The most important thing you can do to improve any metric in your funnel, including the number of people who become referrals, is to answer the fears and doubts of your audience. You can do it by asking people what they think. It takes a long time, though.
Pawel Grabowski from CloudSponge did this for you and found the most common questions, fears, and doubts that you need to answer or address to get more of your users to ask more of their friends.
These are them:
#1. Is the product/platform useful?
#2. How involved am I with this platform?
#3. Will inviting this person help me develop my relationship with them?
#4. Will bringing this person to the platform improve my position within the group?
#5. Will it look like spamming my friends?
#6. Will referring make my friends think poorly of me?
#7. Will I look like someone who easily shares my friends’ contact details with anyone, not respecting their privacy?
#8. Will my friends love being on the platform, will they be impressed?
#9. Why should I invite my friends?
Source: www.cloudsponge.com