My Most Excellently Flawed Referral Survey

Contact Us

Duct Tape Marketing

Free Social Media for Business ebook

About John Jantsch

Entire Archive

Last week, as part of some research for a book I’m working on, I sent out a survey to readers of this blog and my newsletter and I was floored by the response (Sorry to those who found the survey closed, I just didn’t anticipate thousands would flock to it so fast)

I got exactly what I was looking for with one exception.

First off – here’s what I asked
1) What percentage of your business would you attribute to some form of referral or word of mouth?
2) Do you have a well-defined system to promote referral generation in your business?
3) If you are not systematically receiving a consistent stream of referrals, what is in the way?
4) Of the referrals you receive do most come from . . .
5) I have been in business for . . .

First off the validations – 69.3% felt over 50% of their business came by way of referral and yet, 79.9 further admitted they had no well-defined system to promote referral generation. So, we know the power of referral, but we don’t develop proactive processes to take advantage. I actually had a hunch on these numbers because I hear this every day. By the way, it varied little from over 10 years in business to less than 3 years in business.

Now, what I was really trying to learn is why for heavens sake . . . and that’s where I flawed my results. Q3 – If you are not systematically receiving a consistent stream of referrals, what is in the way? – puzzled people so much that over 20% of the respondents skipped the question. To give you some perspective less than 1/2 of 1% skipped any other question.

Now, one thing was clear from the dozens of emails I got on this one, I should have had an other or I get enough referrals, but judging from some of the very long, passionate emails I got, this is a subject of significant importance in the puzzle and I’m going to push, challenge, explore and otherwise make people uncomfortable and accountable on this one in the book.

Here’s your shot – what’s in the way of you getting a steady stream of referrals in your business. What’s holding you back from getting referrals from every single customer and dozens of strategic partners? Please share your thoughts.

Like this post? Share it with others

Posted by: John Jantsch on Feb 08, 09 | 1:01 pm
Category: Referral Marketing | Tags:

Comments

« My Blogging Editorial Calendar Radar | Home | Upping the Price of Free »

Ivana Taylor

There are two things in my way:
1. Me - there are days - too many days where I don't work the system. I don't know why, maybe for the same reason I skip my exercise class. We all know how that story and reasoning goes don't we?!

2. CONSISTENT implementation of the system that I have. I would be terrible at any MLM scheme because I hate following established systems. I have to work very hard to remind myself and push myself to run my system. It's a good thing I did a lot of work up front because people will send my name around for referral meetings. But I need to motivate myself more often.

Fabio Platero

Ivana: your comment about MLM "I hate following an established system" is so 1990. I have a MLM business and my business strategy, the system of references or mouth to mouth, and mainly, the construction of thinking of leadership are based on lessons learned from two great gurus: Seth Godin and John Jantsch. Today, with access to technology and internet, you no need to follow established systems to build your MLM business.

Paul Simister

John what I find interesting is that so many of your survey respondents are already getting such a high number of referrals despite not having a system.

So it is almost as if they are thinking "I don't need a system because I already get a lot of referrals".

Perhaps the benefits of having a structured referral system are not clear but the costs are - time to create, time to operate, cost of any incentives to the referrer and referree.

I also think that there are so few common, established examples that people can see and be inspired by.

Classifieds

I guess everyone already has a system that they don't think about it as a way of having a system. They get referrals but they don't know how they get them. They get them through word of mouth

Joseph T. Dager

For me it is consistency. We talk about it but do we really work it.

For example: I look at the survey and it says 69% felt that 50% of their business comes from referrals. My question would be does 50% of your marketing dollars support Referrals?

So when you talk about a referral plan/system, WHAT IS STOPPING US? I for one, need to spend a little more work there.

Alan Underkofler

Thank you for sharing the results from your survey. I am always amazed at how many businesses know referrals are a big part of their business yet have no type of system to encourage this to happen. I think many businesses think referrals and word of mouth sales come from chance. They do not realize by simply engaging clients and prospects on a consistent basis using some kind of system will can easily double the referrals they receive.

Whether you use index cards, Excel, Outlook, SendOutCards, Act!, Goldmine, Saleceforce.com, or any of the many other CRM tools on the market the important thing is you use one!

Thank you for shedding more light on this important marketing step!

Larry Kilbourne

Interesting survey, and thanks for sharing! My own suspicion (no evidence other than anecdotal) from my experience helping businesses market enterprise software is that too many perpetuate an unhelpful distinction between customers and prospective customers. They'll spend inordinate amounts of time and money to capture the latter ("what I don't have"), while treating the former as a fait accompli ("what I do have"). It's unhelpful for two reasons: 1)I end up concentrating too much of my marketing energy on prospects, while taking my existing customers for granted, which can result in lost customers. 2) Because I stop marketing to my existing customers, I don't create a mindset about how I might leverage them (through referrals for instance) to bring more business my way.

Anne Millerd

I struggle to find referrals because my customers are retailers who are in competition with each other. I have begun asking them for referrals to non-competing clooleagues or friends, but I have a very low rate of success. They don't want anyone else to carry our product line. They want to be unique!

Kris Bovay

Well first I think I might question the accuracy of the 69.4% who felt that 50% of their business came through referrals. They might feel that way - but is that real? If you don't have a system, how do you measure?

@John - what's holding me back from getting referrals from all my customers and partners? Time to develop a system; the feeling that I'd be moving into a 'hard' sell; the feeling that I'd be imposing on my existing clients; etc. I've got lots of reasons why - when I list them here (and I could put a lot more in this list), I realize that I need to do some work to make this easy and painless - my customers actually like me, like my work and probably would be happy to provide referrals.

Atniz

Referral will help our business to grow. But, giving away 50% of the revenue might sounds very high for a real product. If it is intangible items like ebook, softwares, it is not bad at all.

Selena Horner

I found your survey very interesting.

I provide a service that is generally only thought about when someone has pain or a problem functioning. I am a physical therapist who practices in a state without direct access. This legally means that I am unable to treat a patient without first having a referral from a physician. I also have knowledge in prevention and could tap into that area, especially in light of the number of people 65+ who are at risk of falling, have peripheral vascular disease, have osteoporosis, and have hip or knee joint pain, but again, the current legal constraint, medical model and reimbursement model do not currently support preventative methods. At the same time, our society is built on a quick fix - medications, surgery. This is problematic because the "quick fix" isn't always as beneficial as society thinks and has a high amount of risk. Services provided by a physical therapist are not a "quick fix" and take work on behalf of the patient, although they can have long term benefit with substantial less risk.

The majority of patients choose my services based on word of mouth. To promote new referral generation does take a lot of time - either speaking to the local groups (Kiwanis, Lions, Rotary, Senior Center) or writing newsletters. The referrals from these activities do not occur immediately because a person needs to recognize a situation where a physical therapist will be beneficial exists.

Dr David Black

The best clients are those who have been referred by another happy client.
Dr.David Black
www.blackchiropractic.com.au

blog comments powered by Disqus

Small Business Marketing Magazines

Free - No strings attached - Business and Marketing Magazine Subscriptions

Target Marketing
CRM
Internet Retailer
eWeek
Electronic Publisher
Print Media and more

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution-NonCommercial
-NoDerivs 2.5 License.

Subscribe to the Duct Tape Podcast

Duct Tape Marketing System

Duct Tape System - Complete small business marketing system in 14 workbooks and 4 audio CDs.

Marketing Plan Pro powered by Duct Tape Marketing

The Duct Tape Marketing System now comes as Marketing Planning Software. We teamed up with Palo Alto Software, the makers of Business Plan Pro, to bring you the most powerful small business marketing plan tool going. More info here . . .

Referral Flood by John Jantsch

Referral Flood - How to create a flood of new business without spending one dime on advertising - by John Jantsch

Small Business Marketing Blog from Duct Tape Marketing

Duct Tape Marketing

Free Social Media for Business ebook

Recent Posts

Entire Archive

Categories