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The Referral Engine Launch Day Bonus
May 13th
The Referral Engine Launch Day Bonus
This content from: Duct Tape Marketing
Note: When an author launches a new book (well, at least this author) it’s kind of a big personal deal. So, I know I’ve been a bit commercial of late in promotion of my new book, but the good news is today is launch day so regular old thoughts on helping your grow your business to return. Thanks for your patience, trust and support.
My new book, The Referral Engine – Teaching Your Business To Market Itself is finally available to ship! In fact, the online retailers are blowing it out at as low as 55% off during the launch. Go to The Referral Engine book site for details.
The buzz for the book online has been tremendous and the reviews over the top positive. To continue the momentum I want to make you an offer to take action today. I have a library of incredible interviews available exclusively to those who buy my new book today.
Here’s the deal -
The book has received praise from the following thought and business leaders in the form of a blurb on the book’s jacket.
As a bonus for purchasing today you’ll receive audio recordings of the interviews I did with each. These are not pitches for the book, these are deep conversations about their thoughts on marketing and business.
- Chris Brogan, coauthor of Trust Agents
- Seth Godin, author of Linchpin
- Guy Kawasaki, cofounder of Alltop
- David Meerman Scott, author of The New Rules of Marketing and PR
- Tony Hsieh, CEO, Zappos.com
- Bob Burg, coauthor of The Go-Giver and Go-Givers Sell More
- Marcy Shinder, vice president, American Express OPEN
I addition I’ve included double bonus interviews from some of the people you’ll meet in the book who also know a thing or two about referrals.
- Ivan Misner, founder of BNI
- Stephen MR Covey, author of The Speed of Trust
- Scott Ginsberg, The Nametag Guy
- Zingermans Community of Businesses, a chat with Ari and Mo
That’s 11 interviews in all with some folks I consider the brightest minds in marketing today.
Order today and send a copy of your receipt to john@ducttapemarketing.com and you’ll receive your special link to download or listen to this entire library.
Go to The Referral Engine book site to choose your favorite online retailer – you can also send me the receipt from an offline retailer to qualify as well.
Thanks for all your support, you truly inspire me.
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The Confusing Opportunity of Referral
May 12th
The Confusing Opportunity of Referral
This content from: Duct Tape Marketing
One of the reasons I wrote The Referral Engine is because some opinions and perceptions from business owners and marketers about referrals in business didn’t make sense to me – and they still don’t really.
I conducted a poll of my readers consisting of six questions that I think are relevant in the consideration of referral strategies and tactics and I find the answers both confusing and dripping with opportunity.
Here are the questions and my observations
1) What percentage of your leads would you estimate comes by way of word of mouth or referral?
Over 55% said that more than 50% of their business came by this method. Not surprising really as this is what I’ve heard for years and speaks to the power of referrals as a business building strategy. 15.2% said over 90% of their business was through referral. So, what about you? Where does your business come from? Do you do anything to actively create referral opportunities?
2) Do you use any method to educate your referral sources about your business?
Less than half answered yes to this question. The only complaint I ever hear from people on this subject is that they often receive the wrong kind of referrals when they ask. First you’ve got to understand what the right kind of referral, ideal referral, is for your business and then you’ve got to help your referral sources understand how they would spot your ideal customer – and a few other things as well.
3) How many referrals have you personally made in the last 30 days?
70% of respondents claimed they had made 1-5 referrals. 5% had made over 10 referrals in the last 30 days. Making referrals is simply the flip side of receiving them and if you’re not actively making referrals you are probably limiting your ability to grow your business through referrals. One of the things that every business needs to do is build a dream team of “best of class” providers so that when their customers need products and services beyond what they sell, they can refer a member of their select team. This is how you become the go to person for your clients and it’s the first step in building a referral network platform. (See my Make a Referral Monday idea.)
4) What’s the number one consideration you make when giving a referral?
I had a list of 5-6 answers for people to choose from but “I trust they will do a good job” came in with 66% and “they provided me with a great experience” gobbled up the rest. Trust is always the most significant factor in a person’s willingness to refer, but a great experience is what gets them talking – you’ve got to have both.
5) Has social media use changed the way you generate referrals?
Only 28% said yes definitely social media changed referral generation and 21% said not at all. I think this is an area of great opportunity. So many people still look at social tools and social behavior as a way to get in front of more prospects. I think the first place to install a set of socially charged processes is with your existing customers and network. Do that and you will build deeper relationships and create engagement with those you meet much quicker than relying solely on offline methods. The next time your meet someone at an event connect with them online too.
6) Do you actively seek strategic referral partnerships with other businesses?
Only 14% said they had a formal partner program while 44% said not at all or wish we did more. In my mind this is one of the most exciting opportunities going for marketers. If you “get it” – you’re producing content that educates, you’re using social media to get closer to your customers and you’re fusing online and offline tools to create a better customer experience, then recruit your team of providers and start showing them how you can market each other. Do this and you’ll never have to lead generate again. (This idea is covered in great detail in The Referral Engine.)
So, what about you? Where do you fall in this list of questions?
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The Referral Engine: Teaching Your Business to Market Itself
May 8th
If we all know that referrals are the best, most cost-effective marketing strategy, then WHY OH WHY do we continue to leave referrals up to fate or some happy coincidence? I honestly don’t know. In fact, it’s frustrating to see so many new, ideal, wonderful and profitable clients simply going un-harvested, just because you treated referrals as something that just happen and not like a powerful strategy.
Well, it seems that I am not the only one. John Jantsch, author of “Duct Tape Marketing” and award winning social media publisher has been thinking about this same thing for years and has come out with his latest book “The Referral Engine: Teaching Your Business to Market Itself.”
In the interest of full disclosure, shameless bragging and self-promotion, I have to tell you that he interviewed me for his book and I’m happy to say that my story is listed early in the book in the section titled “Reality #5 Marketing is a System” (that’s page 9 in your copy 
). Don’t worry; I’m not the only one. John has interviewed hundreds of entrepreneurs and used their stories and information to serve as inspiration as well as a best-practices collection so that you can literally see what others are doing and create a system that works for you.
And talk about building goodwill and reciprocity — you can see a full list of all the people he interviewed on the book’s website! I wonder how many referrals all of those participants will get from that?!
Read It in One Sitting – Use It for a Lifetime
This is what I call a power-book. It’s just over 200 pages long. You can read it in one sitting, but you’ll use it for a lifetime. Here is what I mean by that. It’s written is such a simple and engaging style with so many interesting stories, case studies and examples, that you’ll find yourself zipping through it very quickly. I also recommend that you keep a highlighter and some sticky notes by your side because you’ll want to pull out the many good strategies and ideas that you’ll read about and adapt them for your own use.
If you don’t like to write all over your books, John has devoted Chapter 12 “Snack Sized Suggestions” to listing a bunch of strategies that he’s found in his research.
You’ll find examples from retail:
- A gift store setting up a referral club that rewarded customers by giving them a certificate good for $20 off a hundred dollar purchase.
- A clothing store partnered with surrounding retailers to promote each other
- A golf driving range gives members who purchase a 10-session package “Free Range Time” coupons to give to others they want to bring to the club
There are service business examples too:
- A computer consultant joined an industry association and marketed his service as an add-on to hardware upgrades.
- A sales trainer offered a free all-expense paid trip to Cancun for the person who referred the most clients in a year.
- A maid service sent out fake $100 bills as a Valentines Day gift to their clients – and then told them to “gift” them to their friends as $100 off the maid service.
Independent professionals get tips too:
- A dental office installed a small kitchen with an oven and bakes cookies to give to their patients (I wonder if they are low-sugar?). The practice is so unique that people tell their friends.
- A financial planner surprised his clients by having their car detailed in the parking lot while they were in the meeting. Clients were so pleased they told everyone.
- A management consultant got a testimonial from EVERY client he had ever worked with. He had over 500 pages of letters! When potential clients asked for references, he would send a spiral bound 500 page book with a snappy letter.
3 People Who Should Get This Book – Yesterday
- Business Owner – If you’re a multi-hat wearing small business owner without a salesforce or marketing expert, the best time and money you’ll spend this year will be for this book. John Jantsch has done all the hard work for you and pulled together everything you need to make the most of your networking meetings.
- Sales Person – How much do you love cold calling? Yeah, I hear you. Trust me. I got my start cold calling and selling long distance service and BELIEVE me, a good referral system will have you spending all your time doing what you do best.
- Free Agent or Consultant – There is absolutely no better way to build a profitable book of clients than the referral techniques that John Jantsch outlines in Referral Engine.
There is no doubt that John Jantsch has put his heart, his soul and all his wisdom into this book. Hard to imagine that he could beat Duct Tape Marketing - you’ll have to pick this one up and judge for yourself.
Editor’s note about free books: Small Business Trends has 2 extra copies of the book that John Jantsch’s publisher sent us. We’ll give those away in a random drawing. Everyone who leaves a comment below by May 12, will be entered in the drawing for a chance to win a book. We’re happy to mail the books anywhere in the world at our expense, via first class mail.
The Referral Engine: Teaching Your Business to Market Itself
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The Referral Engine Overview
May 6th
This content from: Duct Tape Marketing
My new book, The Referral Engine – Teaching Your Business to Market Itself, ships next week so I thought I would share some of the key points via a slide show. Hope you grab something tweetable and, well, consider buying the book too – links to buy – Barnes & Noble, Amazon, 800-CEO-READ or Indie Bound
Lots of info at referralenginebook.com – and thanks.
The Referral Engine
View more presentations from ducttape.
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Referral Engine Preview and Book Giveaway
Apr 27th
Referral Engine Preview and Book Giveaway
This content from: Duct Tape Marketing
Video podcaster Steve Cunningham produced a very cool video preview of my new book, The Referral Engine, set for a May 13th launch. Steve is putting together a service called ReadItFor.me that summarizes popular books. As part of the review, Steve is giving away five copies for readers that comment on the post or connect via Facebook – so get over there and do it!
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What is Make A Referral Monday?
Mar 15th
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!
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Make a Referral Week Giveaway
Mar 13th
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.
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The Soft White Underbelly of Referral Marketing
Mar 11th
The Soft White Underbelly of Referral Marketing
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
Not that I want to be a wet blanket during referral week, but sometimes there’s room for reminders when things are not necessarily all that rosy. I love referrals and referral marketing, and I believe in the cause of referral week. Still, it’s good to keep the full spectrum in the picture. There are some dangers there.
1. Don’t recommend without knowing who you’re recommending
Back in the early days of Palo Alto Software we included a list of business planning consultants on bplans.com, our free business planning resource. The listing was free for users and consultants, and we certainly had no resources to check and validate the information included. So we offered it as a useful resource to some with some obvious buyer beware and check references advisories.
One day eight years ago I got a call from somebody saying a consultant on that list had taken $3,000 from him and never completed a business plan. He was blaming us for listing the consultant. I knew nothing about him and next to nothing about the consultant. Although we had put everything we could on the site to make it clear we were listing, rather than recommending, how do you think I felt? How satisfied do you think our customer was to be told that using somebody on our list was his fault, not ours? Technically, we were right. Commercially, we lost a customer. And we didn’t know the people on the list. Bad move. Business mistake.
Another time I got a similar call from a different customer making almost the same complaint about a different consultant. That second time, unlike the first, I knew that consultant. He had done business planning for an old college friend of mine, and my friend was very happy with the results. He was involved with getting several of our bplans.com sample companies financed. He was a good professional consultant.
So this second time, I called the accused consultant. And he said he’d been trying to give the client back the initial money because he couldn’t stand working with him. The client, my friend said, had been exaggerating the truth in the plan, had “sketchy ethics,” and, in a nutshell, wasn’t somebody he wanted to work with. But the client wouldn’t take the money back, because he wanted the consultant to get him financed, not to give him the money back.
The second story was better than the first, but neither is much fun. We pulled the consultant listings off of bplans.com as a result.
2. Don’t risk dollars for nickels and dimes
The saving grace for us in both of the two stories above was that we weren’t taking any money. That makes a huge difference. When things go bad (and sometimes they do) your situation is way worse if you’ve been taking money for referrals. In that case, maybe you have legal language like disclaimers and all, so you might not be legally liable (I’m not an attorney, I don’t know).
I’m always amazed when I see experts whose time is worth hundreds of dollars per hour getting involved with small shares of add-on products worth a few extra dollars. Does it make sense to stake your professional reputation on what amounts to as much as a free lunch every so often? I don’t think so. I say recommend cleanly, without financial interest, to preserve your credibility as an expert.
3. Don’t call revenue sharing or comarketing referral business
I think this is basic ethics, and doesn’t need saying. Still, especially during referral week, let’s agree that when you get a cut or a commission that’s not a referral. That’s a revenue share or a sale. And it’s not fair to pretend you’re just recommending somebody out of good will or generosity.
Tim is the president and founder of Palo Alto Software, founder of bplans.com, and a co-founder of Borland International.
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Author of Book Yourself Solid Visits Referral Week
Mar 10th
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.
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The Referral Multiplier Effect
Mar 10th
The Referral Multiplier Effect
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
After I read an early copy of John’s terrific new book The Referral Engine, it got me thinking about how really great online information makes the job of referring a friend, colleague or family member to somebody a simple process.
Think about your own referrals. How many of them happen via an electronic mechanism (email, Skype, Instant Message, LinkedIn, Twitter, and so on). If you’re like me, nearly all of your referrals happen this way. Somebody will email or tweet me something like: “Hey, I’m looking for a great Web designer, do you know anyone?” How easy it is to just send a link to a Web designer’s work and some contact information!
Most businesses aren’t like Web designers, though. We don’t have our stuff available for easy access. But this problem is easily solved. All you need to do is create something amazing on the Web—a YouTube video, a blog, an ebook, some photos, graphs or charts—something that people are eager to share with others (something that makes referrals easy).
Make it free with no registration gates of any kind
There is no doubt that free information made available on the Web creates a referral multiplier effect. When you make it easy for people to point to something interesting that tells your story for you, many more people will talk you up with their friends, colleagues and family members.
Sadly, most people put brakes on their referral engine by requiring an email address (and other personal information) prior to permitting people to download content (such as a white paper). The thinking is that with a gate, each person downloading becomes a valuable sales lead.
When you remove the gate and allow the completely free flow of information with no registration required, immense value comes from many more people consuming and spreading your content and referring you to others.
For example, my most popular ebook The New Rules of Viral Marketing: How word-of-mouse spreads your ideas for free has been downloaded over one million times.
Every week someone contacts me to say that they learned about my ideas first when someone referred them to one of my free ebooks. There is no doubt that if I required registration, I would not have a referral engine.
I’m always interested in metrics from other organizations. For example, John Mancini, President of AIIM—a non-profit organization representing the users and suppliers of document, content and records management technologies—released an ebook called 8 Reasons You Need a Strategy for Managing Information — Before It’s Too Late. AIIM also made their ebook totally free, with no registration required.
In just the first month of release, the ebook was downloaded 5,138 times. In addition, AIIM also created a presentation version of the book and posted that, also with no registration, on SlideShare. This version has had 3,353 downloads for a total of 8,491 downloads in the month. Pretty darned good result, for the first month of an ebook, I’d say, and each one a potential for a simple and easy referral.
“Making the e-book available for free and totally without registration was a new approach for us,” Mancini says. “These results for unfettered access are particularly impressive when considered against a couple of more traditional examples (i.e., content requiring a registration on our web site).”
So create some great content, make it totally free with no registration required, and encourage people to share. Your referrals will multiply immediately.
David loves it when people refer to his keynote speech video
David Meerman Scott is a marketing strategist, keynote speaker, and seminar leader and author of the best selling book The New Rules of Marketing and PR. The book is a BusinessWeek bestseller published in 24 languages.
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