“A friend told me” is a referral programme you have not built yet.
It is usually your best-converting channel and your least specific data point.
What is actually happening
Referred leads close faster and churn less, and every marketer knows it. Almost nobody can say who is doing the referring, because the only record of it is a phrase in a form field.
One follow-up question turns that phrase into something you can act on: which company, which context, which problem the two of them were both trying to solve.
Your best-converting channel, recorded as nothing.
why: “she set this up at her last company and said it took ten minutes”
We do not ask for the referrer’s name and we do not want it. Context is what is useful, and it is what people will actually give you.
What changes when you can see it
You learn which customers advocate, which roles do the recommending, and what they say when they do. That is the raw material for a referral programme, a case-study shortlist, and a much better first sentence on your homepage.
See what is actually in your direct bucket
Free while you are small — no card. $99 a month when you connect it to your CRM.