Of course when I start discussing flow, I am going to start discussing Theory of Constraints. In your marketing process, you will have numerous constraints but Goldratt claims that at any given time, there is only one constraint. That constraint is much like the neck of an hourglass and will limit the entire system. Actually, if it is well managed you could throttle your process accordingly (We only wish we could that). Simply doubling the efforts in a constraint could be the easy solution and may just move the constraint to another area. However, we operate in a more complicated world than that. Something else usually cases something else to happen.

What is that something else? It is the marketplace. What we see in our constraints may not be problems but indicators. If we treat the perceived problem without really determining the root cause we just may go in a merry-go-round. It would be like just adding sales people. You could double your sales capacity and that may or may not increase sales. In fact, what typically happens is additional responsibilities are given to salespeople and you off-load other stages of your Marketing Hourglass to them without increasing sales. You did not find your root cause. The good or bad part is that your indicator will return because the constraint really never went away.

David Armano just wrote a blog post on Dynamic Signals for Business and how rapidly dynamic signals are transmitted and received. He discusses how Google has organized the Web by figuring out who has authority, but now the real-time Web behaves differently. It is about trending topics, and SEARCH JUST CAN’T REACT QUICK ENOUGH. He goes on and discusses how he receives trending information, and what they mean to him.

So marketing today has to address value and the content they are distributing. However, as importantly, they have to address the time or the stream of their marketing system. The acceleration or throughput is extremely important. Creating systems within our process that are efficient and propels customers through the Marketing Hourglass or Sales Cycle is imperative. Our days of leaving non-responsive customers on our mailing list, online or offline are ending. Creating advertising to the masses and expecting a reasonable return have already ended for small and maybe even medium size businesses. These statements are not meant to say that we only market to someone for 90 or 120 days and that’s it. It is more inline that we have to create interactive platforms that allow our customers to interact at their leisure, their timing and at their discretion. A good description of pull marketing, but how do you manage a stream?

You must understand your Marketing Stream well enough to have a throttle. You must know where your constraint is, maybe even on a seasonal basis. You must address indicators that are built into your process and not built into month-end reports. I look at my Google analytics daily. If I see web traffic dropping from referral sites, I realize that I am spending too much time pushing my message versus participating with others.

What are the real-time indicators within your business? Do you have a monitoring system that lets you know? Do you adjust your marketing message accordingly? Are you improving your stream with better information to qualify yourself to the customer? If you are proving a higher value of information to the customer, does that propel them through your marketing hourglass?

If you believe that your referral process is a sub-standard or your constraint, it may be a way to create an immediate impact in your process. Applying a couple of these principles to the bottom of the Duct Tape Marketing Hourglass in the refer stage. If you worked in this area alone and increased testimonials and referrals, what would it do for you? Could you reduce the time spent in your hourglass? Do you give every customer the opportunity to refer and to provide testimonials? Try a few of ideas and see if you can get a handle on your throttle.

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You must remember that a referral system is many times the cornerstone of someone’s hiring practice. And if you could develop an entire army of people wanting to refer you, would you not be better of than you are today. Go study some referral programs and make them work for you.

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Service, Product, Retail, Construction, Professional services, Employee, and Volunteer … it doesn’t matter. A referral system should include 7 basic steps that helps you identify and succeed in ways you never imagined. It is the basic understanding on how to apply the Referral Flood program to Your Business or Organization .

Step #7 – To bring your referral system full circle you need to devise two follow-up steps:

1. 1. Continue to market to your referral leads that don’t immediately turn into clients.
   2. Systematically communicate the progress of a referral back to your referral sources to keep them motivated.

Since you inspect a shorter sales cycle you sometimes will give up on a referral more quickly. Well, you may find out since they entered the Hour Glass or Marketing Funnel at a different stage that maybe for this particular client you missed a step. Or, they may not have been that good of a referral and need to be educated more about your product. You should develop a system to re-qualify these people and send them back through your funnel. they may not have been viable candidates at all . However, by re-qualifying them you will have to make a decision of how to continue with them. Re-purpose some of the material in the top of the funnel and feed it back through to them. Keep the material fresh and try to automate this process as much as possible.

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Service, Product, Retail, Construction, Professional services, Employee, and Volunteer … it doesn’t matter. A referral system should include 7 basic steps that helps you identify and succeed in ways you never imagined. It is the basic understanding on how to apply the Referral Flood program to Your Business or Organization.

Step #6 – What good are referral leads if they don’t become referral clients? You must map out a specific set of steps that will allow you to convert your referral leads. What I would recommend is developing a hour glass for this process just like you do a regular sales channel. If you do this, your steps in developing a referral client will become very clear. After a while, you will begin to recognize where the referral is entering your sales cycle at. Why is this important? If the referral is strong enough the prospect may already know, like and trust you. They may be ready for a trial offer. You may only confuse them by trying to build more knowledge and sending them additional information  about your company. Understand the process and work it! A nice surprise would be that a significant portion of the sales cycle is skipped there by reducing your cost of sales.

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Service, Product, Retail, Construction, Professional services, Employee, and Volunteer … it doesn’t matter. A referral system should include 7 basic steps that helps you identify and succeed in ways you never imagined. It is the basic understanding on how to apply the Referral Flood program to Your Business or Organization.

Step #5 – This is where you devise the creative offer that makes people want to refer you. Example: “Refer 4 people that become clients and yours is free.” There are numerous offers available but be creative. A gift certificate, dinner, and discounts can be great incentives. But know your audiences and try to be outlandish. The old adage of What is in it for ME, is never more important than right now. This single step may determine the success of your program so be creative, easy to understand, and something no one else would do. 

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Service, Product, Retail, Construction, Professional services, Employee, and Volunteer … it doesn’t matter. A referral system should include 7 basic steps that helps you identify and succeed in ways you never imagined. It is the basic understanding on how to apply the Referral Flood program to Your Business or Organization .

Step #4 – Most people when meeting with a potential referral source will not only increase the number but the quality of referrals if you educate them on:

1. Who makes a great referral.
2. What’s in it for them to provide a referral.
3. How to refer you.
4. The exact steps you plan to take with that referral.

If people don’t know who makes a great referral they will either never refer or pass you leads that are not qualified at all. I always likened it to buying a new car. You very seldom see one till after you buy it. Afterward, you see the car at every corner. If you tell people what opportunity it is, it may come knocking.

You need to provide an incentive to refer someone to you. Don’t just assume they are going to do it. But before you can construct an incentive, be sure to understand what may motivate them. Some people will be satisfied with recognition, others discounts on future purchase and others may want referrals from you.

Many times people will misunderstand not only who to refer but what to say when referring you. Defining who you are to your referral partner is extremely important. Not being a client they may not understand exactly what you do. So to communicate that, the description must be short and to the point.

It is also imperative that you tell people what you are going to do with the referral. They are not going to send their friends and family to someone that is going to relentlessly pursue them. Tell your partners the exact steps you will take and do them. It will go a long way in developing the trust you need.

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Service, Product, Retail, Construction, Professional services, Employee, and Volunteer … it doesn’t matter. A referral system should include 7 basic steps that helps you identify and succeed in ways you never imagined. The principles are outlined in a 7-step process that we will communicate this week in leading up to Referral Week. It is the basic understanding on how to apply the Referral Flood program to Your Business or Organization.

Step #3 – Create and communicate your core referral message – your referrer must be able to easily explain the value you bring to anyone who they refer. “Business901 implements marketing systems.”  Now, how do you go about defining your core referral message. Is it different than your typical core message?

Your Referral Message must be very concise to your Target Referral Market. If not the effectiveness of your message will be greatly reduced and may even be non-existent. You must develop a message that has the ability to be transferred effectively and rapidly cross the network, much like the game of telephone that played as a child. If your message has to repeated: Short, concise and to the point is important. Where a core marketing message may solicit a "How do you do that?" A core referral message should solicit: Can they do this or a What do they do? More about the answers later.

Looking at my Referral Venn diagram, look at the overlapping of circles. You must envision what core message you want to express to each particular group. The trade organizations you belong to may not have any interest or similarities to the message that you are sending to you vendors. Or it may be the exact message same message you send to each. Why would this matter? By organizing your referral clients according to core message you can start build a referral funnel for each perspective group and see what message and material will be similar to each one. Many companies will develop a referral program without integration and/or try sending the same message out to all. Customizing the program to each sector will make it work but by integrating the process, you will be able to manage it and develop it to its fullest extent.

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Service, Product, Retail, Construction, Professional services, Employee, and Volunteer … it doesn’t matter. A referral system should include 7 basic steps that helps you identify and succeed in ways you never imagined. The principles are outlined in a 7-step process that we will communicate this week in leading up to Referral Week. It is the basic understanding on how to apply the Referral Flood program to Your Business or Organization .

Step #2 – Identify your ideal referral client – In order to receive high quality referrals you must be able to quickly communicate the exact type of person or business that has the ability to make great referrals. That is not hard, is it. Anyone that breathes and you have met. If you convey that message I can assure you will get exactly what you ask for, and you better be careful. But if you can identify exactly what makes an ideal referral client there will be the synergy needed to make a referral.

What is different about a Referral Client:

1. It may not be your best customer or your best vendor. It is the person that knows "your ideal client" best.
2. It always helps if the company or person that refers you is famous. I am not talking sports hero or anything but the better known may establish great credibility for yourself.
3. They need to have a built in reason to motivate you. It is still about what’s in it for me.
4. Is there a way that you can motivate them that requires little effort on your part to fulfill.
5. They need to have the ability to repeat the process. Just because they know 1 person that might buy is not reason enough to build a system around.
6. A natural connection point to your organization. If you have to work to have a dialog, both of you will not be active enough to make it work.
7. You need to be important to them. There has to be a reason that they have your best interest at heart.
8. Use social media to make contacts and follow-ups. It is a different animal, but it is an important to distinguish.

Ok, simply stated Ideal would mean: A Star with a wealth of contacts that would be willing to give them to you freely. That is ideal.

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The live web conference is scheduled for Tuesday, March 10th at Noon CST and will be hosted by John Jantsch, author of Duct Tape Marketing.

The conference is the headline event of the educational component of Make a Referral Week.

Special offer on the Duct Tape Marketing Referral Flood Package.

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Mon 09 Anita Campbell, founder of Small Business Trends on strategic partnering    Michael Port, author of Book Yourself Solid on face-to-face networking.

Tues 10 Scott Ginsberg, founder NametagTV on being more referable Rich Sloan, author of Start up Nation on low-cost referral strategies.

Tuesday March 10, Noon CST – Special live web conference featuring Bob Burg, author of the Go-Giver, Ivan Misner, founder of BNI and Bill Cates, author of Get More Referrals Now.

Wed 11 Scott Allen, author of the Virtual Handshake on using social media for referrals.    Andy Sernovitz, author of Word of Mouth Marketing on small business word of mouth strategies

Thur 12 Ben McConnell, author of Church of the Customer on creating customer evangelists    Pam Slim, author of Escape from Cubicle Nation on Personal Branding

Fri 13 Guy Kawasaki, author of Reality Check on the art of the referral    Jill Konrath, author of Selling to Big Companies on customer referral strategies

Check out the Duct Tape Marketing Referral Flood System

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This content from: Duct Tape Marketing

Tired of Hearing About E.D. – then do something. I don’t know about you, but I’m getting tired of all the talk of economic downturn (E.D.) and I think, as a group, small business owners are too.

Therefore we hereby declare March 9-13, 2009 – Make a Referral Week. Make a Referral Week is an entrepreneurial approach to stimulating the small business economy one referred business at a time. The goal for the week is to generate 1000 referred leads to 1000 deserving small businesses in an effort to highlight the fact that this simple action can blossom into millions of dollars in new business. Small business is the lifeblood and job-creating engine of the economy and merits the positive attention so often saved for corporate bailout stories.

Th e-week long virtual event will also feature daily education programs focused on teaching small business owners and other marketers how to tap the power of referral marketing. The featured session includes a live web conference with Ivan Misner, founder of BNI and author Masters of Networking, Bob Burg , author of Endless Referrals and the Go-Giver, Bill Cates , author of Get More Referrals Now. (Here’s the full list of education planned for the week)

No money is exchanging hands, no sponsors are being hit up, it’s just something that we thought needed to be done. If you want to get involved in this small business happening visit the Make a Referral Pledge page and submit your intention now to make at least one referral during the March 9-13 event. (Take this step and you are automatically eligible to receive audio recordings of the entire expert series)

Once you pledge you will also find tools that make it easy to refer friends, post to your Facebook profile and blog about the week. If you would like to actively promote visit the sponsor page for additional tools.During the week of March 9-13 we will activate the Referral-o-meter to track the march to 1000 referrals as small business owners visit and describe who they referred a lead to and why.This is every small business person’s chance to be a part of the solution!

I blogged this in its entirety. Take a look and check back with me for a few local opportunities and a special deal on Referral Flood .

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