The Best Referral comes from a friend

Whether you Google, YAHOO! or Ask Jeeves you are bound to get thousands, possibly even millions of hits when you are in search of a good restaurant, hair salon, or holiday gift for your boss. So what do you do? How do you narrorw it down and make a choice? ... You ask for a referral from a friend.

Now as a business owner, imagine a potential client approaching your business, they've never seen you before, they've never even seen an advertisement promoting the company. In fact, they know very little about it. But, what they do know and what got them to walk, click or call in was the fact that they were REFERRED by a friend!

After spending the past 10 years as a business consultant for one of the top 25 Fortune 500 Companies, I found that referrals are the most powerful marketing tools that a business can have. The National TV, print and radio advertising, flashy websites, and billboards all work well in branding. But when it comes to driving business to a small business, nothing beats a referral from a friend.

So how do you get referred? And what would you pay for a referral?

Stay Tuned my friends!