442 – Sell 4 times as much as you do now: Tom talks Referral Marketing

Episode 442 – Referral Marketing
[00:00:08] Welcome to Screw the Commute. The entrepreneurial podcast dedicated to getting you out of the car and into the money, with your host, lifelong entrepreneur and multimillionaire, Tom Antion.

[00:00:24] Hey everybody, it's Tom here with episode four hundred and forty two of Screw the Commute podcast. Gonna talk about referral marketing today. Wow. This can really, really make your business take off if you put into play mechanisms to get referrals and also to operate your business in a way that stimulates referrals. I mean, this can you can make four times as much money whenever you hear about that. I hope you didn't miss Episode 441. That was Tim Fitzpatrick. And he says marketing doesn't have to be that hard. He's got three fundamental marketing secrets, so you stop wasting money and time. That was Episode 441. Of course, any time you want to get to a back episode, you go to screwthecommute.com slash 441. Now, this was 442 today. Hey, I'm actually going to be talking about in this episode affiliates stuff and how you can make big money referring me anywhere from eight bucks and eight dollars and fifty cents or you can blow that more at Starbucks to up to five thousand bucks. But even the little stuff, if you refer enough of them, adds up to some pretty good PayPals or checks that I said you. So let me know if you're interested in learning about how you can refer my products and services for money.

[00:01:50] All right, grab a copy of your automation ebook, we sell this for 27 bucks, but it was free for listening to the show. It also has something to do with today's episode because I can take care of people lightning fast using the techniques in this automation book that I give you just for listening to the show. So check it out at screwthecommute.com/automatefree. Download it immediately. And while you're at it, pick up a copy of my podcast app at screwthecommute.com/app and you can put us on your cell phone and tablet and take us with you on the road. Now we're in the middle of a thing with my school. Many of you listen to the show. You're aware of my school and how we teach hardcore techniques that are in high demand. And you're not in debt for the rest of your life because, you know, you can have a legitimate new career in six months or so, but. We're doing a thing to help people or persons with disabilities, and so we're doing a pilot program for that, and we're putting some people with physical disabilities, even one with site impairment through our school. And we're doing a crowdfunding campaign to help pay for it. And we're actually hiring a person with a disability to be the liaison and to help out with everything. So please check that out. When you hear that announcement that the school is IMTCVA.org/disability is where now the Go Fund Me campaign hasn't started yet, but I'm asking you to watch for it and if you can help me out. Even at five bucks, you know, anything. If you do it right when it's announced, it really helps the campaign because it gives it momentum and then other people that see us on the Go Find Me site might say, wow, it's a popular campaign. We'll jump in and check it out, say so. That really helps out. And of course, if you're really flush with cash, you can be doing a really great service to someone that's got a physical disability and really help them out where they can not only learn from home, but they can. Legitimately work from home, which I've been preaching for 23 years, but I mean because of the pandemic, it's really on the forefront that, you know, there's plenty of work that can be done from home and it takes a massive burden off of somebody that has to get in and out of wheelchairs and do all kinds of hoops that any person that doesn't have that problem doesn't have to deal with. So try to do some good here. So help me out. Watch for that announcement.

[00:04:42] All right, let's get to the main event. Referral marketing. I can't tell you how many times other people have referred me and my products and services over the years can't couldn't even possibly tell you. Now, some of it I can track because the people used an affiliate link to refer my stuff, but far more have sent me customers and prospects just by word of mouth. I'm going to talk about both of those kinds of issues. Affiliate marketing in word of mouth in this episode. Now, the first thing I'm going to tell you. Well, actually, it's a shame I have to bring it up all right, but. But on the other hand, if you do what I'm going to tell you right here, it will work in your favor. Let me illustrate the concept. I haven't told you the concept yet, but let me illustrated by telling you about an event I remember vividly. And after doing 3000 of them in 12 countries, I don't remember all of them that vividly. The two. But I do remember this one because of what happened and what I'm going to tell you is not uncommon for me, but the other person involved is a memorable character. So that's why I remember it so clearly. See, when I speak at a big event, I'm the first one there and the last one to leave. I don't wear a name tag.

[00:06:06] You'll see why shortly, and I just hang around and talk to people about the event. Frequently I do an early bird session the night before the main event starts for people that flew in early to give them some extra value. Also, the. Event usually loves it that I'm giving extra value to the people and and everybody's happy. Now, I don't do any direct selling at the Early Bird event, but you can be sure I do a ton of indirect selling by doing a video training session featuring my retreat center. So people are exposed to that while they're learning how to do a big high end video about their products and services. But that's a story for another day. All right, back to the name tag, I do the early bird session for maybe, you know, sometimes 20, 25 percent of the total attendees expected on the main day of the event. And I wow these people. And and of course, then they know what I look like. So it doesn't matter if I have a name tag on. The next day, when the main event starts, it's usually very hectic, but but many of those 25 percent people that saw me the night before start telling the new attendees about what happened the night before. Now, follow me on this on the day of the main event, I'm there early mingling with the crowd with no name tag on.

[00:07:37] So two things happen. Someone that saw me the previous evening runs up to me with their friend who just got there for the main event. And in front of me tells their friend, hey, this is the guy I was telling you about. You see word of mouth right there. We have a nice conversation, and I've just upped my chances of those two people ignoring all the other things for sale and waiting for my performance later in the event. The second thing that happens is that I just start talking to people, they don't necessarily know who I am, remember, no name tag at this point. And as we talk, I let them know I've been selling online since online started, really? And I'd be happy to answer any of their questions. All right, back to the original story. All right, so that's the setting here. So during the event, after people knew who I was, was a guy came up to me. Who was let me see how I can say this delicately. All right, dressed bizarrely, was not well groomed and needed dental work. And he asked me some questions and I ended up talking to them, I don't know, maybe about 15 minutes. And I never thought much about it at the time because. I remember one event I had been speaking at twice a year for many years, and the crowds were getting worse and worse and even homeless people were invited.

[00:09:14] So I didn't know if the guy was homeless or not. Anyway, I do my main presentation and afterward the bizarrely dressed guy plunks down the full fee for my mentor program and has been one of my best students ever. He not only purchased the fulfillment of a program for himself, he purchased one for somebody else. It's hardly ever happens. And he sent his commissions in and just been a joy to work with. It turns out he was a multiple true best selling author, not just some little piddly piddly one true best selling author in his field. And he told me no one else would talk to him at this big author event. I was the only one. So I said a few minutes ago, it's a shame I need to mention this, but one of the best ways to get business and referral business is just be nice to everybody and help them out. And no, I'm not saying give away all your products and services for free. I'm just saying you never know who is just checking you out to see if you're worthy of them giving you their money. All the other egomaniacs that frequently speak at these events blow in with their entourage and and do their dog and pony show, and they make sure to tell everyone how important they are and they have to catch a plane. So you better buy their stuff right now.

[00:10:46] I always watch you know, I watch all the speakers any time I speak. That's a whole other issue of why and how that makes for a great speech that I do. But I always watch these people with a smile on my face because I knew I was going to take all the money home and I always did and I still would if I was speaking today. So, I mean, that was a very specific situation that many of you may never be in. All right. So but be nice to people. Talk to everybody. Now, let's talk about things you can do to increase referrals for any kind of business in any situation. And these are in no particular order. But one of the things I'm a real stickler on in my business is extreme customer service. I mean, I've gotten out of bed late at night and gone down to my main computer when I saw an email on my cell phone that a customer was having trouble with downloading or accessing a product or some something like that, I don't know. I've done this many times. Who knows what was about? Now, I don't know what extreme customer service in your business might look like, but you probably do. And if you don't, you better find out and start doing it. Many businesses know what they're supposed to be doing. But their biggest decision is if they're willing to do the great customer service things or not.

[00:12:16] And this all depends on how serious you are about your business succeeding to high levels. Now consider this and and how doing great things for customers could improve your business. Neilson, everybody's heard of those that they, you know, check out TV stuff, but they do all kinds of research. Reported that people are four times more likely to buy when referred by a friend. And if you just cruise along and give normal customer service or, God forbid, bad customer service, you just screwed yourself. There's a screw the commute. Remember that we use crude terms around here. You just screwed yourself over from business. You could have had four times more likely to buy when referred by a friend. Get that indelibly etched in your skull. OK. Now, part of customer service has to do with your personality. If you have a crappy one right, maybe you better hire someone with a very pleasing personality, it it really makes a major difference. Now, here's an example. I know a podcast booking guy that's perfectly competent at his business. But I won't refer him anyone because he's got a lousy personality myself and hundreds or even thousands of other podcasters are in perfect positions to refer him, but most of us don't. I mean, it's too bad for him. I mean, even voice inflection and facial expression plays a big part in customer service.

[00:14:01] I used to get 10000 bucks a day to teach this to the big companies. So I'm going to make up a situation where let's say you had trouble downloading one of my products, and and I want you to think about how you would feel if you heard this, either on the phone or maybe you saw me on Zoom. You won't see me here on this podcast. But you can you'll definitely be able to hear the difference. So let's say you you had trouble with one of my e-books so I could say something like this. I wouldn't, but I could. Are you you can't download a PDF file. You don't have to open one. OK? All right, well, yeah, I'm I'm running some errands, and when I get home, I'll try to give you a call or text or something and try to get it get you fixed up. All right here that I would never in a million freakin millennium's say something like that to a person, one of my customers, you crazy. Here's what I would say. Oh, man, I'm sorry you're having trouble. Listen, I'll try to help you right here on the phone. I'm at the grocery store right now, but it's OK. But if I can't get it solved for you right here, I'm going. I was going to run some errands, but I'm going to go right home and get on the computer and I'll get on Zoom and help you out, OK? Do you see the difference there, folks? You know, I'm showing them I'm going to go 100 miles overboard to help them, and that's what creates referrals.

[00:15:45] That's what creates people talking about you. And you got to do that to the nth degree because they're more likely, everybody knows to if you do something bad to talk about you that if I just said the thing on the first one. Ten times as many people would have would have gone and told people about what a schmuck I am. All right. So so just to get the basic referral, you got to go overboard, say, and that person will talk about you in a great way. OK, so great customer service. Get your referrals now before we move to the next way to get more referrals. Listen to this. According to the Wharton Business School, they did a study and it was they combined with another university, Goethe University, they found that referred customers are more loyal and have a 16 percent higher lifetime value, meaning they will spend more over time with you. So get that etched in your head to you're going to have more loyal customers that are going to spend more money. All right, another way to get more referrals is to make it easy for people to share things about you on social media. Now for this, you might want to explore the various Facebook social plugins.

[00:17:08] You can tell your geek, or if you do this stuff yourself, look bad up Facebook, social plugins. They got tons of them and a few clicks. People can talk about you on Facebook again. If you make it easy for them to share you better, you better do good stuff so that they're sharing good stuff. A lot of these plugins allow you to pre write for them what is being said about you now they can edit it or erase it and put their own stuff in, but most people are lazy and won't. And this way you can control what's being said about you for the most part, if you did a good job and they share it. Now, WordPress has a lots of social plugins that allow people to share stuff to multiple social sites. So look at the WordPress social sharing plugins. Now, the next thing is to offer referral incentives, although in some places this is a big, big, big no, no, don't do it on Amazon. You will get banned. They've cracked down like massively. You cannot give incentives for referrals on Amazon, but for other places like your website, go ahead and go get it. Do it all you want. Just be careful when it's not your Web site that you check their terms of service. I don't want to hear that you got banned from somewhere for incentivizing referrals.

[00:18:35] All right, now, one way to incentivize referrals is to offer money I just mentioned this in the opening of this about affiliate stuff. And for many things, this can be tracked using affiliate tracking module, like the one that my shopping cart system is kickstartcart.com. I think we covered shopping cart systems in episode 10. And this is basic affiliate marketing, which I definitely covered in Episode 52, sea affiliate marketing has two sides. One is other people recommend you and you give them a commission and then you recommend other people and they give you a commission. We're talking this case. We want them to refer you. And if they create a sale for you, you give them some money, say so. That incentivizes their referral now for bigger ticket items. Let's say like my school, where people aren't typically going to just click on an affiliate link to put down their their big tuition. I have the person referring tell me who they have told about the school and it's about scores, isn't the high, you know, high volume University of Phoenix where they just put you through, like cattle. So I know where people came from, but I want you to tell me so it ties them to you so I can give you the commission and those referral commissions can be pretty darn big. So people have a pretty big incentive to refer the school and my other stuff, you know, some of my mentor programs on speaking and Internet marketing and stuff and my my wake him up speaking system.

[00:20:16] There's all pretty big commissions. Now, another way to do incentives is to hold like, say, contests and pretty much use a concept called gamification where people get points that they can trade in for products or chances to win. Like if you're doing a contest based on their referrals, we even use what are called content lockers, which lock off premium content until someone refers that content and all of those kinds of viral referral mechanisms. Mechanisms are covered in my book KickStart Viral and you can find it at Screwthecommute.com/Viral. Now, another way to increase referrals to you is to give referrals to others. This is called the law of reciprocity, people feel like they owe you if you've done something nice by referring them. Now, this doesn't always work, and you must be careful with this idea, you don't want to refer someone that will not take care of the person you referred to them. No one will trust your referrals after that, and then they won't trust you either. And they'll probably hold you responsible if the person you referred. Then rips them off you also and also just because someone refers me doesn't mean I will refer them. And it's for the same reason, even though I appreciate their referral, I just can't risk my reputation by referring them back if I know they give substandard service or they're an out and out rip off.

[00:22:01] OK, now, to make all these strategies work better, you have to ask people to help you. OK, if you're afraid to ask people, hire somebody else that will ask them. Texas Tech did research showing that 83 percent of satisfied customers are willing to refer other people to you, but listen to this. Only 29 percent of them actually do. This is most likely, they concluded, because nobody asked them or showed them how they could. Now, if you're in this boat, it's your fault if you don't get referrals, even when money is involved, if you don't ask someone to join your affiliate program, teach them about it, very few will. I mean, some fields that they know, you know, high bizarre markets and Internet marketing communities know this, but the average person doesn't. And they may have a big following. Maybe they just didn't know about or maybe they just weren't thinking about it. You have to ask. And then another thing is I also create relationships other than just business. I regularly ask about sick parents and animals and other things my customers are doing in their lives, and I really do care and get a kick out of it. You know, I spend most of the time alone in this house.

[00:23:30] Even when the pandemic was here, I still spend most of the time alone in the house. We had the school building and and but now everybody's working from home. And so I enjoy hearing about other people's lives and living vicariously through them, I guess. But but it really does cement and increase referrals to even though it's just something I enjoy doing. So make it a point to make referrals an important part of your business and you'll bring in a lot more money to the bottom line. Now, if you want help with this and the myriad of other things it takes to be successful online, check out my mentor program at greatinternetmarketingtraining.com, and it includes a scholarship to my school. A lot of you know the details of it. It's the most unique, longest running, most successful ever mentor program in the field of Internet and digital marketing. So you can check that out at greatInternetmarketingtraining.com. But I'm really concentrating now on pretty much begging you to help out on this program I'm doing for people with physical disabilities to help them. And then the plan is, is to make this pilot program successful and then go for grants to make it really successful and help tons and tons of people. So that's what I'm working on. Please watch for the announcement of that and I'll catch you on the next episode. See you later.

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