Column · arithmetic of referrals
If each buyer brings a fraction of another buyer, the business grows without additional acquisition. The fraction matters more than the total: 0.9 is decay, 1.1 is growth, and the difference is small and decisive.
Not satisfaction. Satisfaction is silent. A referral requires that the outcome is unusual enough to describe and that describing it makes the referrer look good.
Because the outcome is private or ordinary. Both can be fixed — by making the result visible, or by making it specific enough to be worth mentioning.
Adding a referral programme to a product nobody mentions. The incentive changes the behaviour of people who were already going to refer; it does not create the desire to.
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