One of the most important things to understand about referrals is the secret psychology of why people refer. And it’s not what we think. most of the time, we think that people are referring as a favor to us and that we specifically ask people to refer. We use that word ‘refer’ Your referrals are the lifeblood Of our business. You Know, don’t keep us a secret. Tell people about us.
And all of those things are sort of focused on you and thinking that you earn a referral, that you have to ask people to refer. But when you really realize the dynamic that’s going on, The real secret psychology of why we refer is that we refer or introduce things to people because it raises our status In the herd. And That’s a really interesting thought.
But if you go all the way back to when we were in this herding, uh, you know, an environment where we were surrounded by people who we decided we’d all be better off if we worked together, you know, it helped us escape The food chain. We’re the number one species to ever live. And it’s because we started playing what I call the Cooperation game. And this cooperation game is important in that everybody has to do their part. Everybody has to pull their weight in order for the Cooperation game to work.
So that’s why we have to constantly be vigilant to be adding value to the herd. So when I look at it that, you know, imagine back in the day If I was going out gathering, we’re hunting and gathering, I go out gathering, and I find this patch Of blueberries, And I’m, you know, load ’em up and I’m walking back
to our, Village or camp or whatever we called it. And I see someone on the trail, and I say,’’ Hey, there’s a big patch of blueberries over that hill.’’ Now what I’ve done in that moment is I’ve saved That person, my other tribe mate, time. I’ve saved them time because I gave them inside information on where the blueberries are, that Is an advantage for them. I am of higher status right now in that relationship because I’ve given them something of value that’s gonna benefit all of us.
Now, the urge that we have, and this is why it’s so wired in us all the way back, it’s genetically wired in us that we immediately feel the urge to balance the books on that. So you might say to me, well, watch out behind that tree over there, because I saw a lion. Now, when you’re walking back to camp, you’re gonna be vigilant and looking out, and you may walk the long way around that group of trees because you’ve got the inside information that there’s a lion lurking in there.
And that saved me the surprise of finding out and maybe losing my life because I didn’t know about that lion. And so that evens out the books, right? That’s the thing that we’re constantly doing. And we do that all the time. Right now, you see it even in social situations. If we go to Starbucks today and I buy you a coffee, when we go back to Starbucks tomorrow, you’re gonna feel this overwhelming urge that, oh, I’ll buy this time because you bought me yesterday.
We’re constantly balancing these books, right? We know who’s got social capital and social equity there. And it’s the same reason we refer to anything. If we just take it up the line. We’re constantly referring to and introducing new things to people, books, movies, restaurants, and service providers. We’re constantly protecting and giving an advantage to the people in our tribe, our top 150.
That’s who we’re having conversations with. So we, instead of trying to just get people to send you referrals and talking about it as referrals, we’re going to program people that they’re going to have an opportunity to give somebody an advantage, to give somebody something of value that’s going to enhance their life.
That’s why we always offer them either a book or we offer them some sort of, uh, list or service or something that they can give to their friends so that they’re going to get the glory. They’re gonna get the advantage of that, not that they’re just referring you for you. So once you understand that, then it’s easy to orchestrate what would be the thing that would help us make our top 150 look good? Raise their status in the eyes of their top 150. That’s the secret psychology of why people refer. And once we understand it, we can use it to orchestrate more referrals than you can ever imagine.
