How to refer new work to Draft, long-term thinking, Markdown publishing

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Notes on the care & feeding of your referral to Draft

You know of a store that could benefit from our work, and you want to refer them to us. This is lovely and we’re profoundly grateful. What’s the best way to make the introduction?

First, let’s define “best”

If you introduce two people, presumably you are doing it with a specific intention in mind. The hope is that the referral creates positive outcomes for both parties that you’re referring.

In our case:

The referral is good for Draft, because we get more work, and we get to continue feeding Basil. Basil not starving is an unconditionally positive outcome.
The referral is good for the store, because they are able to capture outsize profit. Since the profit imperative is what drives most businesses, this helps the business as well.

As a result, you’re presumably writing the referral in the hopes that both Draft and the business profit from our working together.

What doesn’t work

I’m writing this because in 2022, no indirect referral to Draft has resulted in a meeting. Indirect referrals are the practice of simply telling clients about us, without making a proper introduction to both parties, including & especially the buyer of our work. This means one thing: merely telling the prospective client about Draft is no longer enough. This means the following things do not work:

Talking about Draft at a conference or on a podcast
Suggesting to the client that they meet with us and pasting our link
Linking our site on your site
Asking the client if they can introduce us to them

These are all forms of indirect referral, and over the past six months we have come to realize that they no longer succeed in resulting in a meeting.

This is important because the only way we can close our work is through a direct, face-to-face meeting with the buyer of the work. This has become so difficult to plan for in 2022 that we are 1) writing this guide and 2) contemplating a major shift in positioning.

We lost our entire spring sales season because people insisted on indirect referral. Several dozen people placed indirect referrals. Nobody reached out. This has caused Draft to lose tens of thousands of dollars in new business.

The only thing that works

…is a direct introduction, to both the buyer and to Draft, over email. This has worked at setting up meetings, because:

We have the buyer’s contact information, allowing us to follow up appropriately
We have someone on the inside who trusts us
We are able to create imperative inside the organization for profit-driven optimization work

That’s it. All it takes is an email intro, to both parties. One of them is us. One of them is the person buying the work. It is not the project champion or your best friend. It is the person buying the work. The other is me.

I’ll thank you profusely, BCC you so we don’t gunk up your inbox, and let you know how it turns out.

I suspect indirect intros will have a long-term impact. In particular, they will result in too many clients reaching out for BFCM-only optimizations in August. This will keep us afloat for another year, but unfortunately it isn’t the sort of client we want to cultivate at Draft, because it will not result in the capture of outsize profit for our clients. Put another way, indirect intros will not result in the sort of case studies that we’re known for.

In short, I would generally avoid furnishing indirect intros in the middle of a psychic war. This goes for Draft as well as any other business you’re trying to introduce. For us, these are the sales equivalent of blindfolding us and tying our hands behind our back. We can’t do anything with them.

I am always thinking of the long run for this business, because I have no other option. I know the world is on fire. I also know that consulting is a relationships business. This is why direct intros have become so essential.

If you provide a direct introduction and we end up working with the client, I’ll mail you all of our books for free and comp you a year’s membership.

Now and always, our goal is to help. Thanks for reading, and for your understanding.

This week, for paid members

For our design of the week, we covered one of the more interesting nav structures we’ve seen. Does it work?
Our weekly lesson expanded on last week’s themes to discuss the specific ways that short-term thinking can manifest when running an online store.
Our fortnightly teardown was for auto shop TireRack. Really, all you care about is the tires for your car. How do they help people browse effectively?
We sent our quarterly call link out, for anyone who wants to chat with us one-on-one.
And finally, we held our monthly office hours, chatting about all manner of fun value-based design topics. Hope to see you next month!

Want in? Join us now – now named one of the best ecommerce communities going on the web.

Links & analysis

In the first of a two-parter, NN/g lays out the difference between personas & archetypes. We use archetypes exclusively at Draft, for we think they better convey the multiplicity of customer beliefs, attitudes, perspectives, and marginalizations. Excited to read part two!
On this newsletter, we are legally bound to post all Trello-for-user-research posts that ever exist. This is one of them.
A new-to-me term: microsolidarity, or the practice of building community through small gestures. I enjoyed thinking about some of the principles & actions that can be taken in here.
A new Markdown-based publishing system, from our merchant provider Stripe. I’ve written these newsletters exclusively in Markdown for 10 years now. This is lovely to see!

This week’s paid lesson: What are the ways that short-term thinking manifests in ecommerce?

This week’s lesson is for paid members. Sign into our community to read it, or join us today to get access.

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