Third party recommendations are the most powerful sales force in the world of business. Let's have a look at how small businesses can use them strategically to accelerate growth.
Picture this, you’re standing in the middle of a busy food market trying to decide between 11 different types of egg brands. You're scanning the look of each carton and opening a few to inspect the eggs. All of a sudden a random person appears from behind you and points to one carton and says;
“Those eggs there are incredible, I’ve tried dozens of brands and those ones are delicious. They hold together nicely when you poach them.”
And just like that, you say 'thanks!' and buy those exact eggs based on the words of a stranger who may or may not know what the shit they’re talking about.
Third-party recommendations like that happen all the time.
Directly, when a friend refers a reputable contractor to do work for you, and indirectly when you overhear a conversation other people are having about a brand.
When people talk about positive experiences they’ve had with a business, others tend to listen carefully and trust the advice when it's specific or it's directed at them.
Now, referrals aren’t new to anyone in business, but I wanted to share how I’ve used them systematically to grow my business over the past few years.
Before we kick off, let’s be clear… Recommending rubbish doesn’t scale.
You must have a product or service that’s good enough that people want to talk about.
People only talk about really shitty experiences, or really (really) good ones, Everything in the middle doesn’t get mentioned - it’s just “Meh” and you never hear from them again.
With that in mind, let’s dive in:
I’ve never liked cluttering our website with testimonials even though that’s the advice of every marketing and sales professional.
But I do use them often in printed documents for direct sales when acquiring new clients.
I’ve found that it is essential to leave them with a well-thought-out document they can read through after a visit that includes relevant testimonials. And I’m not talking about those cheap sales brochures that go in the Rubbermaid filing cabinet straight after the Rep leaves.
Think about something premium that people wouldn't want to throw away.
Testimonials can also be pulled from positive feedback people send your way. We capture them from in-person chats, texts, social comments and emails that come in and use them in social media stories.
It’s super effective around the time an offer is going live (new product, special or flavour) or when people are likely to be making decisions about purchasing, booking or where to go for brunch on the weekend.
And in this noisy, low -trust world we live in these days, hearing genuine stories about how your product made someone's life better is way better than you talking about how good it is...
One of the benefits of having an email database is incentivising referrals using an offer that gives the referrer a reason to talk about your business.
We’ve used it a bunch of times over the past two years to grow home delivery clients, catering leads and drive people into our stores.
Referrals are great if you’re confident that you can convert friends of clients when they come in.
What I mean is, your customer has to put their reputation on the line and refer a friend to you or bring them into your store. You must be ready to delight that person to not only win them over, but also make your client feel special for recommending you.
When you get it right, it's a huge multiplier for gaining new customers.
And when you think of it this way, you don’t need thousands of leads. You just need a handful of high-quality ones who help you grow using their network.
So you can afford to individually target people and deliver excellent experiences.
But just asking someone to refer you doesn’t always work and it often feels awkward even to ask.
Here are two methods I’ve used that have worked:
I prefer to create a physical offers that our clients give to other people because it encourages them to chat which also gets a testimonial thrown in as they hand it over. It's a double win.
Most businesses lean into digital offers because they are trackable and scale well. This includes getting people to share your social media post with others for the chance to win something.
While we've used this approach many times, I find it lacks the impact of in person referrals.
One of the most underutilised opportunities to get referrals is by turning a customer's negative experience around when they’ve had a shitty experience with your business.
But there’s a bit of a strategy to it and no one does it better than Zappo’s - an online shoe retailer in the US.
They’ve essentially built their whole business ethos ‘delivering happiness’ around turning a crappy experience into a dazzling one by solving customer problems quickly and going above and beyond to do so.
There’s an entire book (Delivering Happiness) written on it so I won't go into detail but they don’t just credit you or replace things because that’s an expectation these days. They empower their team to go above and beyond in unique ways.
It means you have to do the unexpected. To go so far beyond their expectations of a normal outcome that they must tell someone how unbelievably good it was.
There have been plenty of example of this in the hotel industry too.
One that comes to mind is a family who were staying at a hotel and the child left their favourite toy bear there.
Not only did the staff find it and post it back, they took photos of the bear all around the hotel as if it stayed and had it's own holiday. It was by the pool, in the gym, at the restaurant and helpig to take reservations.
When the family received the bear back they opened the package to find a note and all the photos of the bears holiday.
Pretty amazing way to turn a negative experience into an overwhelmingly positive one that those people will talk about for decades and no doubt they're deeply loyal to that brand now
There’s a story about how Shimano (a fishing and cycling components brand) captured a huge market share in Australia when they started and it's pretty powerful.
They had built a range of really great products but they were unknown in the market. So they used to tell people it was available in certain fishing stores.
As a result, people went in there asking for it so many times that the owner of the store had no choice but to reach out and become a distributor.
ThankYou water has used the same tactics in recent years to break into the 7 eleven world.
It starts with making products people want to talk about and then directing the consumer interest towards the people you want to work with.
Here’s how we’ve used a similar strategy to create demand:
When someone emails us to ask if we can stock products in their local IGA we tell them to go in there and ask for it at the store.
One or two people asking for Three Mills products rarely leads to them calling us but it breaks the ice. But it means when we do reach out to that IGA store, we’re not going in cold, they’ve at least heard of us from someone else recently.
Having someone mention your brand positively in the weeks leading up to a cold call/visit is unbelievably powerful.
Google reviews are more trusted than reviews on your own site because everyone assumes yours were written by your staff and mates.
The best way to get Google reviews is to ask customers who already love you.
Seriously, it’s awkward for the first dozen times you ask, but then it’s easy, so just get over it and ask!
Here's why you should...
Unsolicited reviews tend to be negative. By leaving these review sites unattended, you’re likely to end up with a number of low-rated reviews.
Generally speaking, you’ll get more 5-star ratings from people who love you than the randoms that drop in once and leave you a 1-star rating. And the 5-star people rarely write about you (unless asked), they show their support by returning as a loyal customer.
Third-Party Recommendations To Do:
I hope this helps!
I write about things like this every week.
If you want me to drop it in your inbox, click drop you email in via the link below.
50% Complete
I added a layer of online protection by making this a two-step process. You'll receive a notification email and free guide once you confirm your subscription in the email.