referrals are still the most common source of new business in the professional services arena. And we don't expect that to change anytime soon.

Referrals are the privilege of the opportunity given to you by someone else to potentially do business with someone who wants, needs or desires the products or services you offer

Many business people end up being relationship rich, and referral poor.

The smart business person sees an opportunity to generate referrals by collaborating with their competitors.

Let 'the cause' become the 'because' – the reason – for people to do business with and to refer business to you

majority of successful business owners will tell you flat out that obtaining referrals is the most powerful tactic for attracting new customers.

Testimonials are nearly as good as money in the bank, but referrals really are money in the bank.

There are prospects that are trying to find what you sell, right now. This is what we normally think of as an easy sale.

Sources Of Customers, Best To Worst 1st Your existing customers 2nd Referrals from your happy customers 3rd Your company’s existing customers 4th Your competitor’s existing customers. Follow the salesman. (You’re going to love this!) 5th That great customer with an immediate need. Direct mail...cold calling 6th People who buy from your method of selling… in-home, mail, referral. 7th Pretty much the other 94% of the world.

Latest Free Guest Posting sites list for SEO and Referral traffic 2021. Get the list of guest posting website for guest blogging with backlinks

In 2013, Hertz Global Rental took a 20 percent stake in China’s biggest car-rental firm, privately owned China Auto Rental. Overnight, the U.S. company’s presence in China expanded from 5 outlets to 700. China Auto Rental got access to Hertz’s customer referrals, one of the main sources of business for car rentals. This sector will only grow in importance as China’s car-rental market grows from $4 billion to $20 billion—equaling America’s.

Do you know who works almost exclusively by referrals? High end consultants, surgeons, attorneys, accountants, the wealthy. Do you know who never asks for referrals? The incompetent.

Hearing someone say they want to serve “anyone with a pulse” is the kiss of death when it comes to asking for referrals, because our brains can’t sort the list of people we have connections with down into a manageable list of people to recommend.

The ripple effect of their new attitude transferred to their customer interactions, improving the customers’ experience with the company, increasing repeat and referral business, which increased everyone’s pride. That simple change over the period of eighteen months did a complete 180 on the company culture. Net profits grew by more than 30 percent during that time, utilizing the same staff and zero additional investment in marketing.

PayPal’s big challenge was to get new customers. They tried advertising. It was too expensive. They tried BD [business development] deals with big banks. Bureaucratic hilarity ensued. … the PayPal team reached an important conclusion: BD didn’t work. They needed organic, viral growth. They needed to give people money. So that’s what they did. New customers got $10 for signing up, and existing ones got $10 for referrals. Growth went exponential, and PayPal wound up paying $20 for each new customer. It felt like things were working and not working at the same time; 7 to 10 percent daily growth and 100 million users was good. No revenues and an exponentially growing cost structure were not. Things felt a little unstable. PayPal needed buzz so it could raise more capital and continue on. (Ultimately, this worked out. That does not mean it’s the best way to run a company. Indeed, it probably isn’t.)2 Thiel’s account captures both the desperation of those early days and the almost random experimentation the company resorted to in an effort to get PayPal off the ground. But in the end, the strategy worked. PayPal dramatically increased its base of consumers by incentivizing new sign-ups. Most important, the PayPal team realized that getting users to sign up wasn’t enough; they needed them to try the payment service, recognize its value to them, and become regular users. In other words, user commitment was more important than user acquisition. So PayPal designed the incentives to tip new customers into the ranks of active users. Not only did the incentive payments make joining PayPal feel riskless and attractive, they also virtually guaranteed that new users would start participating in transactions—if only to spend the $10 they’d been gifted in their accounts. PayPal’s explosive growth triggered a number of positive feedback loops. Once users experienced the convenience of PayPal, they often insisted on paying by this method when shopping online, thereby encouraging sellers to sign up. New users spread the word further, recommending PayPal to their friends. Sellers, in turn, began displaying PayPal logos on their product pages to inform buyers that they were prepared to honor this method of online payment. The sight of those logos informed more buyers of PayPal’s existence and encouraged them to sign up. PayPal also introduced a referral fee for sellers, incentivizing them to bring in still more sellers and buyers. Through these feedback loops, the PayPal network went to work on its own behalf—it served the needs of users (buyers and sellers) while spurring its own growth.

less an authority than financial advisor marketing expert Bill Good recognizes this, and he refuses to allow his salespeople to ask for referrals. As he puts it, “They manifestly do not work.”1 In fact, Good tells the story of an advisor who got a pesky client to stop calling him by asking for a referral each time she called!

In his book, The New Art and Science of Referral Marketing, Scott Degraffenreid used social network analysis to examine why people make referrals. His study demonstrated something that makes intuitive sense—people refer to elevate their standing

In his book, The New Art and Science of Referral Marketing, Scott Degraffenreid used social network analysis to examine why people make referrals. His study demonstrated something that makes intuitive sense—people refer to elevate their standing with their peers.2

Of course, if the Law of Shitty Clickthroughs says that marketing channels decline over time, the other strategy is to embrace new marketing ideas early. Every three to five years, there seems to be a rapid explosion of new media formats and platforms to experiment with. Most recently, with the rise of TikTok, Twitch, Instagram, and other forms of highly scaled visual media, there is a new crop of startups going to market with influencers and streamers. Similarly, new B2B startups have started to embrace referral programs, memes, emojis, video clips, and other tactics previously reserved for consumer products. The landscape is constantly changing, with new product and platforms emerging every few years, opening up opportunities for marketers to jump in before others do.

SagaReach Marketing Helps Local Businesses Build Scalable-Predictable-Sustainable-Measurable Compounding Growth By Providing Them Exclusive Referrals And Online Visibility. With Science-Based SEO, We Drive Qualified Traffic at Scale. With Content Marketing, We Provide Value While Driving Conversions. With PPC, We Transform Customer Intent into Profit. With SMM, We Meet Your Customers Where They Live. With CRO, We Unlock Additional Value in Your Funnel.

And while seeking out the opinions and perspectives of people like ourselves may lead to a more personal and familiar buying experience, what’s even more amazing is the impact those trusted sources have on conversion rates. B2B sales cycle data from Salesforce demonstrates that, when it comes to lead conversion, the interest that originates from customer and employee referrals converts to deals at rates fifty times higher than email campaigns!9 Furthermore, data from marketing automation giant Marketo indicates that leads originating from referrals convert to opportunities at rates of four times the average, and similar to the next three highest-converting lead sources combined (those being partner, inbound, and marketing-generated).10 My personal experience over the years greatly corroborates these statistics. For example, when I started my own sales practice, Cerebral Selling, I needed to have a logo designed. Around the same time, my friend had recently had a nice logo designed for his business. I asked him who he used, he told me, and I just did the same. No further research or investigation required. A short time later, I wanted to head out of town with my wife for an overnight trip to the beautiful Niagara wine region of Ontario to celebrate our anniversary. I didn’t know where to stay or which restaurant to go to, so instead of sifting through pages of online content and reviews, I asked a friend who runs a vineyard in the region. When he gave me his recommendations, I simply booked the places he told me. No questions asked. Were there better places to stay and eat? Potentially. Were there other creative design shops that could have generated equally if not more spectacular logos? More than likely. Do I care? Absolutely not! I love my logo and had a great anniversary outing, and feel secure in my decisions around both because of the feeling I received by selecting recommendations from people I trust. Both experiences are perfect examples of the prescriptive-led sales cycle we spoke about in chapter 2. This means that when it comes to your selling motion, one of the most unobtrusive, empathetic, and authentic ways to convert prospective buyers is simply to surround them with like-minded customers who love you.

which you will complete at the end of this section. Most companies realize that the best way to reach their newly clarified target market is through referrals, using their clients to connect with their prospects.

What is Freelancing? Freelancing is a work arrangement where individuals offer their services to clients on a project basis, often remotely and without being tied to a single employer. In this model, freelancers are self-employed and take on various assignments from different clients, rather than having a traditional full-time job. A Freelancer can provide various types of services in a wide range. Such as Article writing, Graphic design, Web development, Digital marketing, Consulting, SEO, and more. They have the flexibility to choose the projects they work on, set their own rates, and determine their work schedules. Some features of freelancing are discussed below: Flexibility: Freelancers usually work on projects of their choice and set their own working hours. Because they have that freedom, which allows them to balance work with personal life. Independence: Freelancers are essentially their own bosses. They manage their work, clients, and business operations independently. Diversity: Freelancers can work on different projects for different clients, gaining exposure to different industries and challenges. Remote Work: Most freelancers work remotely, enabling them to collaborate with clients from around the world without the need for a physical office. Project-Based: Freelancers are hired for specific projects or tasks, with defined start and end dates, rather than being employed on a long-term basis. Skill-Based: Freelancers offer specialized skills that clients might not have in-house, making them valuable for tasks requiring expertise. Income Variation: Freelancers' income can vary based on the number and type of projects they take on, making financial planning important. Client Relationships: Building strong client relationships is crucial for repeat business and referrals. Self-Promotion: Freelancers often need to market themselves to attract clients and stand out in a competitive market. Basically, you can do freelancing with the work you want to do or the work you are good at. The most interesting thing is that in this field you are everything and your decision is final.

The bonus to being trustworthy is this, you'll get referred way more than you do now.

What is Freelancing? Freelancing is a work arrangement where individuals offer their services to clients on a project basis, often remotely and without being tied to a single employer. In this model, freelancers are self-employed and take on various assignments from different clients, rather than having a traditional full-time job. A Freelancer can provide various types of services in a wide range. Such as Article writing, Graphic design, Web development, Digital marketing, Consulting, SEO, and more. They have the flexibility to choose the projects they work on, set their own rates, and determine their work schedules. Some Features of Freelancing are Discussed Below: 1. Flexibility: Freelancers usually work on projects of their choice and set their own working hours. Because they have that freedom, which allows them to balance work with personal life. 2. Independence: Freelancers are essentially their own bosses. They manage their work, clients, and business operations independently. 3. Diversity: Freelancers can work on different projects for different clients, gaining exposure to different industries and challenges. 4. Remote Work: Most freelancers work remotely, enabling them to collaborate with clients from around the world without the need for a physical office. 5. Project-Based: Freelancers are hired for specific projects or tasks, with defined start and end dates, rather than being employed on a long-term basis. 6. Skill-Based: Freelancers offer specialized skills that clients might not have in-house, making them valuable for tasks requiring expertise. 7. Income Variation: Freelancers' income can vary based on the number and type of projects they take on, making financial planning important. 8. Client Relationships: Building strong client relationships is crucial for repeat business and referrals. 9. Self-Promotion: Freelancers often need to market themselves to attract clients and stand out in a competitive market. Basically, you can do freelancing with the work you want to do or the work you are good at. The most interesting thing is that in this field you are everything and your decision is final. Please Visit Our Blogging Website to read more Articles related to Freelancing and Outsourcing, Thank You.

PayPal’s big challenge was to get new customers. They tried advertising. It was too expensive. They tried BD [business development] deals with big banks. Bureaucratic hilarity ensued. … the PayPal team reached an important conclusion: BD didn’t work. They needed organic, viral growth. They needed to give people money. So that’s what they did. New customers got $10 for signing up, and existing ones got $10 for referrals. Growth went exponential, and PayPal wound up paying $20 for each new customer. It felt like things were working and not working at the same time; 7 to 10 percent daily growth and 100 million users was good. No revenues and an exponentially growing cost structure were not. Things felt a little unstable. PayPal needed buzz so it could raise more capital and continue on. (Ultimately, this worked out. That does not mean it’s the best way to run a company. Indeed, it probably isn’t.)2

Mr. Customer, I’m going to do an awesome job for you, but I need your help also. Most of our new business comes through referrals. This means that rather than paying for advertising to get new clients, we pass the cost savings directly to you. We typically get about three referrals from each new customer. When we’re finished working together and you’re 100% satisfied with the work we’ve done, I’d really appreciate it if you could keep in mind three or more other people who we could also help. Again, breaking it down, we are: Letting them know that they’re going to get a great result Showing them a direct benefit that they’re going to be, or already are, deriving by referring to us Creating an expectation of a certain number of referrals (without being too pushy) so that they can start thinking ahead of time about who would be suitable Leaving the power with them by telling them that their referral is subject to us doing a great job for them

You will run an aggressive marketing and prospecting campaign built off of the list in Figure 10 on page 138. These activities generate leads. All of these leads go into your 8 x 8 program to establish your relationship with these individuals. Their names are then added to your Met database and they get the 33 Touch treatment each year. The 33 Touch program should then result in repeat and referral business at a rate of one referral and one repeat for every twelve people in the program (or a 12:2 ratio*).

Dropbox, the cloud storage company mentioned previously that Sean Ellis was from, cleverly implemented a double-sided incentivized referral program. When you referred a friend, not only did you get more free storage, but your friend got free storage as well (this is called an “in-kind” referral program). Dropbox prominently displayed their novel referral program on their site and made it easy for people to share Dropbox with their friends by integrating with all the popular social media platforms. The program immediately increased the sign-up rate by an incredible 60 percent and, given how cheap storage servers are, cost the company a fraction of what they were paying to acquire clients through channels such as Google ads. One key takeaway is, when practicable, offer in-kind referrals that benefit both parties. Although Sean Ellis coined the term “growth hacking,” the Dropbox growth hack noted above was actually conceived by Drew Houston, Dropbox’s founder and CEO, who was inspired by PayPal’s referral program that he recalled from when he was in high school. PayPal gave you ten dollars for every friend you referred, and your friend received ten dollars for signing up as well. It was literally free money. PayPal’s viral marketing campaign was conceived by none other than Elon Musk (now billionaire, founder of SpaceX, and cofounder of Tesla Motors). PayPal’s growth hack enabled the company to double their user base every ten days and to become a success story that the media raved about. One key takeaway is that a creative and compelling referral program can not only fuel growth but also generate press.

Mr. Customer, I’m going to do an awesome job for you, but I need your help also. Most of our new business comes through referrals. This means that rather than paying for advertising to get new clients, we pass the cost savings directly to you. We typically get about three referrals from each new customer. When we’re finished working together and you’re 100% satisfied with the work we’ve done, I’d really appreciate it if you could keep in mind three or more other people who we could also help.

Mr. Customer, it’s been such a pleasure working with you. If you know anyone who’s in a similar situation to yourself, we’d love you to give them one of these gift cards which entitles them to $100 off their first consultation with us. One of the reasons we’re able to keep the cost of our service down is because we get a lot of our business through referrals from people like you.

To acquire customers, Baroo did not invest in traditional paid marketing, such as Facebook ads. Instead, the startup relied on the marketing efforts of apartment building partners and on word-of-mouth referrals from existing customers. Buildings would distribute a welcome gift from Baroo—a chew toy or leash—to new residents who owned pets. The team also hosted quarterly events for residents, such as “yappy hours” and pet Halloween. Finally, building concierge staff would recommend Baroo to residents. In exchange, the startup paid buildings a share of the revenue that it earned from their residents, averaging about 6 percent. Such revenue sharing is standard practice for service providers, like cable TV companies, that want access to residents.

Here’s a little problem with that plan: the vast majority of jobs are not filled through cold resumes coming in advertisements. Do a little googling on the term “hidden job market.” The hidden job market (also called the “unpublicized job market” or the “unadvertised job market”) comprises all jobs that are not listed publicly or filled through means such as employment ads, job boards, or career fairs. Published estimates typically place the hidden job market at 70 percent to 95 percent of all jobs filled at all levels. In an article published on MSNBC.com, Steven Rothberg, founder of CollegeRecruiter.com, says, “[a]bout 90 percent of job openings go unadvertised, yet about 90 percent of candidates apply only to advertised job openings.”10 Let’s say the correct figure for the unpublicized job market is 80 percent. How are those “hidden” jobs being filled? Primarily through networking and referrals.

Initially working out of our home in Northern California, with a garage-based lab, I wrote a one page letter introducing myself and what we had and posted it to the CEOs of twenty-two Fortune 500 companies. Within a couple of weeks, we had received seventeen responses, with invitations to meetings and referrals to heads of engineering departments. I met with those CEOs or their deputies and received an enthusiastic response from almost every individual. There was also strong interest from engineers given the task of interfacing with us. However, support from their senior engineering and product development managers was less forthcoming. We learned that many of the big companies we had approached were no longer manufacturers themselves but assemblers of components or were value-added reseller companies, who put their famous names on systems that other original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) had built. That didn't daunt us, though when helpful VPs of engineering at top-of-the-food-chain companies referred us to their suppliers, we found that many had little or no R & D capacity, were unwilling to take a risk on outside ideas, or had no room in their already stripped-down budgets for innovation. Our designs found nowhere to land. It became clear that we needed to build actual products and create an apples-to-apples comparison before we could interest potential manufacturing customers. Where to start? We created a matrix of the product areas that we believed PAX could impact and identified more than five hundred distinct market sectors-with potentially hundreds of thousands of products that we could improve. We had to focus. After analysis that included the size of the addressable market, ease of access, the cost and time it would take to develop working prototypes, the certifications and metrics of the various industries, the need for energy efficiency in the sector, and so on, we prioritized the list to fans, mixers, pumps, and propellers. We began hand-making prototypes as comparisons to existing, leading products. By this time, we were raising working capital from angel investors. It's important to note that this was during the first half of the last decade. The tragedy of September 11, 2001, and ensuing military actions had the world's attention. Clean tech and green tech were just emerging as terms, and energy efficiency was still more of a slogan than a driver for industry. The dot-com boom had busted. We'd researched venture capital firms in the late 1990s and found only seven in the United States investing in mechanical engineering inventions. These tended to be expansion-stage investors that didn't match our phase of development. Still, we were close to the famous Silicon Valley and had a few comical conversations with venture capitalists who said they'd be interested in investing-if we could turn our technology into a website. Instead, every six months or so, we drew up a budget for the following six months. Via a growing network of forward-thinking private investors who could see the looming need for dramatic changes in energy efficiency and the performance results of our prototypes compared to currently marketed products, we funded the next phase of research and business development.

Referral marketers

You need to have a differentiating message. If you are new, different, and proposing to solve a real pain or fulfill a cherished hope, you have a chance to be heard.

Clarity is that 20/20 focus that cuts through the fog and lets you stand our from the noise. Clarity fuels effective marketing and selling.

Whatever size the business, getting attention in a crowded marketplace demands, above all, a clear and focused message: a signal that rises above the noise.

You don't fly to another country and expect the residents to speak your language. You have to communicate with speech they understand. Winning business involves speaking human, not spewing jargon.

Clarity is an act of courage to say "yes" to the best business - and therefore to decisively say "no" to work that isn't a good fit.

To win, you have to be clear about your superpower, and you make that differentiation clear to your customers. Otherwise, you remain part of the noise.

If you've earned the trust of people I already trust, their referral of you to me is worth more than any other form of marketing.

There's plenty of money in any niche where you're scratching a genuine business niche.

This is what happened when I cofounded LinkedIn. The key business model innovations for LinkedIn, including the two-way nature of the relationships and filling professionals’ need for a business-oriented online identity, didn’t just happen organically. They were the result of much thought and reflection, and I drew on the experiences I had when founding SocialNet, one of the first online social networks, nearly a decade before the creation of LinkedIn. But life isn’t always so neat. Many companies, even famous and successful ones, have to develop their business model innovation after they have already commenced operations. PayPal didn’t have a business model when it began operations (I was a key member of the PayPal executive team). We were growing exponentially, at 5 percent per day, and we were losing money on every single transaction we processed. The funny thing is that some of our critics called us insane for paying customers bonuses to refer their friends. Those referral bonuses were actually brilliant, because their cost was so much lower than the standard cost of acquiring new financial services customers via advertising. (We’ll discuss the power and importance of this kind of viral marketing later on.) The insanity, in fact, was that we were allowing our users to accept credit card payments, sticking PayPal with the cost of paying 3 percent of each transaction to the credit card processors, while charging our users nothing. I remember once telling my old college friend and PayPal cofounder/ CEO Peter Thiel, “Peter, if you and I were standing on the roof of our office and throwing stacks of hundred-dollar bills off the edge as fast as our arms could go, we still wouldn’t be losing money as quickly as we are right now.” We ended up solving the problem by charging businesses to accept payments, much as the credit card processors did, but funding those payments using automated clearinghouse (ACH) bank transactions, which cost a fraction of the charges associated with the credit card networks. But if we had waited until we had solved this problem before blitzscaling, I suspect we wouldn’t have become the market leader.

In a word-of-mouth and word-of-mouse led world, the process of researching and buying is decidedly non-linear... (p. 8) What if we've got it all wrong? Take the marketing and sales funnels, for example. These tools were designed to sift through an inordinate number of suspects and prospects to extract the gold nuggets (customers) from the dirt (everyone else) by gently guiding (or sometimes forcing) them through a linear progression from awareness through action. But what if, instead of ending with the purchase action by the converted customer, we began with this action and, in doing so, focused on achieving three distinct goals: 1. Building solid, ongoing, and authentic bonds or relationships with our customers (customer service and experience); 2. Transforming customers into returning clients and ultimately advocates (customer relationship management); 3. Harnessing the unstoppable power of referrals, recommendations, and word of mouth for outreach to other potential customers (social networking or even a new kind of affiliate marketing). What if, by following these rules, we were able to essentially flip the funnel and reverse engineer future growth from a platform or foundtion of current growth? From the few come the many: That's the mantra of the flipped funnel.

Getting your message in front of the right people in the right place at the right time using the right channels is the right thing to do. But what if the real optimization that needs to take place is from acquisition-led efforts to retention-led ones [retention, consolidation, and referrals]? p. 18

aWe refer anything to anyone in order to enhance our standing... we do it to look good... If it does not give someone an opportunity to look good than they are not going to talk about it. (p. 26)

We refer anything to anyone in order to enhance our standing... we do it to look good... If it does not give someone an opportunity to look good than they are not going to talk about it. (p. 26)

The first driver is Novelty. If everyone has already heard of it and it is not novel, there is no reason to refer it to someone... You can actually have Novelty be present in some degree with almost any product, all the time, even old established products... It needs to give people a chance to tell their friends and family about this distinction that makes them look good, because their friends and family would not have heard of it before. ... The next aspect is Utility. In other words, will the majority of the people you mention it to have a use or need for it... Whenever possible it is best to target networks that are both broad and deep. A broad network is one with a large number of members. The more critical aspect however is depth; this represents the frequency of communication within this network or their structures for sharing information. An example of a network that is relatively quite deep would be golfers. Not only do fellow golfers frequently discuss their sport, they have magazines, television shows, newspaper columns and specific locations to indulge their interest. ... The third characteristic is Dependability. If something is seen as unreliable or inconsistent, you will not refer it. Why not? It would not make you look good. It is not that it is 100% failure free, but rather that it performs exactly as expected.... The fourth characteristic is Economy. Economy does not mean cheaper necessarily. It is just that it has a better value and you get more of what you wanted out of it. Very often what you get out of Economy is image. We are not really buying products and services, we are shopping for approval.... Strangely, a Hummer is going to be economical for some people. There are very few vehicles that get the kind of attention a Hummer gives.

100% Novelty is when nobody you mention it to has ever heard of it before. If half the people you told had never heard of the product it would be a score of 50%. 100% Utility means everyone you mention it to has a use for it. Not that everyone has a need or use for it but everyone you mention it to knows someone who has a need or use for it. 100% Dependability means it works as promised or expected every time. It it works as expected half the time that would be 50%. 100% Economy means that it is always recognized as a better value.... As you can see the total possible score is 400%. All you really need for viral behavior, for very, very high referral activity is 315%... A typical score for a lot of businesses or products would be about 300%. The resulting output behavior is about 0.15 referrals per customer. In other words, for every 6 or 7 customers you would get 1 referral. When you get it up to 315% you might expect one referral for every customer. So an added 15% gives you 600% difference in terms of performance and referrals. For some businesses it would be simple to arrive at a close approximation of their N.U.D.E. scores by calculating it from the results-end. What I mean is you will look at how many referrals you are getting and compare that to the known outcome from a given N.U.D.E. score. Referral rate 0.15; NUDE score 300%; 1 referral for every 6-7 existing customers. Referral rate 0.10. NUDE score 290%; 1 referral for every 10 existing customers. Referral rate 0.05; NUDE score 250%; 1 referral for every 20 existing customers.

Breakthrough products and services, in order to be perceived as credible desperately need a handicap in order to offset the too-good-to-be-true Toxic Novelty... It is something that is just noticed out of the corner of their eye, not really hidden, but unnoticed by the casual observer. Ideally, all early customers will believe that they are the only ones to have noticed this subtle flaw. We are now naturally situated for high referrals. "Almost too good to be true." Managing the "almost" part of that is the critical secret...

This is a hard thing for most creative people to get, but most of their customers are not buying creativity, per se. What they are actually buying is the way they feel about being involved in the creative process. The Dependability comes in knowing they will get that feeling.

The same thing is true of referrals. You have to be very specific in your requests for referrals; this significantly increases the odds that they’ll happen.

one of the best ways to get referrals is by straight out asking for them from customers for whom you’ve delivered a good result.

They push phone prospecting, e-mail prospecting, social selling, trade shows, referrals, networking, or inbound marketing as the one true way while disparaging all other forms—usually by labeling the forms they don't like “cold calling” to create the ultimate turnoff. “Do it my way,” they'll tell you, “and you'll get unlimited qualified leads. All for only $999!