One of the easiest – and most overlooked – rules of sales is this.

You have a satisfied customer, a delighted customer even, who’s seeing the returns or rewards from the product or service you have relatively recently delivered.

Ask them for 3 referrals. ‘What 3 people can you think of that would also benefit from this product or service, whom we could approach with your blessing?’

Easy. Nothing wrong with asking them to do a bit of work drumming up 3 names for you, that sort of thing is the hallmark of any great partnership. Of course they should be 3 people that don’t compete with your customer.

Think about this for a moment: If you had 2 or 3 personal recommendations from every satisfied customer, you might never need to do demand generation again…