Just about every course or book that deals with getting referrals teaches you one single referral method - - "asking" for referrals.

Yes, they'll teach you how you have to give good service and then they give you a formula for asking for referrals and that's all well and good....BUT...

...there's a HUGE problem with this approach. People HATE to ask for referrals. You hate it, I hate it, and people that get asked hate it.

And bottom line is...people won't do what they hate to do. That's just simple human nature.

Asking people for referrals is right up there with asking your friend to come to church with you on Sunday. It's downright uncomfortable.

The sad result is that people don't get even a tiny amount of referrals they could be getting simply because whole "asking" process is flawed.

_____________________________________________

Here's Other Problem with Asking for Referrals... _____________________________________________

Let's just suppose for a moment that you do ask for referrals. Do you ask all your clients and customers? Do you ask them every time you see them?

Probably not.

Why?

Because it's not a systematic process for you. There's not a bell that goes "ding!" to remind you to ask for a referral every time you're with a customer.

But if you REALLY want a LOT of referrals. I mean an avalanche of referrals, you need to have a systematic process for getting them.

Referral S - Y - S - T - E - M - S

Systems are business processes that have predictable results and outcomes because they happen same way ever time, day in and day out.

I like to think of systems using this acronym:

S-ystems save

Y-ou

S-tress

T-ime

E-nergy and

M-oney

If you want to get more referrals you need to implement referral s-y-s-t-e-m-s.

And referral system needs to be "transactional" and NOT "relationship-based."

NOTE: I'm about to ruffle a LOT of feathers with this one. It goes against everything you've been taught about getting referrals.

_______________________________________________________

"Transaction-Based" Referrals - The Key to Getting a Consistent, Predictable Flow of Fresh Referrals _______________________________________________________

RSS gets 100% of your content delivered, but it’s no good if no one subscribes to your feeds.

So your first order of business after planning and creating your feeds has to be promoting them to your visitors.

The only problem is that most internet users still don’t know what RSS is, so you do have your work cut out for. But using system outlined below you shouldn’t have any problems. Actually, after implementing this system, you should be achieving better results than majority of publishers out there.

1. HOW RSS FEEDS ARE GENERALLY PROMOTED

RSS feeds are generally promoted using orange XML or RSS buttons, and often also with buttons that enable visitors to subscribe directly to feed with their RSS reader.

Usually, if clicking on RSS button, visitor only sees a lot of confusing XML code. They in fact need to copy & paste link in to their RSS reader. But since most still don’t know what RSS is, using this approach will only waste potential subscribers.

To achieve success, you’ll need a different approach.

A] Create an RSS presentation page, on which you explain: - What RSS is - How visitor will benefit from using RSS - Where they can get a free RSS aggregator (recommend one yourself!) - How they can install it (provide step-by-step instructions) - How they can subscribe to your RSS feeds - Why they should subscribe to your own RSS feeds

Then, on this same page, include links to all of your RSS feeds.

In addition to standard orange RSS button, also include direct links for subscriptions via MyYahoo! (get it here http://my.yahoo.com/s/button.html) and other relevant services, such as Bloglines (http://www.bloglines.com). There are about 5 RSS readers you should cover with these buttons.

B] Now promote this RSS presentation page as much as you can using all of your available channels.

2. LOCATION AND CONTENT