I get asked the question above plenty. The answer is really easy: People refer people, products, services and companies because they like to, it makes them feel good, it’s just human nature.

The problem with this question and its answer from a business building standpoint is that it’s not that helpful.

The far better question is “who do people refer?” Answer that question and you will be more prepared to take advantage of this powerful marketing tactic.

People make referral decisions about the same way they make purchasing decisions. People decide something is the right price, fits, addresses their need – the logical part, and then, they determine they will look good, have more life, impress their friends – the emotional part.

Here’s the tough part – they usually do it in reverse order – they get hooked emotionally and back it up with logic.

So, in order to have your business considered as someone worthy of a referral, you need to tap the logic and emotion formula – maybe in equal parts. In other words, people have to believe you can help, have a great price, and will show up as promised (logic), but, they must also feel good about helping you, trust that their friend will be treated well, and like the experience of doing business with you (emotion.) It’s not enough to have a good solution. The firms that get lots of referrals have a good solution mixed with a fun or unique solution.

That’s why money offerings alone for referrals are poor motivators. (In fact,cash may only motivate less than ideal referral sources ) Far better to work on making your business more likable, more referable, more energetic before you go out their and start offering any kind of incentive for referrals.

If you are not getting referrals naturally, you may need to focus a great deal of attention on cracking the logic and emotion code for your clients.

Now, you may be saying, this is a serious business, there’s nothing fun about this business, well, then think of the ways that your serious business can make a genuine emotional connection with your clients and make that one of core elements of your business.

Once you have these logic and emotion parts down, then make sure it’s easy to refer you – create tools, education, and follow-up systems and you are ready to rock the referral world.

Web marketers have discovered the value of adding audio to websites and sales pages for a number of years now. Used properly, audio can really help visitors connect and get more excited about a product or service (video is quickly jumping into this space too.)

One overlooked use of audio is to help enhance your customer’s experience with you, your products, and services.

• Audio welcome messages on thank you pages or in autogenerated email
• “How to” audio links delivered with products
• Personalized instructions to help get more from a service
• Getting started audios to help a client know what to do next
• Ongoing conference reports that wrap up meeting notes
• Conference call summaries for non attendees
• Assignments for third party vendors or collaborators

Finally, I would love to see this: An FAQ page with the questions posed via audio from real prospects and clients and your expert answers or those of real clients spoken for each.

By the way, I use a very effective service for this type of audio enhancements called Audio Acrobat. I like it most for its ease of use. I can record from my computer or telephone and upload mp3 files. I can also create guest lines and allow clients to record messages via telephone. I’ve also seen podcasters use this feature to take recorded audience calls and drop them into shows. Audio Acrobat makes it easy to publish the audios and place them on web pages and emails.

Once you get the hang of it you may find lots of great uses for audio.