What Referral Marketing Actually Is, And How You Did At It This Summer

When I ask most people what referral marketing is, and you get some version of the same answer: you finish a job, the customer is happy, you ask if they know anybody else who needs the work.

That's the whole definition for a lot of folks.

And look, that's not wrong, but it's just the smallest and uncontrollable version of it. It's the version that only works when you're standing in front of somebody who just paid you.

Here's the definition I've been using for fifteen years: referral marketing is building and maintaining relationships with people you know share your values so that business comes to you through people who already trust you, instead of through ads or cold calls.

Read that again and notice the beauty of what's missing. There's nothing in there about asking, nothing about closing, nothing about a script you run at the end of a job. I teach entrepreneurs to create and maintain relationships.

Assuming the definition I have used in my business for 15 years is right, then everything you did this summer counted. Every cookout you got dragged to, every ballgame where you stood around talking to somebody's dad for twenty minutes, every job site where the electrician mentioned his sister is finally selling the house, every church potluck, every neighborhood pool, every graduation party you stayed at longer than you meant to.

All of that was referral marketing...so were you keeping score?

Let's take a few minutes today and set up your scoreboard of whom you met this summer. 

Here's your first score of the week, and I want you to do it right now before you keep scrolling. Don't open your phone, don't open your CRM, just from memory, name every new person you met since Memorial Day.

Say them out loud if you're alone. Type them in your notes if you're not. Most people get four or five and then they stall out. They can picture faces. They remember a good conversation. They know somebody's wife does something with real estate, but the name is gone.

That's not a character flaw, I've done (and sometimes still do if I am being honest) it plenty of times myself. That's what happens when you spend a season being social without a system underneath it.

But here's why it matters, and this is the part I want the contractors and insurance agents and real estate agents reading this to sit with: a referral doesn't come from a stranger; it comes from somebody who remembers you well enough to say your name when it counts and that relationship only exists if you remember them too.

You can't connect people you can't name.

That's the whole thing. That's why I built The Connector Blueprint in the first place, because I had summer after summer of good conversations that turned into nothing by October. Not because the people didn't like me, but because I never wrote anything down and I never went back.

You just spent three months planting and some of you planted a lot. The question isn't whether the seeds are in the ground; the question is whether you know where you put them.

Wednesday we go get the real number, not the memory version. The actual count, pulled from your phone and your camera roll and that stack of cards in your console. And then we sort it, because a full contact list and a working referral list are two completely different things.

For today, just answer the one question honestly: how many did you get from memory?

Drop the number in the comments. No names, just the number. I want to see how close my four-or five-guess is.

And if you want the Connector Blueprint for free and tighten up your referral marketing skills, visit www.ReferralBlueprint.com.