People want to increase e-mail mailing because it is free. But e-mail is not free. It takes effort, great content and current material. E-mail is struggling as a medium, it is still push marketing. But I have this junk mail theory, if it is cool enough, it is not junk. If an e-mail is worthwhile enough, it is not spam.

I believe an active small list allows you to target your message better and therefore have a more interested party. I would have a tendency to recommend not increasing their list but segregate it into more accurate groups. I think what makes a great list is creating more of a direct message to individual groups within the entire group. Than grow it by doing this:

A suggestion, create a referral program, it is referral week:
1. Segregate the list into groups.
2. E-mail only twice a month with more precise content.
3. Personalize as much as possible
4. Ask for referrals(forward e-mails) and if your friend signs up???
5. Become a guest writer on another’s e-mail. Leave them write on yours. Each of you, of course would get a link to that persons. Ask for a signup to yours inside the post.
6. People that have customer traffic, create an offer to acquire their e-mail, especially at point of sale or a computer that could print a coupon.
7. Get and post testimonials about your newsletter, everywhere.

If they want to create a better list, make a better offer to get the name or better yet content that someone wants to read. If you want to grow your list do it from within not by trying to acquire more.

And then to start blogging.

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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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Service, Product, Retail, Construction, Professional services, Employees, and Volunteers … it doesn’t matter. A referral system should include 7 basic steps that will help 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 1 = Create a referral target market(s) – you must first create a target list of companies and individuals who can be motivated to refer. This can be clients, volunteers or a network of related businesses. Most people think that everyone is already doing it or would be unwilling to do it. They just look at it as a black and white issue. But I will tell you one thing; very few things are black and white. Ask yourself, who would be willing to refer my company and why? Who is going to benefit? Example: Does a Home Stager make a Real Estate agents job easier? If you want to build a strong referral network and program, sit back and think about what is the motivation for this person or organization to refer us? What is in it for them? Don’t think about yourself.

But as you go through this list, don’t start with strangers. Strangers are not going to refer you unless there is a real incentive package included. The less you know the person, the greater the incentive you must make. The more the people know, like and trust you the easier it is to refer.

This is not rocket scientist type information but it is amazing how most of us forget about it and jump into a network group thinking that someone is going to refer you. They seldom do but remember the old adage to give before you get. So think about a few of these Target Markets and how they would benefit from referring you.

The reason I made a Venn diagram is to demonstrate your Core Referral Message that will be discussed in the next post and how to hit a home run with it.

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This content from: Duct Tape Marketing 

Another Best Referral I Ever Received In a previous post I asked readers to share stories of the best referral they ever received. It was a lot of fun listening to the audios so I thought I would share a couple with you. This referral story comes from Kevin Sanders of Creative Concepts in Lancaster, CA. If you would like to share your referral stories call (214) 615-6505 ext 6998 and listen to the message prompts to leave your message.

I encourage you to leave a referral story it might be fun and you never know who may hear it!

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Referral Week. Not only does it include some heavyweights in the line-up but the sponsors are pretty outstanding. 

John Jantsch of Duct Tape Marketing is hosting the event, this is what he has to say: As the talk of recession crowds the news and economic stimulus package debates rage in Washington DC, it’s time for small businesses to take the matter into their own hands. 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. You can visit here to learn more

The cornerstone event during the week is a live web conference Tuesday March 10th at Noon CST. The event features Bill Cates, author of Get More Referrals Now!, Bob Burg, author of the Go-Giver, Ivan Misner, founder of BNI. A number of readers are using the event to get their their referral groups, networking groups, BNI groups, strategic partners, customers, MeetUps and business connections together to view the live web conference as a group.

This could be a great reason to bring folks together to learn and network.

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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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