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"I get my business through referrals, so my website doesn't really matter."

Sep 10, 2026 — John Way

Ok, let's do a simple thought experiment together. And, I don't make websites for a living, so it won't hurt my feelings either way.

Let's suppose you're looking for a recruiter, and you ask your friends for recommendations.

How many referrals do you think you'll get?

1? 3? 5+?

Now, do you call and talk to everyone?

For me, if I asked that from my friends and peers, I know I'd probably get 3-5.

And if I include firms that I know and have worked with in the past, I'm at about 7-8.

I'll be honest. I'm not going to talk to all 8 firms.

I'll check out their websites and ask AI about them.

Depending on who looks promising, I'll call the top 3 or 4.

Is that what you'd do as well?

Because, here's the thing that I noticed from owners who run referral-based businesses.

This is how we would love referrals to work: buyer hears our name → call us immediately.

But… we don't do that ourselves when it's our turn as the buyer.

What we actually do is: someone gives us a name → we check them out → if they're a top pick, we call them.

But if they're just middle-of-the-pack, we don't do anything. We just silently move on.

So, why do we think our buyers will do something different than us?

“Well, because we're more experienced than our buyers.”

Maybe.

But, let's assume that's true, and we focus only on inexperienced buyers: people who've never researched our service before.

In the Atlanta study, we surveyed 100+ B2B buyers, and even First-Time buyers have 3-8 vendors in mind when they *start* researching.

Which means, just because they're inexperienced doesn't mean they don't know anybody.

Check out the full study ⬇️