March 2011

The REFERRAL Pattern – Who’s REALLY Referring You and Why

by Cidnee Stephen on March 4, 2011

Have you ever had a really good look at who’s actually referring you and been surprised to find it’s a handful of the same people over and over again?

Have you wondered why more of your customers or strategic partners aren’t referring you at all?

Even though you might have a great product or service and your customers rave about what you or your product have done for them, they may NEVER refer you. Think about it. Do you refer every product or service that you have had a great experience with? Of course not. The good news is that doesn’t mean working on your referral system is a waste of time. Instead try looking at your referral sources in a different light. If you can start to recognize their profiles, you may just find you can start to create a much more powerful Referral Marketing System and generate a flood of new customers!

Who will refer you?

If you are currently getting referrals, start looking at the people that are referring you the most. At first glance, you might not see any differences between them and other customers. In fact they may not have even been your best customer. Instead what you are likely to find is that they have one or more of the following characteristics.

If you have ever read the Tipping Point you might recall that Gladwell talks about these first 3 very powerful groups of individuals:

Salesmen or Persuaders – You can’t miss these charismatic people. You probably find yourself drawn in by their charm. Lucky for you, they are also naturally armed with powerful negotiation skills that cause others to want to agree with them. When a persuader mentions your product or service, he or she will encourage others to try it and they will.

Connectors – These are your customers that have a large social network and are happy to connect you with those networks; or share their experiences with your product or service with their network.

Mavens – These individuals are information specialists or people we rely on to provide us with new information, especially those around your particular product or service. For example a food critic for a restaurant would be an ideal maven and strong referral source, or someone who researches and downloads a large number of phone apps could refer a ton of people to a new business iPhone app.

The above can (and often are) combined with one of more of the following:

Raving fans – The product or service you provided has had such an impact on them that they just can’t stop talking about it and/or others have noticed the results.

Strategic Partners – Strategic partners share your same target audience. The strategic partners that will refer you the most (assuming they also have some of the above mentioned characteristics) are those that come just before you in the timing cycle.

For example, while real estate agents and movers share a similar target audience, because realtors tend to come before the moving company in the timing cycle of moving they will be able to refer more business to the mover than vice versa.

Friends/Families/Peers – Because they believe in you and want to support you, your friends, family members and peers will refer you. But don’t get upset if they don’t. It’s likely because they don’t portray any of the other above mentioned characteristics.

Others with a similar target audience – If a woman is pregnant and within a short period of time many of those around her also become pregnant, as a provider of baby gear you might find that this individual is referring you a ton because she is surrounded by others currently in the market for what you offer.

Doers – One of the reasons we don’t refer every product or service we come across is because we simply don’t have the time. Doers are those that will follow through with action, and tend to be efficient with their time. If they say they will send contact info about a great company, they will. If you ask for a referral and they say yes, they will give it. Others are more introverted and can be described more as thinkers. They may be less likely to actually follow through with a referral source or even refer you at all.

Here is a great exercise

In your database, start to identify your customers (and even prospects) by the traits above. Do you find that those with a strong combination of traits are also strong referrals? Can you now start to think of better ways to reach out to them and get them more engaged in referring you more?

At the very least, I hope this information also helps you forgive or understand why some of your customers aren’t referring you at all even though they raved about your product or service. It’s not because they don’t want to, they just may not be programmed to do so.

Want to build your own killer Referral System. Check out our Referral Engine Program

About Cidnee Stephen

Cidnee Stephen is the owner of Strategies for Success – a marketing company that focuses on the needs of budget-minded small businesses and professional services. She has helped hundreds of small businesses get out of their peak and valley ruts to finally achieve that next vital level of success. Cidnee is also a sought-after speaker, writer and blogger on marketing topics that affect small businesses and B2B service based operations.

If you would like to build a system to reach those goals quicker, check out Cindee’s Speak for Leads & Expertise Program.

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Basic and Fundamental: Own Your Own Content

by Tim Berry on March 4, 2011

(Sung to the tune of the old blues song, God Bless the Child (That’s Got His Own))

It’s a simple concept, really: own your own content. It’s like owning your own home. In web terms, that’s owning your own domain. My thanks to Liz Strauss for this back-to-basics common-sense reminder, posted yesterday, called Why It’s Smart to Own Your Content URL, Publish at Home First, and Only Share on Facebook, Flickr, YouTube . The key:

If you’re going to build and share online content, own the url where you house it. Put the link on Facebook, but the content on your own URL.

She quotes the New York Times on Blogs Wane as the Young Drift to Sites Like Twitter. It’s about this:

“I don’t use my blog anymore,” said Mr. McDonald, who lives in San Francisco. “All the people I’m trying to reach are on Facebook.”

Liz points out two problems with that.

First, “we don’t own the keys.” She recalls a painful moment when her site on blogger went down:

I woke up one morning years ago unable to reach my “free” blog because Google owned the server. I wasn’t paying them to serve me. My content was at the mercy of their willingness to keep their tool working and accessible to my readers.

Second, “we give up rights to what we own.” Facebook the like have to cut into your content copyright and ownership with terms of service; they can’t operate without it. So you don’t own them.

Of course, every online tool has to have it’s own rules to protect itself and to maintain its identity. Some of those rules make it deliciously easy to do it their way rather than put in the work to build a “home” of our own. Even the power of their longevity can make the Search Engine listings seem stronger to stay with them.

But the pride and power of ownership allows us to tell our own story in our own way. We can use those other tools to support us in building a powerful presence that is truly our own. But relying on them alone they can become less support and more “just an easy way.”

Liz puts the nugget right into her title: own the content, publish at home first, then link out. That’s good advice.

(Image: Haywiremedia/Shutterstock)

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At the Business Table, Where are the Ladies?

by Carol Roth on March 3, 2011

[Note: I’m proud to welcome Carol Roth as a guest author here. This post was originally posted on Carol Roth’s Blog and is re-posted here with her permission. It’s another very fitting response to the problem I posted about here yesterday. Tim]

This is a tough post for me to write, because I think of myself as an entrepreneur, not a “woman entrepreneur” and half of the time, I forget that I am female. I hate the idea of even calling out the difference between the sexes, but there are certain times when the fact that there is no woman at the table is absolutely glaring.

Looking at the New York Times business best seller list, there is rarely ever a woman’s name that pops up. In fact, the few times there are, it is often a celebrity (like Suze Orman or Ivanka Trump). With all of the smart business women out there (and 52% of new businesses being started by women), where are the ladies?

The online gurus- When you hear about the thought leaders, you hear about the Seth Godin’s, the Gary V’s, the Brian Solis’s, the Chris Brogans, the Guy Kawasaki’s, and so on and so on, who are all brilliant and deserving of the attention and accolades. But, despite again the many women having really compelling messages, I rarely, if ever hear a woman’s name mentioned in the same company, or at least with the same reverence. Where are the ladies?

In fact, the lack of women speaking at TED conferences made the organizers come up with the genius idea of having a TED Women conference. But that misses the point. We don’t want to be singled out and we don’t want to be given a seat at the table just because we are women either.

So, where are the ladies and why are we not represented at the highest level of business? There are certainly many women who should be at the table, not because they are women, but because they are deserving and are conspicuously still absent. In a recent discussion with a high profile business publication, I was invited to become a contributor. The senior editor named all of the other business contributors and, absent me, they were all men. Despite the fact that 52% of all businesses are started by women currently, the business advice is being given by men.

Ironically, Facebook’s COO Sheryl Sandberg gave a really compelling talk at TED Women on the lack of women leaders:

If you are in a substantial position, think about whether you are missing out on having a woman at the table to add to the conversation. Seth Godin showed his leadership in this area with his “FeMBA” intensive free workshop for women entrepreneurs. Chris Brogan showed his leadership in this area by inviting both Liz Strauss and me to become founding contributors to the Escape Velocity blog, and quickly adding Pam Slim and Alexandra Levit to the team as well. Michael Port shows his leadership with ongoing support of many female entrepreneurs (myself included).

I think it’s time that we make sure we are all supporting the women, too. Not just for being a woman- that’s lame and defeats the point- but because there are some very compelling messengers out there that the world is missing out on, possibly because the message comes in a pair of high heels.

What do you think of this issue? How can we encourage the recognition of more of the top-tier female business leaders, authors and entrepreneurs?

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On Sexism, Bad Taste, and Blogging

by Tim Berry on March 2, 2011

I dealt with some disturbing stuff on this blog yesterday. Before I explain, here’s what I wrote in Women-Run Tech Startup Successes, on this blog, in January:

I believe there are disproportionately few women heading interesting tech startups; that this is bad; and that it’s neither their fault nor their preference. If you disagree, that’s your right, but I’m not arguing about it here. I’m saying it’s obvious and moving on.

This is what I wrote last year in 5 Points on the Gender Gap in Entrepreneurship on Planning Startups Stories:

At the very least, the men in the crowd can recognize that it’s there, think about it, and make sure that we’re not contributing to the problem. Where we can, like in our local angel investment group, we can seek out successful women who qualify to be accredited investors and invite them, maybe even urge them, to join. We can at least know that those women we meet in startups along the way have overcome a lot of mindless stereotypes, and are still fighting them. We can wake up and at least recognize the imbalance. Then maybe we can fight it one situation at a time.

What happened? I’m not going to link here to the post in question. I don’t want to give it more play or more traffic. It was a stupid reference to bra straps in a tasteless and inappropriate way. It added nothing useful to the content of the post. I didn’t write it, I’d never read it, and I never approved it. It got here last weekend as one of several hundred posts brought here in a blog transition. I did approve having the flock of about 800 posts brought over here, but I had no idea that anything like this one was there.

It hit me like a kick in the stomach. Even though its author was clearly identified as somebody else, not me, this blog has been exclusively me for three years and it hurt like hell to see it there. People in Twitter blamed it on me. I agreed with several angry comments posted below it. I was going to just delete the whole post, or, at the very least, delete the offending sentences; but we’re a team here, and people I respect say it should stay there as an example. Trying to make it disappear would leave only the ugly residue. The tweets and the links and the comments. So we’ve left it there, along with the comments it inspired.

Which is why I quoted myself here from earlier posts. It’s one thing to distance myself after the fact; it’s quite another – and a hell of a lot better – to show what I’ve been saying all along, well before yesterday’s blowup.

I sincerely hate the sexual gender-specific references that men way too often play down as harmless, as if women were being too sensitive. Even the least offensive of them are demeaning, and the way we – men – quickly imply that it’s all good fun and nothing to make a fuss about makes it worse. The borderline offenses, supposedly harmless must be (I have to guess; I’m a man) like a low-grade fever or a stone in the shoe, a supposedly small, constant annoyance that ends up as a huge issue.

This stuff is always bad. Of course it rarely happens to men, but when it does, we don’t like it either. Read this post by Jolie O’Dell about how distasteful it is when it’s about a man. Still, women get it about a million to one, so I want to add another quote from the Gender Gap post I wrote about a year ago.

Sad but true: none of us men really know how hard it is. We look around and we see lots of women working side by side; things are certainly a lot better than they used to be. But let’s not kid ourselves.

For example, men don’t have to deal with some significant percentage of the population — wrong, of course, but still — assuming we’re bad fathers if we work hard; or that we should be at home taking care of the children; or that the house/home work is ours, because of our gender, regardless of the rest of what we do.

We don’t get up to the podium in a business plan contest as a woman looking out on a sea of male faces in the audience . We don’t stand up in a venture capital conference room or angel investment group as a woman looking out at 90% male faces.

Less than a month ago I was visiting with my sister. We were talking about this problem in reference to our daughters (I have four, she has two). She told me she was in a meeting once where a man referred to getting her to agree to something in a business meeting as “getting one button unbuttoned.” This happened to her 20 years ago, and she still remembers it in vivid detail today. Why does she have to carry that memory around? There’s no excuse for it. Things like that, and the bra strap reference I’m dealing with now, matter. They have to stop.

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6 Things Small Businesses Can Learn from Lady Gaga

by Carolyn Higgins on March 1, 2011

I was never a fan of Lady Gaga. I grew up in the age of Madonna rolling and gyrating all over the stage in her fetish-style costumes and Ozzy Osbourne biting the heads off bats. Lady Gaga and her outrageous outfits and risqué lyrics didn’t faze me. She was just another wannabe exorbitant artist that the general public was eating up and I didn’t pay much attention. That is until I saw her on 60 Minutes last night; then I realized what a marketing genius she is and gained a new respect.

She built a brand (Lady Gaga) from scratch and is now, according to Anderson Cooper, “the most talked about entertainer in the world”. Lady Gaga didn’t get famous by accident. No, she diligently studied “the art of being famous”. This is a woman on a mission – a woman with passion and drive and I gained a whole new respect, if not for the music, but for the business woman and brilliant marketer she is.

Here are 6 things all small business owners can learn from Lady Gaga:

Master the “Art of Fame” - Lady Gaga didn’t become famous by accident. She knows what it takes to be famous because she invested the time and energy; she studied it. Nothing she does is by accident. She plans every outfit, every song, every interview, every moment of her life. Are you a master of what it takes to become famous in your industry? Do you understand what others in your industry have done to make it big? Can you honestly say you KNOW what it takes to make your business as successful as you want it to be and that you plan each and every action with achievement of that goal in mind?
Know your audience and connect– Lady Gaga knows her audience, she has a huge fan base of young and old who feel disconnected and disenfranchised in the world and she speaks to and connects with them in her music, her image and her interviews. She moves them because she understands them so well. Who are your “fans”/customers? What moves them and what do you do to move them? What do you do on every level to connect with them?
Be inspirational – People are drawn to positive people, businesses, and outcomes. If you aren’t excited about your business, no one will be. Lady Gaga embraces and uplifts the insecure, outcast, “freak” in us all. Hers is a message of self empowerment and self acceptance- and that has helped her succeed. What is your message to the world?
Make it personal – Lady Gaga uses her own experience to connect. She grew up feeling like an outcast; she was different. But instead of using it to isolate herself she turned it into a way to connect to others. How can you tell your story to connect with your customers and prospects? What need, problem, or niche do you fill that is lacking in peoples’ lives? People connect with people – make it personal!
Be outrageous – No one ever got famous or popular by being timid. Lady Gaga made a truckload of money and became a worldwide phenomenon by taking risks and by standing out from the crowd – by being outrageous. What can you do in your own industry to stand out and be outrageous? Don’t be afraid to take risks- don’t follow the crowd.
Change it up sometimes – Never be boring! Every time you see Lady Gaga she’s sporting a different look. She’s always outrageous, always edgy and always true to her brand – but she’s always fresh and new and exciting! How can your company and brand keep it fresh and new and exciting so that every time a customer or potential customer comes into contact with you they get a new/fresh look or perspective? Maybe it’s a new product or service offering. Maybe it’s a new process… find a way to keep it interesting and keep your customers engaged!

Carolyn Higgins is the President and founder of Fortune Marketing Company. Her personal mission is to help small businesses stop wasting money on advertising and promotions that don’t deliver and help you implement an effective marketing system that will bring you more customers – consistently.

For more information about Carolyn Higgins and Fortune Marketing Company please visit http://www.FortuneMarketingCompany.com. Email chiggins@fortunemarketingcompany.com or call us at 707.631.6340.

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