Tesla Referral Program: Why It Matters

Tesla has been going a completely different route in sales techniques, marketing budgets and acquiring new customers. It is quite an interesting method they employ, but they aren’t the only ones using that technique and philosophy behind their brand.

Tesla Stores

If you have never visited a Tesla Store before, let me tell you one thing. It isn’t a car dealership. Not at all. And you should visit one as soon as possible. Just recently I’ve read someone describing the experience when visiting such a store to be more like a technical museum. Tesla employees take their time in explaining, in much detail, how these cars work, how the infrastructure is built up, they praise the technology behind the vehicles and love to talk about the philosophy of owning and living with an all-electric automobile. But there’s one thing they don’t do: ask you to purchase a vehicle. The experience is very similar to Apple Stores and their employees. They love the technology, they love being independent of sales figures and let the customer feel welcomed, helped and even understood.

I truly believe this is the right way to do sales for premium products. Having been an Apple customer for quite some time now, I truly admire and respect the freedom of choice you get, while also getting the ideal consultation when interested in a new product. The goal is to have the recommendation for a product that suits you, the buyer, the most, not the seller in terms of more profit from the sale. And this is really something you can see happen a lot, especially in electronics stores or even regular car dealerships.

Tesla Marketing

A recent report showed that Tesla Motors invests much, much less money into marketing and advertisement than other manufacturers like BMW, Mercedes-Benz and Audi. In fact, I have personally not seen a single advertisement by Tesla Motors for their products, at least outside of news articles mentioning the name and products. They are doing a great job relying on others to pass the word around. Of course, being the first real all-electric vehicle manufacturer in the world with no other products, they do get a lot of benefit through public media. But there is another means of marketing that Tesla heavily relies on: the word and experience of happy customers. With an evolutionary product such as the Tesla Model S and Model X, a lot of owners are happy and quite often asked to show potential customers the vehicles and provide an experience. And with that coming from a respected friend or colleague, the chances of being truly believed and impressed are much higher than if a sales representative from a car dealership were to tell someone about the great features of the vehicle.

Tesla Referral Program

This is why Tesla introduced a program that benefits not only the referee, but also the referrer. With a bonus program in which each current Tesla owner is able to refer up to five (5) new customers, both the referrer and the buyer each get a 1000$ bonus. The new owner will get it as a rebate on their new vehicle, which can only be ordered through the Tesla website, and the good friend referring the Tesla experience is granted a bonus of the same amount. When completing your 5 referred customers, you can actually get rewarded with another great bonus on top: an exclusive set of Arachnid wheels for the Tesla Model S, and I must say they look very, very tempting.

Using a Referral

If you were buying a new Tesla at the time, you could use a referrer’s link or enter their code when ordering the vehicle to get the rebate. This post describes the program as it was in 2016. It has changed many times since and I no longer take part in it, so there is no code to use here. If you’d like to ask any question on the Tesla Model S or the Tesla experience in general, I’d still love to talk about Tesla and the philosophy behind it.

Image credits: Tesla Motors, Inc.