Production Blog Reviews » referral-week

Are You an Active Business Blogger?

cgseo — Thu, 15 Apr 2010 17:46:01 +0000

Are You an Active Business Blogger? This content from: Duct Tape Marketing I am making 50 advance copies of my new book The Referral Engine available to active business bloggers. If you would like to receive one visit this form to apply Please know that we would like you to meet the following requirements: 1. You maintain an active blog, meaning that it’s updated at least once a week. 2. You agree to blog (and tweet, if on Twitter) an honest review of the book on May 10th, 2010 or during that week. (Blogging about the book before that is okay too, just agree to do it that week as well.) FYI – I totally stole this idea from Tony Hsieh at Zappos who is offering the same for his book due in June – Delivering Happiness . Related Posts: How Do You Resell Your Employees I Am Giving Away 250 Copies of My New Book for My 50th It Is Make a Referral Week! The Referral Multiplier Effect Come Meet Me on the Road Powered by Contextual Related Posts Like this post? Share it with others

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Are You an Active Business Blogger?

What is Make A Referral Monday?

cgseo — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 12:42:13 +0000

Share What is Make A Referral Monday? This content from: Duct Tape Marketing Last week’s Make a Referral Week , an event designed to generate over 1000 referrals for 1000 small businesses, was a big success in terms of bringing a focus on the act of making referrals, but why stop at a week. Making referrals is a great practice all year long. Please join me in kicking off something I call Make a Referral Monday . The idea is to bring the practice of making referrals into focus every week, all year long. One of the ways to keep this idea alive and top of mind is to use the awesome reach of Twitter as a weekly reminder and accountability tool. If you participate on Twitter you are probably aware of something called Follow Friday. Follow Friday asks folks to share the names of people on Twitter that they like to follow, with the idea that other might as well. Follow Friday participants use what’s called a hashtag to designate their Follow Friday listing – #FF ( More on Twitter hashtag use here ) To participate in Make a Referral Monday (#marm) I would like ask you to a) make a referral and b) tell the Twitter world about it using #marm as a hashtag each and every Monday. Something like: I just referred @AcmePrinting to my BFFs at @ZetaGraphics both do awesome work #marm I think we have the ability to create a bit of a movement out of the act of making referrals. Spread the word, retweet this post and make those referrals! Related Posts: It Is Make a Referral Week! Making Referrals As a Job Creation Engine Rosy Monday is Strategic Planning Day Have You Made Your Referral? Free Friday Follow Winner 2-20 Powered by Contextual Related Posts Like this post? Share it with others

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What is Make A Referral Monday?

6 Ways to be More Referable than Edward Scissorhands at a Lawn & Garden Convention

cgseo — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 13:21:06 +0000

6 Ways to be More Referable than Edward Scissorhands at a Lawn & Garden Convention This content from: Duct Tape Marketing This post is a special Make a Referral Week guest post featuring education on the subject of referrals and word of mouth marketing and making 1000 referrals to 1000 small businesses – check it out at Make a Referral Week 2010 1. Circumvent people’s suspicions. Recognize that you’re beginning with negative balance with most people. Sad but true. It’s just the posture of the masses. People have been sold, scammed and screwed; conned, played and hustled; manipulated, used and marketed to for too long and their TIRED of it. Your mission is to exert comfortable confidence. To lower the threat level. To prove to people that they aren’t going to be the first person to trust you. Otherwise they’ll show up plagued by an underlying unease. And that’s a brick wall you don’t have the time, energy or equipment to climb. How will you disarm people’s immediate preoccupations before entering your orbit? 2. Resort (not) to artificiality. People who do come off like terminal try-hards. And their gnawing sense of inferiority fills the room like a garlic fart. Not exactly the type of orbit admirers are drawn into. The secret is making the conscious choice to reassemble your posture. To assume a different pose. And to stand up in front of the world and put yourself at risk. That’s what authenticity is all about: Flirting with the possibility of people not liking who you are, accepting the reality when they don’t. As I learned from The Velveteen Rabbit , “Once you are real, you can’t be ugly – except to people who don’t understand.” How will you authentically extend yourself this week? 3. Be a source of infinite opportunity. “Become a platform.” Those three words alone were worth paying twenty bucks for Jeff Jarvis’s bestselling What Would Google Do? Here’s how it works: You give customers, users and fans the control to create and improve your online content. You aggregate information and services. Then, you enable your admirers to build communities, networks – even products and businesses – of their own, under the umbrella of your platform. Think Twitter. Think Facebook. Think Linked In. All platforms. All raking it in. Lesson learned: When you make a platform, you make an indispensible contribution. What are YOU a platform for? 4. Jump at every chance to declare the unspoken truth. Follow the advice of Dilbert creator Scott Adams: “Be completely and radically honest where most people would say nothing.” Simple, yes. Easy, no. The secret is to plant the seeds of love where fear grows. In my experience, here’s the best practice for doing so: Speak the unspeakables to compel people to think the unthinkables so they’re disturbed into doing the undoables. How are you branding your honesty? 5. Increase your agency. I love this concept. Just learned it myself a few weeks ago. Increase your agency . Now, it’s got nothing to do with the FBI or Leo Burnett. Agency is about the state of being necessary for exerting power. The cool part is, agency is relative. It all depends on where your power generator resides. HOW to specifically increase your agency is up to you. The only advice I can offer to support your process is: Don’t make despair your default setting. It’s timelessly unattractive and will slowly nibble your power away like a school of baby piranhas. Where are you unintentionally giving your power away? 6. Be willing to be crucified. I think it’s fair to say that Jesus Christ had a knack for drawing admirers into his orbit. And, among his long list of approachable attributes, I think it’s also fair to say that his willingness to be crucified – literally – served his purpose well. Now, the odds of you, as a Thought Leader, being nailed to an actual cross and left for dead are highly unlikely. (Then again, I don’t know you that well.) The point is: Crucifixion isn’t about wood and nails – it’s about criticism and persecution. It’s about passion, which comes from the Latin passio , which means, “to suffer.” The two-fold question is: What do you do that you are willing to suffer for? And what do you do that – if you did NOT do it – would cause you suffering as a result? Find the answers to those questions and you’ll find admirers drawing into your orbit immediately. No messianic complex needed. Have you taken up your cross today? Scott Ginsberg is the only person in the world who wears a nametag 24-7-365 to encourage people to become friendlier and more approachable. He is the author of four books including “ HELLO, my name is Scott ,” “The Power of Approachability,” “How To Be That Guy” and “Make a Name for Yourself.” Related Posts: The Three Dâ€™s of Being More Referable 17 Terrific Tactics to Inspire Customer Love (and Get New Business) Making Referrals As a Job Creation Engine 5 Ways to Make Your Business Easier to Recommend Build Your Brand So People Will Refer You Powered by Contextual Related Posts Like this post? Share it with others

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6 Ways to be More Referable than Edward Scissorhands at a Lawn & Garden Convention

Ring-Ring: This is WOM calling: Are You Listening?

cgseo — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 13:14:29 +0000

Ring-Ring: This is WOM calling: Are You Listening? This content from: Duct Tape Marketing This post is a special Make a Referral Week guest post featuring education on the subject of referrals and word of mouth marketing and making 1000 referrals to 1000 small businesses – check it out at Make a Referral Week 2010 Women control more than 85% of the spending in the U.S. We’re your market. When it comes to referring you via word of mouth, we dominate the marketplace. We buy trucks, tires, laptops, gardening tools, houses, toys, perfume, and everything else under the sun. It doesn’t matter what you’re selling, if we don’t buy it, we know someone who does. If you want us to promote you via word of mouth, you need remember just one thing: it’s not about you — its about us (it’s really about me – and if you can grasp the nuances of that – me vs. us – you have a big jump on your competition!). Let’s get real about word of mouth, fondly referred to as WOM, these days. In the latter 20th century kids ran around chanting, “Telephone, telegraph, tell-a-girl.” Today they’d be chanting, “Telephone, telegraph, tell a blogger.” It’s a fact that blogging and tweeting has extended word of mouth exponentially. It’s also a fact that women dominate both – we’re still the big talkers of the world . If you’re hankering for real word of mouth, how do you get it? Do you hop on your blog and blog about your latest/greatest? Do you start a twitter account with a bit.ly link to your content? Are you marketing to a demographic? Touting “your stuff” is so old school. Women will burn you if you market to them as a “demographic” or a “target market.” As the latest Merck diabetes commercial tells us so well, we’re people, not statistics. No matter what you sell, grasp this fact: word of mouth begins with the client, no matter who she is. I don’t really care what you do, who you are, or even who you know. Because it’s just not about you. It’s about me. It’s so much about me that you’ll find me tweeting about it, texting about it, blogging about it! When I make a recommendation, other women stop and listen. That’s partly because I’ve worked hard to establish my focus on marketing to women, but the reality is – I’ve worked even harder to connect with women, to promote them in their business and personal endeavors, and to provide a sounding board when needed. We talk pets, kids, husbands, boy friends, financial planning, conferences, healthcare, the Superbowl, HGTV, you name it. We spread WOM with every breath! Because we can, not because we need to. So, if you want great WOM, ask women questions about their lives. Ask for their opinions. Don’t cover or hide your flaws– because your women clients are not going to be shy about pointing them out and if you get defensive – we’ll move on. Use your profile to tell us who you are and what you sell. Use your blog and twitter page to help us solve problems (time crunching is huge, right now), and to engage us in dialogue about our lives, not about your products/services. Tweet about local women’s events and/or organizations. Tweet about us – retweet about us. Tell us why we’re important to you. Share stories about your pets – surprise us with your softer side. Bissell with its recently launched Pack of Pet Lovers is doing a fabulous job with this. Mimic their success. Us, us, us…not you, you, you! That’s what generates word of mouth referrals. Short story: in the last four years of writing my Lip-sticking blog I’ve met dozens of smart and talented women. The ones who refer me to colleagues and prospects are the ones I’ve supported over the years, without expectation. I can’t wait to talk about them, and vice-versa. The mutual-admiration society we’ve formed helps both of us. It’s word of mouth at its most powerful . Word of mouth drives a lot of conversation between women. Want some of that? Tap into the power where it exists. p.s. March 8th is International Women’s Day , did you know that? You do now…have at it. Yvonne DiVita is the author of Dick*less Marketing : Smart Marketing to Women Online, a book about getting those baby boomer icons Dick and Jane to buy at your website. She is also the president and founder of Windsor Media Enterprises, LLC which specializes in business blog building, social media strategy and print-on-demand publishing. Related Posts: Women Entrepreneurs Just Crack Me Up Where Do Women Business Owner's Open Up Shop? Women Entrepreneurs Will Someday Rule the World Author of Word of Mouth Marketing Visits Referral Week Do Woman Define Success in Business Differently Than Men? Powered by Contextual Related Posts Like this post? Share it with others

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Ring-Ring: This is WOM calling: Are You Listening?

Make a Referral Week Giveaway

cgseo — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 13:02:48 +0000

Share Make a Referral Week Giveaway This content from: Duct Tape Marketing Like it or not tax time is upon most small business folks. So, it seems like a good time to give away copies of Intuit’s Turbo Tax Business Software don’t you think. As an element of Make a Referral Week I’m going to draw 15 names from the businesses your refer today and send them a copy of Turbo Tax. Here’s the deal, go Make a Referral here and when you do you’ll also be entering a business you love for a chance to get picked randomly to win a copy of Turbo Tax courtesy of Office Depot . And, I’ll also pick two businesses you refer to get a Canon SD780 digital camera so they can take pictures of all those new customers they land because you made a referral. So, what are you waiting for – go Make a Referral and make sure you share their contact information or website so we contact them if they win. Related Posts: Small Business Start-Up Kit Giveaway Building Your Referral Engine - Free Webinar with the Referral A-Team Software + Service Making More Sense Two Fine Referral Examples Bake a Referral Engine Into Your Business Model Powered by Contextual Related Posts Like this post? Share it with others

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5 Ways to Make Your Business Easier to Recommend

cgseo — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 14:40:52 +0000

Share 5 Ways to Make Your Business Easier to Recommend This content from: Duct Tape Marketing This post is a special Make a Referral Week guest post featuring education on the subject of referrals and word of mouth marketing and making 1000 referrals to 1000 small businesses – check it out at Make a Referral Week 2010 If I were to ask you what the secret was to getting someone to recommend and refer your business, what would you say? Perhaps you might focus on the experience that you provide. Or you might believe that this is a behaviour that you should focus on illiciting from only your best customers. Now what if I told you that the single biggest reason someone chooses whether or not to refer your business has very little to do with their experience with you? That seems counter intuitive. Yet if this were false, then everyone who had a positive experience would share it with someone else. And everyone who had a negative one would do the same. The point is, people don’t inherently share positive or negative experiences – they need an incentive to do it. The main problem is that anger or frustration IS an incentive. That’s why you hear the often repeated adage that it is much easier to get a customer to post a negative review than it is to post a positive one. Satisfaction, apparently, is not as powerful of a motivator as dissatisfaction. Yet despite this behaviour, there are ways to stack the odds in your favor. You probably already know that online opinions make a difference for your business. So the question you need to ask yourself (especially for Referral Week) is how you can make YOUR business easier for someone to share with a friend, family member or colleague. In other words, you need to be easier to recommend! Here are 5 tips you should consider to help you achieve that: Ask at the right moment . There is one moment when your customer is likely to be happiest of all, and that is the moment right after they buy something. The decision has been made, and anticipation is likely to follow. Why not ask them to share their experience with a friend right in that moment? Use a post-purchase survey online or encourage your customer to write a review or even take some extra business cards with them as they walk out of your retail location. The more you can do to get someone to recommend your business right after purchase, the more referrals you can generate. Create different levels . It is tempting to think of recommendations and referrals in strict terms. Say online review, and your mind probably goes straight to the sort of review you might find on Amazon or TripAdvisor. In reality, there are many different levels of engagement when it comes to online reviews, and hand written experiences are the most extreme. A much simpler style is what you may have seen on Facebook … the simple thumbs up or thumbs down. Star ratings are another easy method. The lesson is simple … to create more likely situations where people will share their opinion, try to accommodate for different levels of effort and complexity. Let them save your details . The magnet for your fridge that your real estate agent always gives you is the prime example of this idea. The opposing idea to #1, the philosophy behind letting your customers save your details easily is that you want to be there in the moment when they do get asked by someone to refer a business or service. Aside from fridge magnets, for the growing digital savvy customer, another way you may be able to stand out is to always include important keywords in your email communications (and always send email receipts). Then your customer can search their email account and even if they don’t remember your business name or have your card handy, you’re just a simple email search away. Have a personality . The basic fact is that people don’t generally remember businesses, they remember other people. For this reason, having a personality is of paramount importance. When you can foster a personal connections with your business, you give them a reason to remember and recommend you to others. This is the power of word of mouth referrals, that we will remember working with someone who we respected and will be more likely to actively recommend that person and their business in any relevant situation. Admit failure . This last tip will seem like an odd addition to the list. After all, we are generally taught to hide (or at least never admit) our failures for fear that it may make us or our businesses appear vulnerable. The surprising fact is that admitting a mistake can be one of the unintentionally best ways to humanize your business. We all make mistakes, but how you deal with them is the real question. Nothing can endear your business more to a customer than making a mistake an going overboard to correct it (and not making the same mistake again, of course). So the next time you or one of your employees makes a mistake, own up to it and actively fix it. You may find that in the process you converted an unhappy customer into a brand evangelist for life. Rohit Bhargava is a founding member of the 360 Digital Influence group at Ogilvy and author of the award winning new marketing book Personality Not Included , an entertaining and useful guide for companies on how to use their personality to stand out. He is also a popular keynote speaker on marketing and business strategy and believes in being approachable Related Posts: 17 Terrific Tactics to Inspire Customer Love (and Get New Business) Build Your Brand So People Will Refer You Making Referrals As a Job Creation Engine 5 Ways to Rock Customer Review Sites How's Your Personality? Powered by Contextual Related Posts Like this post? Share it with others

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Author of Book Yourself Solid Visits Referral Week

cgseo — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 14:24:01 +0000

Share Author of Book Yourself Solid Visits Referral Week This content from: Duct Tape Marketing This post is a special Make a Referral Week guest podcast featuring education on the subject of referrals and word of mouth marketing and making 1000 referrals to 1000 small businesses – check it out at Make a Referral Week 2010 Marketing podcast with Michael Port (Click to listen, right click and Save As to download – subscribe now via iTunes Today’s special guest interview for the Duct Tape Marketing podcast is Michael Port . Michael Port has provided coaching and consulting services to over 20,000 business owners. He is the author of Book Yourself Solid , Beyond Booked Solid and The Contrarian Effect: Why It Pays (BIG) To Take Typical Sales Advice and Do The Opposite and the soon to be released The Think Big Manifesto. In this episode Michael and I talked about the new ways in which smart marketers are building their expertise and tapping into networks, both on and offline to build marketing momentum. Related Posts: Michael Port on Make a Referral Week Book Yourself Solid with Michael Port Author of Word of Mouth Marketing Visits Referral Week Michael Port on Small Business Marketing Is the Online Business Manager a VA on Steroids? Powered by Contextual Related Posts Like this post? Share it with others

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Why Word of Mouth Doesn’t Happen

cgseo — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 16:56:35 +0000

Why Word of Mouth Doesn’t Happen This content from: Duct Tape Marketing This post is a special Make a Referral Week guest post featuring education on the subject of referrals and word of mouth marketing and making 1000 referrals to 1000 small businesses – check it out at Make a Referral Week 2010 Sometimes, what you do is done as well as it can be done. It’s a service that people truly love, or a product they can’t live without. You’re doing everything right, but it’s not remarkable, at least not in the sense of “worth making a remark about.” What’s up with that? Here’s a smörgåsbord of reasons: It’s embarrassing to talk about. That’s why VD screening, no matter how well done, rarely turns into a viral [ahem] success. There’s no easy way to bring it up. This is similar to number 1, but involves opportunity. It’s easy to bring up, “hey, where’d you get that ring tone?” because the ring tone just interrupted everyone. It’s a lot harder to bring up the fact that you just got a massage. It might not feel cutting edge enough for your crowd. So, it’s not the thing that’s embarrassing, it’s the fact they you just found out about it. Don’t bring up your brand new Tivo with your friends from MIT. They’ll sneer at you. On a related front, it might feel too popular to profitably sneeze about. Sometimes bloggers hesitate to post on a popular source or topic because they worry they’ll seem lazy. You might like the exclusivity. If you have no trouble getting into a great restaurant or a wonderful club, perhaps you won’t tell the masses because you’re selfish… You might want to keep worlds from colliding. Some kids, for example, like the idea of being the only kid from their school at the summer camp they go to. They get to have two personalities, be two people, keep things separate. You might feel manipulated. Plenty of hip kids were happy to talk about Converse, but once big, bad Nike got involved, it felt different. Almost like they were being used. You might worry about your taste. Recommending a wine really strongly takes guts, because maybe, just maybe, your friends will hate the wine and think you tasteless. There are probably ten other big reasons, but they all lead to the same conclusions: First, understand that people talk about you (or not talk about you) because of how it makes them feel, not how it makes you feel. Second, if you’re going to build a business around word of mouth, better not have these things working against you. Third, if you do, it may be a smart strategy to work directly to overcome them. That probably means changing the fundamental DNA of your experience and the story you tell to your users. “If you like us, tell your friends,” might feel like a fine start, but it’s certainly not going to get you there. What will change the game is actually changing the game. Changing the experience of talking about you so fundamentally that people will choose to do it. Seth Godin is author of ten books that have been bestsellers around the world. His most recent titles include The Dip and Linchpin . His books have been bestsellers around the world and changed the way people think about marketing, change and work. Related Posts: Author of Word of Mouth Marketing Visits Referral Week Natural Advantages of Small Business in a Down Market The Essence of the Inbound Referral 17 Terrific Tactics to Inspire Customer Love (and Get New Business) Passion is a Wonderful Branding Tool Powered by Contextual Related Posts Like this post? Share it with others

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Why Word of Mouth Doesn’t Happen

17 Terrific Tactics to Inspire Customer Love (and Get New Business)

cgseo — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 16:52:29 +0000

17 Terrific Tactics to Inspire Customer Love (and Get New Business) This content from: Duct Tape Marketing This post is a special Make a Referral Week guest post featuring education on the subject of referrals and word of mouth marketing and making 1000 referrals to 1000 small businesses – check it out at Make a Referral Week 2010 There are two fundamental approaches to generate more business: The first is to focus on making your existing customers insanely happy, so that they want to tell others about how much they love you; the second is to simply be a resource, or be helpful, to those who aren’t customers yet. Specifically, here are 17 tactics: 1. Have a goal . Set a clear goal with a specific timeline – for example, you want an x increase in referrals over the next six months. You know that old adage about how you can’t get there if you don’t know where you’re going? It’s true. 2. Monitor the web and primary social channels (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn) for people talking about you or your company . Say thank you (if they are saying nice things). Reach out and ask how you can help (if they aren’t). 3. And if they aren’t, BTW: Apologize for mistakes and solve problems fast. Speed is your ally. 4. Monitor the web and social channels (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn) for specific keywords relevant to your business. Be approachable, conversational, and helpful there. Engage, don’t sell. 5. Join LinkedIn groups relevant to your expertise or industry, and build conversations with relevant individuals . Chime in when you have something to contribute, and be helpful with your advice, suggestions, opinions. Again: It’s about engaging, not selling. (This bears repeating.) 6. Create a blog with content that helps your customers with a problem, or gives advice on a difficult situation, or walks them through a hard decision, or just takes the customer’s point of view, generally. Be a resource, and don’t simply toot your own horn. 7. When someone comments on your blog, respond . Talk back. Thank them for participating with a follow-up email. This is a dead-simple thing, and something a lot of people don’t do. 8. Read other relevant blogs in your industry , or by your customers, or would-be clients. Comment there, too. How? I almost want to repeat that bit about engaging-not-selling again, but I know you get it. 9. Put something on your front door (if you have one) that reminds people to tell their friends about you. (This is an idea from my friend Andy Sernovitz . 10. Put a “tell-a-friend” form on every page of your website . (Another idea from Andy .) 11. Put a special offer in easily forward-able mail . 12. Add a small gift and a word of mouth tool to every package you sell . Do something unexpected. (Andy once sent me a few packets of Bacon Salt with a copy of his new book, for example, which inspired me to blog and tweet about it . 13. Create a mechanism to keep in touch with existing customers or clients , even if they aren’t in buying mode. Perhaps you publish and “insider’s” newsletter, guest-blog on their blogs, or pick up the telephone and call every once in a while, just to say hello. 14. Be generous in your business practices . Go the extra mile. Offer extra service or follow-up support as a routine way of doing business. 15. Be generous with your own referrals . 16. Say thank you . Someone refers new business to you? Send them a note. An especially nice touch in this digital age is a handwritten card. The kind that arrives in the mail. 17. Be nice . Does this sound lame? It’s not. People refer people who treat them well, are approachable, and likeable. Be that person. Your turn. How else do you generate referrals, or inspire positive word-of-mouth? Ann Handley is the Chief Content Officer of MarketingProfs , the world’s largest community of marketers. Follow her on Twitter at @marketingprofs Related Posts: Making Referrals As a Job Creation Engine Author of Word of Mouth Marketing Visits Referral Week 5 Ways to Share Content to Create Referrals Have You Made Your Referral? Get Closer to Your Customers Now Powered by Contextual Related Posts Like this post? Share it with others

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17 Terrific Tactics to Inspire Customer Love (and Get New Business)

Bake a Referral Engine Into Your Business Model

cgseo — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 13:10:34 +0000

Bake a Referral Engine Into Your Business Model This content from: Duct Tape Marketing This post is a special Make a Referral Week guest post featuring education on the subject of referrals and word of mouth marketing and making 1000 referrals to 1000 small businesses – check it out at Make a Referral Week 2010 Have you ever squirmed when a seasoned businessperson asked you “what sets you apart from your competition?” or “what are you truly great at, that no one else in your market can do better than you?” You are not alone. Many new entrepreneurs get uncomfortable with the notion that they have to be an expert in their field to have a successful business. This is because they think that they have to know every last thing about the market in order to be considered an expert. Here is the good news: one of your unique differentiators can be your ability to refer your clients to fantastic people who compliment your work. You don’t have to know everything. You just have to know people who do. I have designed my business this way. I feel exceptionally competent helping corporate employees figure out which business to start. I can wrestle their snarling fears with confidence. I can help them with branding and marketing plans, and teach them how to grow their network using social media. But if they ask what kind of business structure will protect their assets, I draw a blank. That is why I have tax attorney and business process guru Kyle Durand on speed dial. If they are creating a new software product and want to know how to wade through IP laws and trademarks, I send them to Jill Hubbard Bowman . If they have no idea which shopping cart to use on their website, I send them to research maven Crystal Williams, otherwise known as Big Bright Bulb . If they want killer branding design with great copy, I send them to Reese and Kelly Parkinson . If they know what to do but get paralyzed by procrastination, overwhelm and creative blocks, I send them to Charlie Gilkey . If they decide they don’t want to start a business after all and want to get a job, I send them to the best career coach I know, Michele Woodward . And if they are incredibly difficult to work with, I send them to John Jantsch . (Just kidding John! J) Knowing I have world-class business partners who will not only deliver excellent service to my clients but will also be fun and easy to work with allows me sell my strengths and refer the rest. My clients are happy, I am happy, and my circle of partners is happy. Our combined networks generate lots of new business, and many opportunities to collaborate on programs, products and services. How can you bake a great referral network into your business model? Define the problem your clients are trying to solve. Are they trying to start a business? Make more money? Simplify their life? Build a product? Break down all the knowledge and support they will need to solve the problem. Think about which tools they may need, which decisions they have to make and what skills and competencies they require. Identify your strengths. As you examine all that’s needed to solve their problem, think about what you love to do, what interests you, and where people say you excel. Structure your services around your strengths. If you love doing big picture strategy and get bored with implementation, don’t offer that service. By focusing only on what you do best, you will set yourself apart from so many others who struggle to provide everything to everyone. Identify ethical, competent people who are great at solving the rest of the problem. Use your personal networks, social networks and research to find excellent referral partners. Watch closely the first few times you send a client their way. Make sure they deliver great results and make your clients happy. After awhile, you will send them business with your eyes closed. And they will do the same for you. Baking referrals into your business model will not only grow your business, it will make your brand shine. As Miguel de Cervantes said in Don Quixote: “Tell me what company you keep and I’ll tell you what you are.” Pamela Slim is a business coach and author of the award-winning book Escape from Cubicle Nation . Find her at www.escapefromcubiclenation.com and follow her on Twitter @pamslim Related Posts: Do You Know Someone Who Needs to Escape? 17 Terrific Tactics to Inspire Customer Love (and Get New Business) Are There Holes In Your Network? Why Do People Refer? 5 Ways to Amp Up the Personal in Your Brand Powered by Contextual Related Posts Like this post? Share it with others

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Bake a Referral Engine Into Your Business Model