Summary
The video presents a step-by-step framework for developing a strong referral system within businesses, emphasizing the importance of becoming “referable” rather than merely focusing on initial sales. The framework is based on the Marketing Hourglass model developed by John Janss, which outlines the progression of customer engagement through several key stages: Know, Like, Trust, Try, Buy, Repeat, and Refer.
Core Concepts
- Marketing Hourglass Stages:
- Know: Potential customers become aware of your business.
- Like: Customers develop a positive impression.
- Trust: Building credibility and confidence in your services or products.
- Try: Customers test or sample your offerings.
- Buy: Conversion into paying customers.
- Repeat: Customers make additional purchases.
- Refer: Satisfied customers recommend your business to others.
- Many businesses skip essential stages by pushing for immediate sales after awareness, neglecting the critical phases of liking, trusting, and trying, which are necessary for sustained relationships and referrals.
- Touchpoints play a crucial role at every stage. These include:
- Obvious physical and digital touchpoints (e.g., website, diplomas, staff appearance, interior design).
- Less obvious experiential factors (e.g., how guests are greeted, feelings upon entering, cleanliness of parking areas).
- Identifying and optimizing these touchpoints aligned with customer expectations helps businesses develop referability and a sustainable referral engine.
Key Insights
- Businesses that focus solely on generating awareness and pushing for immediate sales miss opportunities to build trust and loyalty, which are essential for repeat business and referrals.
- Creating a referable business involves systematically improving each stage of the hourglass model, ensuring touchpoints resonate positively with customers.
- The primary growth driver moving forward will be referrals due to:
- Increasing challenges in traditional advertising.
- The growing influence customers have over each other’s purchasing decisions.
- Investing in becoming referable accelerates business growth and fosters a perpetual referral engine.
Timeline Table of Customer Interaction Stages
| Stage | Description | Objective |
|---|---|---|
| Know | Customer becomes aware of the business | Increase brand awareness |
| Like | Customer develops a favorable impression | Build positive perception |
| Trust | Customer gains confidence in the business | Establish credibility |
| Try | Customer samples or tests the product/service | Encourage trial usage |
| Buy | Customer makes a purchase | Convert trial to sale |
| Repeat | Customer makes additional purchases | Foster loyalty and recurring sales |
| Refer | Customer recommends business to others | Generate organic referrals |
Recommendations for Businesses
- Map out all customer touchpoints across the hourglass stages, including both obvious and subtle experiences.
- Focus on building relationships through the “Like” and “Trust” stages before pushing for sales.
- Enhance customer experience at each stage to encourage trial, repeat purchases, and ultimately referrals.
- Recognize that referrals will be the dominant growth channel as traditional advertising becomes less effective.
- Continuously evaluate and improve touchpoints to align with what prospects want to see and feel.
Conclusion
The video highlights that businesses must adopt a holistic, stage-based approach to customer engagement, moving beyond just making sales to cultivating a strong referral pipeline. By strategically developing every step from awareness through referral and optimizing customer touchpoints, organizations can create a sustainable engine for growth fueled primarily by referrals, which will become increasingly important in the evolving market landscape.
00:00:00
So, here’s a step-by-step framework for developing referrals. So, how can you become referable? Because a lot of practices miss a lot of these steps. And so, while they’re able to make sales, they’re not able to make the recurring back-end sales and the perpetual engine of referrals. So, this guy named John Jans, I don’t know how to spell his or I don’t know how to pronounce his last name, but it’s spelled J an SS C, developed the idea of the marketing hourglass. And the steps are as follows.
00:00:31
At the top you have no then you move on to like then you move on to try or trust. Then try then buy repeat and then refer. So these are stages of people’s interactions with you. This is a framework that you can develop off of that people will first have to know you then like you then trust you and then try you out then buy then repeat uh purchases and if you’re referable they will refer. Now a lot of organizations skip a lot of these steps. So they work on the knowing aspect. They they do the
00:01:09
work of getting known and then they jump to having people buy. They want people to make that jump, but it’s missing a lot of steps. People don’t like you yet. They don’t know trust you or they don’t they don’t really want to try you yet. So, we have to do the work of developing that. Then, once they buy from you, will they repeat the purchase? Will they buy different things? And finally, if they do, will they refer you? So each of these steps are different opportunities for us to work on the system and to
00:01:41
improve it in order for us to become a business that is referable. So refer back to these steps know, like, trust, try, buy, repeat, and refer and think of all the touch points that go on within those stages. So touch points are experiences that people have with your organization. Um, the obvious ones could be things like your website, the diplomas on your wall, how your staff is dressed, the interior architecture, but there’s much less obvious uh obvious touch points like how people are greeted, how people
00:02:16
feel when they walk inside, um the cleanliness of the parking lot and and so on. Like there’s infinite number of touch points. And so our job is to think of all these different stages, figure out what touch points could affect those, figure out the most important ones and do the work of aligning it with what the prospects want to see. And so when we can do this, we can create a business that is not just good at getting people to buy stuff, but is good at being referable, is good at getting growing through referrals. And if you
00:02:51
have seen my other videos, you know that referrals are going to be the primary way of growth moving forward. As these trends continue, as advertising gets worse, as organizations find it more difficult to influence the individuals, it’s going to be the individuals who are influencing each other. So, the sooner we can do the work of becoming referable, the better it’s going to be and the faster your organization will grow. Hope you found this video helpful and I’ll see you guys in the next one.
00:03:16
Thanks.