Realities of the Referral:

1. People make referrals because they need to – it’s intrinsic to share what’s good, and not what’s bad.
2. All businesses involve risk.
3. Nobody talks about boring businesses – make something that people can’t stop talking about.
4. Consistency builds trust.
5. Marketing is a system.
6. Most don’t know how develop a referral system even though it’s how a majority of business is done.

The qualities of a referral:

1. Honesty – don’t lie to customers. Tell the truth!
2. Treat your employees as customers – they can refer you, but only if you treat them well!
3. Hire for fit – Hire for attitude and train for skills.
4. Train, and create standards.
5. Give them the tools – satisfy an employee’s basic needs. Delight your customers!
6. Open dashboard – create a one page high-level view of the finances to keep your employees on track
7. Employees as owners – allow an umbrella style company that allows employees ownership
8. Create a culture of buzz – it can anything; t-shirts, free merch, free events, outrageous acts of kindness,
9. Give-to-get mentality
10. Expect referrals
11. Premium pricing-low priced liters and referral still not go hand-in-hand.
12. Inbound sales and marketing works wonders versus outbound sales and marketing in the referral business. Educate on overselling.
13. Shorter sales cycle.
14. Process oriented business promotes wow-zing the customer (develop an internal wiki for systems)

The Four C’s of Marketing

1. Content – create content that educates and gives value for free.
2. Context – narrow and simplify your customer focus.
3. Connection
4. Community – both online and in-person

Your best bet is to blend offline and online worlds and not rely solely on one.

Add internal flourishes: out of office emails, vacation responders, fax cover sheets, etc. stop doing what others are doing.

Find your: This Is How We Do It Here (TIHWDIH), allowing you to find ideal customers and solve the root cause problem.

Larry Bird shot 100s of free throws per day. What are you actually practicing?

Content is a marketing driver. You must create a total Web presence and then crest spokes, online, and off-line that lead people to your hub;

• social media
• White papers, free reports
• PR exports and articles
• Strategic partnerships
• Web conferences
• Community building events

How to properly stalk a journalist:

1. Build a lists of journalists who might care about your story
2. Read everything they write and subscribe to them
3. Discover their blogs or online columns, comment, and write with relevant trackbacks to your article
4. Set up a routine of sending relevant content to them related to the articles they write
5. Don’t push any of your stories unless they are truly news until you’ve done this for weeks

Call five customers a day. Send handwritten notes.

Stay top of mind – make sure all your prospects have heard from you every thirty days.

Send handwritten notes because no one does anymore. Add a movie pass.

Find customer champions and used them for beta testing.