If you’ve been following this blog for a while, you know my position on the importance of cultivating referrals – particularly for smaller businesses.

This is a realm of marketing that is commonly overlooked… typically botched… and arguably the highest return marketing activity a company can invest in. Literally… Infinite Return Marketing when executed properly and consistently.

Yesterday I had breakfast with the owner of a small service business. As is typically the case, he is not only the owner and manager of the business, but the chief client relationship manager and evangelist for the firm.

The topic of referrals came up, and I was struck by a confession he made. So much so that I wanted to quickly offer up this brief post for anyone else who may also be hindered by his fear.

As you may recall from previous posts, I’m a strong believer in enlisting clients as ambassadors for a business… teaching them how to refer others… extinguishing their anxiety over making referrals… rewarding their referring efforts… AND enlisting them in your growth plans.

Until yesterday, no one had ever pointedly confessed to me their fears of discussing growth aspirations with current clients.

His fear was essentially this. “If I share with my clients my aspirations to grow, they will assume that (if I’m successful) my attention will be diluted, and the personal service they now enjoy will erode in the future.”

If your client has enjoyed good service from you to date, this is a baseless fear. If you struggle with this self-consciousness over your growth plans in the company of current clients – stop.

If you’re really worried, include in your description of your growth plans a dedicated effort to maintain or enhance quality as you grow.

But absolutely do not be afraid to enlist your clients in your future growth. Petty jealousy aside, people are generally attracted to others who are growth minded and want to help their cause.

Then they want to be thanked for their help and kept abreast of how their contribution has impacted the business. Try it.

Brian Korte is an artist pioneering a new and fun medium. He builds mosaics – big pictures – out of LEGOs. You can find him in the Guinness Book of World Records in connection with his craft.

I can remember the time he told me he was working on his first one – a portrait of two of his friends who had recently married. With limited expectations, I took a look, and WOW! pretty darn cool!

What’s really interesting about his LEGO art, is that once you understand HOW he does it, unlike other forms of art that so often require freakish talent, most anyone could do this with his level of precision.

He has leveraged this sense of attainability to create a following of enthusiasts. Kids can (and do) actually help him complete his work.

Now he has built a growing business called Brickworkz out of this form of LEGO art, and by all indications, he’s doing quite well. You should have a look. He’s being commissioned to build his mosaics for individuals and businesses around the country, and he’s creating a growing buzz.

I mention this for two reasons. First, he’s a creative inspiration, and he’s succeeding at breaking into the crowded art community in a new and exciting way. It’s worth watching.

Second, and more to the point of this post, he wrote something recently that highlighted a phenomenon that has intrigued me for several years now as a marketer. It is a counter intuitive quirk of human nature that many of us marketers should recognize and exploit.

Let me set the stage for you. Brian’s at a show/exhibit in Chicago displaying his work, and yes – teaching others how to do exactly what he does. Remember – once you know his methodology, you too could produce Brian Korte caliber LEGO art.

He describes his workshop – and the resulting revelation beautifully:

“The first “Intro to Mosaics” session I hosted was very informal…. So, I fielded questions, explaining the methods of mosaic building. This is one of those situations where free advice surprisingly does not mean you lose your stance among your market. Contrary to popular belief, if someone takes the time to explain all the technical and subtle nuances of brain surgery to you, you just gained a new appreciation and respect for the surgeon, and despite your new knowledge, you still want THAT GUY to do the operation. Why? We may never know. But education is never a wasted thing. It’s strange, but give a man a fish and he’ll eat for a day. Teach him how to fish and he still wants you to fish for him tomorrow. Hey, I’m not complaining. It’s paying the bills! ”

This is not the first time I’ve seen this phenomenon at work. I had a similar conversation with one of the Eisenberg brothers who founded Future Now. They are masters of online conversion, and they dispense their proprietary techniques in shocking detail in their books, newsletter and web site.

One day, while at one of the Future Now workshops gobbling up all that they had to say, I asked, “Why do you give away your secret recipes to people who could be potential buyers of your services?”

Eisenberg replied, “It is a universal law. The more you give it away, the more people want to buy it.”

A leap of faith? Yep. It’s not intuitive. But it works.

Sure, some trade secrets must remain in the vault. But a lot of what we in business consider our secrets may be put to more productive (and profitable) use if we shared them with the public.

I have a few thoughts on why this may be. When you openly share your secret how-to techniques:

You convey a sense of confidence that – try as I may, I can’t do it as well as you can. I now understand and appreciate what you do, so who better to hire to do it for me?

People gain an appreciation for what’s required in your field of expertise to be successful and conclude that it’s easier to outsource.

You become the authority. People trust those from whom they learn.

Even if you are not, you appear as the pioneer… the originator of the concepts you are sharing.

I’d be curious to hear your thoughts on this, but here’s my suggestion. Revisit what you regard as trade secrets, and consider publishing them for the world to see. It works.

You know when a web site isn’t working for you. The beauty of the web is that you don’t have to tolerate it for more than a second before you’re gone… on to another site that better meets your needs.

But what actually happened on that site you abandoned? Maybe it just didn’t offer what you were looking for… or maybe it did, but failed to let you know.

We can quickly sense when we are on track to finding the content we’re looking for by detecting what some experts call the “scent” of information. As it turns out, people behave on web sites in a manner very similar to dogs sniffing around for food – or whatever else they’re looking for. We get on a particular scent trail and follow it.

So designing and writing the content of your web site around the idea of creating easy-to-follow scent trails is vital to your success online.

Where are the critical scent markers on a web site?

Far more important than your site’s main navigation are the text links that you build into your copy. Each one emits a scent that your visitors can follow. As the scent grows stronger, your visitor’s confidence level increases that he’s progressing in the right direction.

According to the renown studies of User Interface Engineering (UIE) and its founder, Jared Spool, when a link is comprised of 7 to 12 words, people will successfully follow it 50-60% of the time. The optimal length… 9 to 10 words – provided that the copy contains what Spool calls a “trigger word.”

Imagine the language that one of your visitors might type into a search engine to find what they’re looking for on your site. These are trigger words. Not industry jargon… but the words that a customer would actually use. These words grab their attention.

Having grown so accustomed to “click here” as the only text link on most web pages, 9 to 10 blue, underlined words may feel awfully verbose. But as it turns out, one of the great scent killers is short copy. The most successful sites have surprising long pages and reveal that users are quite willing to scroll.

How many links are too many? The researchers at UIE have yet to discover an upper limit to the number of links on a site’s home page. Users are quite willing to process them and, like your dog, just want the scent to grow stronger with every click.

How do you know if you’re providing your visitors with the scent trails they need to graduate from visitor to customer?

There are a handful of scent killers of which you must be mindful. First and foremost, if your users resort to the “back” button, you have a problem. When a site’s design forces the use of the “back” button even a single time, only 18% of users will find what they’re looking for. When your users never touch the “back” button, 45% will succeed in finding what they want.

Another sign of failure is what some refer to as “pogosticking,” a navigation path characterized by bouncing between levels of the information hierarchy (and back to the home page over and over). This is a clear sign that your links are either too vague (to short or too cute), or are simply misleading.

When users pogostick through your site, only 11% will find what they need. When they navigate without pogosticking, 55% succeed.

Finally, when users resort to using the search feature on your site to find products or content rather than navigating directly to their destination from the home page or category listings, they have failed to pick up a scent. With few exceptions, search features ultimately yield a 30% average success rate for visitors compared to 53% for users who don’t search.

How do you design your site for scent?

Contrary to popular practice, start with your content pages, and end with the home page. Content pages house what your visitors want. Your job is to sprinkle their scent in the appropriate places to enable visitors to find them easily.

Depending on the complexity and scale of your content and/or product offerings, you may need to create an information hierarchy to allow users to drill down to what they’re looking for… home page… product category page (product gallery)… product page.

UIE has learned that on gallery pages, link order is important. And alphabetically is the worst way to organize content. Recognizing that 50% of searchers give up after viewing only one page of search results, longer gallery pages work better than short ones. Certainly there is an upper limit to how many products you put on a single page, but err on the side of long rather than short as long pages beat short ones almost every time.

And as important as anything else, watch your site usage statistics and click paths to find and correct the problem spots.

I’d hate to be responsible for marketing at Sprint (together with Nextel). There are people at Sprint dedicating their lives to trying to make people like this company – to say nothing of the millions they spend in that effort.

And for what??? To have it all ruined the moment someone walks into one of their retail locations and tries to transact business with any one of the battalion of thoughtless morons that they employ (or allow to conduct themselves draped in the Sprint brand).

You can tell I’m a little agitated.

I’ve been a Nextel customer for several years now. I’ve never missed a payment, and I have the most expensive plan that they offer – unlimited voice + unlimited data + the warranty on my Nextel BlackBerry.

The scroll wheel on my BlackBerry broke last week. Pleased with myself for investing in the warranty, I drop into a Sprint store to swap my broken device for a new one.

Taking great pleasure in the fact that I can be dismissed without any help at all, the store clerk tells me that despite their well stocked inventory of BlackBerries just like mine, I would have to travel to a store across town to resolve this issue.

So across town I go – reminded of how much I love my BlackBerry – and hate Sprint. I arrive at Sprint store #2. After waiting ten minutes to be acknowledged by clerk #2, I’m told that despite their well stocked inventory of BlackBerries just like mine – and the instructions I received at Sprint store #1, I would have to travel to yet another store some ten miles away to resolve this issue.

Irate, and wondering what it would cost to break my Sprint contract that seems to constantly renew without my knowledge, I arrive at Sprint store #3 – the biggest of the bunch. Here, I’m told that despite their well stocked inventory of BlackBerries just like mine – and my less than pleasant journey to their location, I would have to wait for three days to get a replacement for my broken BlackBerry.

I leave… amazed at how some businesses seem to make money in spite of themselves.

Returning three days later, I find a replacement BlackBerry waiting for me. As I attempt to claim it and depart, I’m told that I have to leave my broken BlackBerry at the store.

I keep a lot of information on my BlackBerry. And while I back up from time to time, I’m nervous about getting the information off of my broken BlackBerry and onto the new one. As you might imagine, if something goes wrong in the process, I’d like to have the old one handy to put my mind at ease.

Politely, I explain my anxiety. No one at the store can assist in the data transfer process, and that’s just too bad for me. “I don’t want to keep the old phone,” I say. “I just want to keep it for a few hours until I have all of the data transferred.” I went on to offer to leave my driver’s license at the store for the short time it would take.

The Sprint response – absolutely NOT.

I left WITHOUT my replacement BlackBerry and will some day soon return to the store with my laptop and perform the operation at their location.

Attacking a wireless carrier’s customer service is almost a cliché. They’re all terrible – which is probably how they all stay in business. But this sort of thing happens in all kinds of businesses every day. The marketers present a beautiful version of the company only to have those who interface with customers and prospects destroy their work. The experience simply doesn’t live up to the marketer’s presentation.

Now back to the poor marketers trying to make people like Sprint… How many great ads and direct mail packages does it take to neutralize the experience I just had? To what lengths must a marketer go just to make me stop HATING Sprint?

Answer: They can’t.

The experience trumps everything.

The world’s greatest marketing can be negated forever by one bad experience in dealing with the company.

Happily, the reverse is also true. A company that doesn’t “market” itself at all can attract new business in droves by delivering a remarkably good experience.

Arguably, the experience of doing business with you is the most powerful marketing medium you have at your disposal.

If the marketers in your organization don’t have direct influence over the customer/ prospect experience (and most don’t), then I would ask you…

Who is really in charge of your marketing?