How To Scale Referrals

Scale Your Referrals: Beyond Hope and Prayer

It’s an all-too-familiar scene: December rolls around and desks across the country are piling up with branded water bottles, generic gift hampers, and USB cup warmers nobody asked for. Everyone’s trying to stay “top of mind” with their clients, but they’re all doing it exactly the same way.

Meanwhile, across town, a business owner just landed a million-dollar contract. 

How? 

Because someone remembered them six months after they sent their client’s spouse a carefully chosen gift based on their passion for artisanal coffee brewing.

Here’s what’s interesting about referrals – they’re universally acknowledged as the most valuable source of new business. Pre-qualified leads, shorter sales cycles, higher conversion rates… yet most companies treat them like rare gifts from the marketing gods, hoping and praying for more to arrive.

At Growth Experts, we’ve discovered something powerful: referrals aren’t random acts of kindness. They’re a systematic, scalable source of leads. And yes, gifting plays a role – but not in the way most businesses think.

Before you sign off on those end-of-year gift tags, consider your strategy. When your valued customer opens their gift, you want them to love it enough to take a picture and post it on Instagram! 

And here’s our gift to you for 2025—a cheat sheet to help you generate leads from referrals:

1. Building Your Lists (Like the Pros Do) 📋

• Active Clients: HubSpot turns current users into growth engines by making referrals natural, not forced. Remember that your best customers are already selling you, so make it easy for them.
• Past Clients: Airbnb tripled signups by re-engaging past customers. Someone who loved you six months ago might be your perfect ambassador today.
• Network Connections: LinkedIn built an empire on this. Every professional connection is a potential growth opportunity.
• Industry Partners: Tesla’s genius move? Turning customers into evangelists with perks like free Supercharging miles.

2. Set Real Targets (No More Hoping) 🎯

• Weekly Goals: Like Salesforce, train your team for consistent touchpoints—two referral requests every week, no excuses.
• Monthly Gifting: Skip the December rush. Take cosmetics company Sephora’s approach – regular, meaningful touches that build lasting loyalty.
• Quarterly Reviews: Google Workspace tracks everything, then iterates for better results. What gets measured gets managed.

3. Craft Messages That Work ✍️

• Make It Specific: Dropbox’s genius? Clear asks with clear rewards. They offered extra storage to both parties and saw signups jump 60%.
• Follow Up Smart: Morning Brew turned newsletter readers into ambassadors with tailored emails and escalating rewards. From merch to premium tech, everyone wins.
• Say Thanks Properly: Revolut rewards both sides of the referral. €60 for you, €60 for them – simple, clear, effective.

4. Track Everything 📊

• Watch The Numbers: Like Airbnb, track your “Invitees per Inviter”. Know what’s working and double down on it.
• Measure Success: Tesla doesn’t just count referrals – they measure customer retention and secondary referrals to prove ROI.
• Calculate Returns: PayPal’s famous referral program built an empire. But they knew exactly what each new customer was worth.

Master the Art of Strategic B2B Gifting

While running Humanwrit.es (RIP ~2021), some of our large clients wanted to brand our notebooks to gift to their clients. We pushed back on this idea. Why? Because, as we alluded to at the start of this post, the most memorable gifts feel like presents, not promotional items.

John Ruhlin’s “Giftology” breaks this down brilliantly. Here’s how to do gifting right:

• Don’t be cheap. Calculate the lifetime value of a referred client and gift accordingly.
• Gift when others don’t. Try “welcome back to work” in January instead.
• Make it personal, not transactional. A gift isn’t payment for a referral.
• Include their partners. Our million-dollar coffee example wasn’t hypothetical – understanding what matters to your client’s inner circle can be game-changing.

Give as Good as You Get

This should be common sense, but it’s worth stating: become known as a connector. Build your reputation as someone who consistently makes valuable introductions.

At Growth Experts, we’ve reached what you might call “black belt” status in connecting people. It’s not just about feeling good (though nice) – it’s about building the kind of trust that generates reciprocal referrals.

The Growth Experts’ Way

Since January 2024, we’ve nearly doubled our newsletter subscribers using these exact principles. Not hoping for growth – engineering it.

Speaking of which… know any businesses in the US or UK looking for all-you-can-eat marketing support? Send them our way. After all, what kind of referral experts would we be if we didn’t ask?

Jason Bagley Founder, Growth Experts

I'm a business builder, the founder of Growth Experts, sometimes public speaker, and a member of the Entrepreneurs’ Organization. Mostly though, I’m just a dad to Eva & Cruz and a husband to Karina.