The strongest marketing a small business has is the work it hands over to a client who already paid. Satisfied clients tell other people about you, and that is where most of the money comes from, far more than from any ad.
The assumption everything else rests on
You can keep a tidy customer file, know each client's next step, ask for a name at the right moment and build a network of people who refer you. All of it works on one condition that usually goes unsaid: the client got something worth talking about.
The source puts that condition plainly. Excellent delivery creates goodwill, and the goodwill travels by word of mouth like wildfire.
Delivery here isn't the sale and isn't the promise. It's whatever actually happens for the client after he has already bought: the install, the treatment, the project, the follow-up call. Word of mouth is simply one client telling another person what they got from you.
So the thing that finds you a referrer isn't the card you left behind or how well you phrased the ask. A good method can find you someone to refer you. Your work at the client's place decides whether that person has anything to refer at all.
Why there is no shortcut
You can memorize every technique for repeat sales and for asking for referrals. If the work itself is mediocre, no referrer will stay with you past the first time.
Suppose an HVAC technician shows up on time, cleans up after himself and tells the client exactly what he fixed. Within a few months his name is moving through a whole neighborhood.
Now picture another technician who arrives late and leaves a mess behind. He can ask for a referral using every right component, word for word, and still not get a single one. His problem isn't in the ask.
Another case: a dental clinic where the dentist himself, not the receptionist, calls the day after a significant procedure to ask how the patient is feeling. Patients tell their friends about that call more than they talk about the procedure.
That call is delivery too. It happens for the client, after the payment, and it's exactly what people end up talking about.
Most of your income, not a bonus
This is the sharpest claim in the chapter. According to the source, prospects come from people who have already had the service and are urging others to have it as well.
And that word of mouth doesn't appear out of nowhere. It rests on numerous people out in the field who are happy and satisfied with what they received. Then comes the source's financial conclusion, in a single line:
“There is where the bulk of your income comes from.”
Not a part of your income, and not a nice addition to advertising. The bulk. An owner who spends time and money as if advertising were the main engine, and treats service to existing clients as routine upkeep, has the order of things backward.
Suppose an interior designer spends a whole quarter tracking where every new client came from. Most of them arrived through an existing client's referral. The few who came from paid ads cost her more than all the others combined.
At the other end, picture a neighborhood bakery that spends nothing on advertising for two straight years and still has a line out the door on Friday mornings. That line is made of regulars who brought their neighbors along, since the bakery gave people something worth talking about.
The everyday sale matters more than the giant one
The source recounts one huge sale of its own, then stops and corrects itself. You can't expect all of your prospects to live on the same road, be related and each need what you sell. And you don't need a giant deal every time you go out:
“What you do need is that steady, day in, day out sale”
The distinction is practical. The giant deal depends on circumstances outside your control. The steady sale depends on one habit: asking.
And the circle of people you can ask is wider than it seems. Not only the client who bought, but whoever is there at that moment: the next-door neighbors, or the waiter who brought your coffee.
Suppose a renovation contractor finishes a big job in a shared building. Instead of stopping at the client who hired him, he knocks on the door of a neighbor who watched him work in the hallway and asks for five minutes. That neighbor becomes his next client the same week.
Even here the ask is the small part. What gives it weight is the work already done in that building.
What the booklet has on this
In the booklet The Second Sale, this chapter closes with two exercises: checking the source, and the waiter who brought the coffee. The chapters before it cover the customer file, each client's next step, the ask itself and your referrer network.
Advertising can bring you one client. The client after that comes from the work you delivered to the first.