---
title: "Why 98% of our new work comes from referrals"
description: "The most honest metric a services firm can share isn't a survey score. It's whether clients stake their own reputation on you. Ours do, 98% of the time."
canonical_url: "https://www.tarmac.io/resources/why-referrals/"
last_updated: "2026-10-07"
---

[Resources](https://www.tarmac.io/resources/) / Culture

# Why 98% of our new work comes from referrals

The most honest metric a services firm can share isn't a survey score. It's whether clients stake their own reputation on you. Ours do, 98% of the time.

Tarmac · April 29, 2026 Culture

Services firms love a satisfaction score. NPS this, CSAT that, numbers a client can give you in a survey and forget by lunch. There’s a harder, more honest signal: will a client put _their own reputation_ on the line to introduce you to someone they respect? For 98% of our new business, the answer has been yes.

## Referrals are trust you can’t fake

A referral is a costly signal. The person making it is spending social capital, and people don’t spend that on vendors who merely didn’t mess up. They spend it on partners who made them look good, who shipped, communicated, and stuck around when things got hard. You can’t buy that with a marketing budget. You earn it one engagement at a time.

## What earns the introduction

Looking across the relationships that referred us, the pattern is consistent:

-   **We felt like their team, not a vendor.** Same schedule, same tools, shared code ownership, not an outsourced black box.
-   **We were transparent when it counted.** Honest reporting, including the bad news, and fast issue resolution.
-   **We stayed.** The best work compounds over years. Long-term relationships around real product work, including the spiky periods, beat transactional projects every time.

## Why we optimize for it

Chasing referrals instead of ad clicks changes how you behave. It makes you allergic to short-term wins that cost long-term trust. It aligns the whole company around the only outcome that generates them: clients who’d happily work with you again, and want their friends to, as well.

It’s also why we’re comfortable with 30-day-cancellable contracts. If we ever stop earning the relationship, you shouldn’t be locked into it. So far, clients keep choosing to stay, and to tell others.

Keep reading

## More on Culture

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### Who sets your software partner's growth targets?

Outside capital is good for plenty of companies. When your software development partner takes it, someone who is not you starts setting their growth targets.

July 12, 2026](https://www.tarmac.io/resources/who-sets-your-partners-growth-targets/)[

### Remote work: boosting productivity in changing scenarios

How a fully remote, globally distributed team stays productive when the ground keeps shifting. Practical habits from Tarmac's engineers.

January 15, 2025](https://www.tarmac.io/resources/remote-work-productivity/)[

### Candidate experience: leading candidates the right way

Clear communication, real feedback, and a hiring process that treats candidates like people, not ticket numbers. How Tarmac runs candidate experience.

March 12, 2024](https://www.tarmac.io/resources/candidate-experience-hiring-process/)

## Let’s build something worth taking off.

Tell us what you’re building. We’ll assemble the senior team to ship it.

[Let’s team up→](https://www.tarmac.io/contact/?source=resources-why-referrals)

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