Small Business Marketing Blog from Duct Tape Marketing

This is a special Make a Referral Week 2009 Session

The Referral A-Team consisting of Ivan Misner, founder of BNI, Bob Burg, author of the Go-Giver and Bill Cates, author of Get More Referrals Now! joined me for a live web conference yesterday to talk about, what else, referrals.

You may listen to the session here (1h:15m)

You may download the session here

We covered a lot of ground and the tweets were flying as well – follow twitter thread here

Some of my favorite nuggets

• small business is the economic engine that can pull our country out of the recession
• In referring, you’re not trying to close a sale, you’re trying to train a sales force
• Stimulate referrals by educating people on how referrals work and how you handle referrals
• Time confidence curve= the level trust needed to receive referrals depends on business. High (financial adv) low (florist)
• strategic alliances are not formed by speed dating – proactively support each other
• you should be getting at least 20% of your referrals passively, without you asking -they know, like, trust you and refer
• Must rely actively on network, strategic partners and clients together to build referrals. Not on clients alone
• Women give referrals twice as often as men
• Most people lack a *process* for harvesting their network. Process replaces the fear of asking for referrals
• Trust is the ultimate root and source of our influence. Influence is everything

Hope you join us by making your referral now at Make a Referral Week – just tell us who you referred and why and have fun reading the growing list as we march towards 1000 referrals made.

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Posted by: John Jantsch on Mar 11, 09 | 3:03 am
Category: Referral Marketing, make a referral week | Tags: , bill cates, Bob Burg, Business Network International, Ivan Misner