General marketing Five secrets to creating an endless stream of referrals! It shocks me! It really does. Word of mouth is one of the best ways to grow a business. It’s free, or at most, costs very little. But very few businesses use it to anywhere near its potential! Consider this: if you got just one referral from each one of your customers, you’d double your customer base! So, how do you maximize word of mouth? Here are five secrets I used to grow my last business by 237% in just 23 weeks, solely using word of mouth! 1. Love your customers. This is, in my opinion, the most important, yet overlooked element of creating endless referrals. It makes me very sad when I see so many businesses focusing more on profits than on people. Word of mouth success comes from looking beyond just profit into how you can enrich your customers' lives. 2. Create an amazing experience! If you can make doing business with you an amazing experience, your customers will tell a lot of people. People want amazing experiences! Let me give you a great example. There is an Australian accountant who placed his desk on a balcony which backed onto a golf course. He set up a tee off area for his customers to practice their golf swing while he consulted with them about their finances! Obviously, you don’t have to go to these extremes. Just a little extra touch can make dealing with your business that much more of an amazing experience! 3. Give your customers incentives for giving you referrals. If you’re being passive about referrals, then you’re sitting on a gold mine. When I grew my last business, we were very active about getting referrals. 4. Make it easy for customers to give you referrals. If you want to get lots of referrals, you must make it incredibly easy for your customers to tell their friends. 5. Ask at the right time! When is the best time to ask for referrals? I want to let you in on a great little tip! The best time to ask for a referral is when your customer is on a high because you’ve delivered so much, or have gone beyond what they expected. Source: Article adapted from Michael Norman. Michael Norman is the author of "Referral Magic - How To Use Word Of Mouth Marketing To Create A Lifetime Stampede Of New Customers For Your Business". To learn how Michael grew his last business by 237% in just 23 short weeks, solely using word of mouth with $0, get Michael’s free 8-day "Word Of Mouth Secrets" mini-course at http://www.ReferralMagicEbook.com