Incent, incent, incent. And after that, try using an incentive. In our over-cluttered, over-informed world, one of the best ways to grow it through referrals. If you think that think this strategy sounds like you’ll be paying people to sing your praises, you’d be right.

There’s no shame in rewarding people for expressing what they already believe. These folks have enjoyed working with you. With the proper motivation, they will happily refer their friends, family, and inner-most circle. And that’s when the magic happens. Once more people find out you’re incentivizing referrals, the more referrals you’ll get. And then, boom. It’s like a waterfall of new business.

So we’re not going to be losing money on these incentives?

Absolutely not. Well, maybe on the first one. But after that, the returns pay dividends.

Companies like Airbnb and Starbucks see huge results by incentivizing referrals. But you have to go about it correctly. A lot of banks and credit unions view referrals on a small scale — typically implementing them as short referral campaigns and then shelving them.

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