A Referral Success: 'and Death Came Third'

On 5th April 2005, Andy Lopata and Peter Roper managed to get their book '...and Death Came Third' to the number 2 spot on Amazon on the day of the book's launch, instantly making it a best seller. I wonder how many millions of authors dream of getting their book into the top 100, let alone the second highest spot?

Yet, how is it that two relatively unknown businessmen managed to capture the attention of enough buyers to outsell many thousands of other books on that one day? Why would unsuspecting visitors to Amazon suddenly have the urge to puchase a book that was not being discounted (£14.95), nor did it have any reviews at that time?

There is more to it than meets the eye. Andy Lopata are networkers and professional speakers. They knew approximately how many they needed to sell to hit the top spot and they knew they couldn't simply do it on their own. So do you know what they did? They just asked people in their network to help. They created an ethical bribe for people who bought the book on the day of approximately £2000 worth of bonus gifts and created one of the most powerful forms of advertising I know - viral marketing. I'm not sure about the exact figures, but I think they got their marketing message to approximately 250,000 people in the space of 5 days. Even though a very small proportion bought (2,000 people), it was enough to catapult them to the number 2 spot.

So what's the moral of the story? If you don't ask BIG in your referral marketing, you don't get BIG results. Andy and Peter asked BIG, played BIG and they got a MASSIVE result.

Want to find out more about how you can boost your business referrals, then why not book yourself for the Referral Sales Summit on Tuesday 27th June 2006 in Birmingham, UK?