Self Help Lab – Nishant Kasibhatla’s Blog

There are more than a million ways (channels) of marketing and branding your products and services. In this post, I single out the channel called referral marketing. Read on to know how you can use referrals to become a superstar! What’s a referral? What was the last movie you watched that you liked very much? Lets say it was “I am Legend”. You read reviews, bought tickets, spent 90 minutes watching it, came out and wowed about it!

The next day, wouldn’t you talk to your friends, colleagues about the movie? I am sure you will. You have just used the power of referral to promote the movie and you didn’t even got paid a cent by Warner Bros (the distributors of the movie)

Its just natural for anyone to spread the good word (good movies, books, products, services etc). Now the point is how to benefit from this tool.

How to get referrals:

Its easy to give a referral to someone. But how do you get someone to give your products or services a referral? There are plenty ways of doing this. Here are some steps to follow:

1. You must first have a very good product/service. If you are in a job, you must provide exceptional service. No one refers a lousy product or a person.

2. Be proactive in talking about your product, service, achievements & accomplishments. If you are in a job, talk about your achievements and the targets you achieved.

3. Ask for referrals. You might say something to the effect of “If you know someone who you think might get benefited by my product/service, just let them know”.

4. Try to be in the eyes, ears, mind and heart of all your contacts. Meet them regularly, call them, be in touch. If your contacts don’t know what’s happening in your life, they will forget you and just cant refer you to anyone, even if they want to (Not everyone has a very good memory like mine!).

If you are in printing business and you do this, who do you think your contacts first think of when someone asks them if they knew any printer? You know the answer.

If you are in a job (say, Accounts Head), when you do this, who do you think your seniors think of when your company is expanding and they need some one to manage the accounts division if a major project?

5. Join a referral organisation, which engages in active referral promotion. One such organisation is BNI. I just joined one of its chapters in Singapore (BNI-Abundance)

You – The Superstar

By following the above points, it doesn’t take much time when everyone is talking about your products/services. And you (or your products/services) will be well on your way being a SuperStar!

BTW, I haven’t watched “I am Legend”.

Nishant Kasibhatla
Grand Master of Memory

PS: If you like my post/blog, let your friends know about it! (That’s Step 3 in action)

Credits: Thanks Nifal. You are the one who inspired me to come up with the title for this blog.

Filed under: Marketing