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The Referral Engine - The Ideal Customer Lifecycle begins with: Know, Like and Trust

matthewdavidPosted for Everyone to comment on, 5 years ago5 min read

Here's a picture of me holding a book

I warn you, I'll be posting a lot of pictures of me holding a book. Why didn't I just post a picture of the book?

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I posted a picture with me holding the book because I'd like you to get to know me (or at least a little bit about me). With a picture of me, you feel a better connection with my writing because you can visualize who is writing to you.

This is the first part of the process, a sales process.

The Referral Engine

The book I'm writing about is The Referral Engine by John Jantsch. I've read it at least twice now, revisiting it again a month or so ago. Reading it again helped me clarify some things for the new project I'm launching.

The Referral Engine is all about how you can set up a system that consistently sends you the kind of people you want to do business with.

My guess is that you are on Whaleshares because you think that there will be people here who like what you have to share and will reward it. How do you get that to start working for you?

The Beginning of the Lifecyle: Know, Like and Trust

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Know

The first step is for people to get to know you. I know that there are very good reasons why someone may not want to post their picture online, but if you don't have one of those reasons including a picture of yourself is a good first step in letting people get to know you.

You don't have to share everything about yourself, but sharing some of your beliefs and personal history can help people see that you are real and not trying to pretend to be someone you are not.

Like

As people get to know you and have some interactions with you, a lot of them will actually start to like you. We want to feel connected with people. We want to like people. If we don't like the people we are around, we'll try to seek out other people that we might have a chance of liking better.

If you give people the opportunity to get to know you, odds are some of them will like you.

Trust

Once people like you and have the opportunity to repeatedly interact with you, they will likely trust you. Especially if you are striving to treat people with respect and dignity.

People want to trust other people. With time, they will... unless you give them a reason not to.

Try to do the right thing and if for some reason you don't, recognize it and make it right. That goes a long way in helping people to trust you.

This is an authentic process

It's what happens naturally, not a way that you scam people into doing something against their own self-interest. It's authentic and real. But it's just the first part of the Ideal Customer Lifecycle.

For my own business of computer repair and sales, I allowed myself to be somewhat visible in my community. I had a physical location, I went to groups to give technology or social media talks. I gave people the opportunity to get to know me. Often they liked me, observed what I did and how I handled questions. I gained their trust as a person, not just as a company. The reason most people buy something from me is that they've had a positive experience with me before or they were referred by someone they know who trusts me and says good things about me.

One mistake I made early on was not publishing pictures of myself on my business website or social media. I was uncomfortable with sharing my picture. I didn't want it to "be about me". That was a mistake. I wish that I had shared my picture earlier and had a more personal voice in my company communications earlier. It's a mistake I recognized and fixed later on.

Things I can apply from this book

I got a lot out of The Referral Engine. It helped me clarify my thought and guided me in choosing the name for my project that I think will work much better than the name I was thinking of using before.

Whaleshares is a Referral Engine

Think about it.

When you share and reward a post, it gets recommended (referred) to the people who follow you. Why do people follow you? Because they like you for some reason. Or they trust your judgement on what's good and what's not.

This book was written with the traditional small business owner as the audience, but I encourage you to think about how it applies to you as a Whalesharian. Do you give others here the opportunity to know, like and trust you? Or are you just throwing out posts that you think are popular topics and hoping that people press that "rewards" button?

Let me know if you read this book

Or if you've already read it. It'd be great to connect with you and compare notes.

-- @matthewdavid

P.S. If you'd like to get to know me a bit better, feel free to read my introduceyourself post

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