Blog 312: What's In It For Them

The other night I told my friend Chris where to have dinner in Chicago. A couple or a few hours later, he sent me a message with a picture, letting me know that he was having a wonderful time. ‘This is a great place!’ he wrote.

This got me thinking …

All recommendations are selfish. Yes, I wanted my dear friend Chris to have a lovely night in Chicago, but if I am being completely honest, I also enjoyed having a secret ad and sharing it with him and then knowing he’d be delighted. The bonus is, of course, that he’ll tell people that story for years. “My friend Dennis told me to go … “

To get more referrals, you must be a story your clients want to share more than once. The work you do is the service you charge for, and that isn’t usually enough to get a referral. The experience you stage is how you work and make people feel. How you make them feel is why they will refer you; the consequence of the work you have done and how it has changed the way you see your world and place in it is why they’ll tell the story twice.