TPRs: The most powerful sales tool I use.

I’m standing in the local fresh food market on a Saturday morning.

In front of me is a series of timber tables displaying piles of egg cartons from different local producers.

I’m slowly walking along looking at the brands and opening a few cartons to inspect the eggs. 

Even with a food background, trying to decide between 11 different types of egg brands is pretty difficult.

All of a sudden I hear a voice over my right shoulder that says: 

“Those eggs there are incredible. I’ve tried dozens of brands and those ones are delicious. Plus they hold together nicely when you poach them.” 

I turn towards the lady’s voice, smile and say “thanks”. 

And just like that, I buy those exact eggs based on the words of a complete stranger who may or may not know what the hell they’re talking about.

That’s the power of third-party recommendations.

And they happen for different reasons all the time. 

Directly, when a friend refers a reputable contractor to do work for you.

And indirectly when you overhear a conversation about a brand while waiting in line at the supermarket checkout.

The cool thing for you and I is that when people talk about positive experiences they’ve had with a business, others tend to listen carefully and trust the advice when it’s directed specifically at them.

Now, referrals aren’t a new concept to you, but I wanted to share how I’ve used them systematically to grow by business over the past few years. 

Before we kick off, let’s be clear about one thing:

Recommending something crap doesn’t scale…

You must have a product or service that’s good enough that people want to talk about. 

People only talk about really shitty experiences or really (really) good ones.

Everything in the middle doesn’t get mentioned - it’s just “Meh” and you never hear from them again.

With that in mind, let’s dive in:

1. Referrals

One of the benefits of having an email database is incentivising referrals using an offer that gives the referrer a reason to talk about your business. 

We’ve used it a bunch of times over the past two years to grow home delivery clients, catering leads and drive people into our stores.

Referrals are great if you’re confident that you can convert friends of clients when they come in.

Meaning, if someone has put their reputation on the line and referred you to a friend or brought them into your store, you must be ready to delight that person. 

To make your client feel special for recommending you, and also convert their lead into a long-term customer. 

When you think of it this way, you don’t need thousands of leads. 

You just need a handful of high-quality ones. 

So you can afford to individually target people and deliver excellent experiences.

But just asking someone to refer you doesn’t always work and it often feels awkward even to ask. 

Here are two methods we’ve used that worked:

1. A printed discount code for a regular client to give to their 4 neighbours/work colleagues to buy with you in the next 2 weeks. It allows your regulars to be generous on your behalf. 
2. Digital referrals delivered via emails where the sender and the receiver get benefits for claiming. We normally use this one to grow our social media audience.

I prefer to create a physical offer that our clients give to other people because it encourages them to chat to each other which also gets a testimonial thrown in as they hand it over.

It's a double win. 

The general rule is, to look for ways to make it easy for your clients to recommend you.

2. Testimonials

I’ve never liked cluttering our website or waiting area with testimonials even though that’s the advice of most marketing and sales professionals. 

But we do use them often in printed documents for direct sales when acquiring new clients. 

I’ve found that it is essential to leave them with a well-thought-out document they can read through after a visit that includes relevant testimonials. 

Testimonials can also be pulled from positive feedback people send your way. 

We capture them from in-person chats, texts, social comments and emails that come in and use them in social media stories. 

It’s super effective around the time an offer is going live (new product, special or flavour) or when people are likely to be making decisions about purchasing, booking or where to go for brunch on the weekend for example.

 3. U-turn Negative Experiences

One of the most underutilised opportunities to get people talking about your business is by turning a customer's experience around when they’ve had a shitty experience with your business. 

But there’s a bit of a strategy to it, and no one does it better than Zappo’s.

They’ve essentially built their whole business ethos ‘delivering happiness’ around turning a crappy experience into a dazzling one by solving customer problems quickly and going above and beyond to do so. 

There’s an entire book (Delivering Happiness) written on it so I wont go into detail but they don’t just credit you or replace things, because that’s an expectation these days. 

They empower their team to go above and beyond in unique ways.

It means you have to do the unexpected. 

To go so far beyond their expectations of a normal outcome that they must tell someone how unbelievably good it was.

4. Creating Demand

There’s a story about how Shimano (a fishing and cycling components brand) captured a huge market share in Australia when they started.

They had great products and people were starting to want them but were unknown in the retail market.

So they used to tell people it was available in certain fishing stores. 

Those people went in there asking for it so many times that the owner of the store had no choice but to reach out and become a distributor. 

ThankYou (the not-for-profit company in Australia) has used the same tactics in recent years to get their range into major retailers. 

But remember, it starts with making products people want to talk about. 

Here’s how we’ve used a similar strategy to create demand:

When someone emails us to ask if we can stock products in their local IGA we tell them to go in there and ask for it at the store.

Now, one or two people asking for Three Mills products rarely leads to them calling us but it breaks the ice.

It means we’re not going in there cold now when we do reach out to them, they’ve at least heard of us from someone else recently. 

Having someone mention your brand positively in the weeks leading up to a cold call/visit is unbelievably powerful.

5. Third-Party Review Sites

Google reviews are more trusted than reviews on your own site because everyone assumes it was written by your staff and mates.

And the best way to get Google reviews is to ask customers who love you. 

Seriously, it’s awkward the first few times you ask your regular customers, but then it gets easier.

So just get over it and ask! 

Unsolicited reviews tend to be negative. 

By leaving your review sites unattended, you’re likely to end up with a number of low-rated reviews. 

Generally speaking, you’ll get more 5-star ratings from people who love you than the randoms that drop in once and leave you a 1-star rating.

Okay… Let’s recap. 

Third-Party Recommendations To Do:

1. Make products worth referring
2. Make it easy for people to refer your business to others digitally and physically
3. Gather testimonials and sprinkle them throughout your communications
4. U-turn negative experiences by going above and beyond
5. Create demand by telling your customers to seek you out at their local
6. Set time aside monthly to take control of third-party review sites

That’s it, a few simple ways to get people talking about your business to drive more people to it. 

Something I reckon every business needs more of in 2025. 

 I hope it helps you.