I don’t know about you, but I’m getting tired of all the talk of economic downturn (E.D.) and I think, as a group, small business owners are too.
Therefore we hereby declare March 9-13, 2009 – Make a Referral Week.
Make a Referral Week is an entrepreneurial approach to stimulating the small business economy one referred business at a time. The goal for the week is to generate 1000 referred leads to 1000 deserving small businesses in an effort to highlight the fact that this simple action can blossom into millions of dollars in new business. Small business is the lifeblood and job-creating engine of the economy and merits the positive attention so often saved for corporate bailout stories.
The week long virtual event will also feature daily education programs focused on teaching small business owners and other marketers how to tap the power of referral marketing. The featured session includes a live web conference with Ivan Misner, founder of BNI and author Masters of Networking, Bob Burg, author of Endless Referrals and the Go-Giver, Bill Cates, author of Get More Referrals Now. (Here’s the full list of education planned for the week)
No money is exchanging hands, no sponsors are being hit up, it’s just something that we thought needed to be done. If you want to get involved in this small business happening visit the Make a Referral Pledge page and submit your intention now to make at least one referral during the March 9-13 event. (Take this step and you are automatically eligible to receive audio recordings of the entire expert series)
Once you pledge you will also find tools that make it easy to refer friends, post to your Facebook profile and blog about the week. If you would like to actively promote visit the sponsor page for additional tools.
During the week of March 9-13 we will activate the Referral-o-meter to track the march to 1000 referrals as small business owners visit and describe who they referred a lead to and why.
This is every small business person’s chance to be a part of the solution!
