Ep #341: Mystery Referral Episode

Stacey Brown Randall: Hey there, and welcome to episode 341 of the Roadmap to Referrals podcast, a show that proves you can generate referrals without asking or manipulation.

I’m your host, Stacey Brown Randall. My journey from a business failure to a successful business now 11 years in, I know generating referrals naturally and consistently has made all the difference. Working with clients around the world, we leverage the science of referrals, protect relationships above all else, and help you build a referable business.

I always find it interesting when an episode drops on a holiday or like close to a holiday within a holiday week.

And since you might be listening to this episode weeks or months from now, the holiday reference is like a little out of place, but then not acknowledging the holiday, if you listen to this episode on the day or the week of that holiday, and this episode is dropping, not acknowledging that holiday feels a little weird too. So if you’re celebrating, Merry Christmas.

Before we dive into our mystery episode, I want to mention a very exciting opportunity I have coming up in February. My anticipation for this has been building now for a couple of weeks, and I’m just starting to talk about it, so hopefully, this is exactly what you’ve been waiting to hear from me.

I do hear from a lot of you that you would love to put together your referral plan, your multi-layer referral plan, referral strategy that I build out with my clients at the VIP level and in the BRB coaching program, that you would like to do the same thing, but as fast as possible, which is two days in my world.

And if you could marry that speed of building your entire strategy, your entire referral strategy without having to watch a single video, you’d be as happy as a clam. Well, call me Santa Claus, because I’m going to make that wish come true.

In February, I’m inviting a small group to join me in Charlotte for two days to build and implement your referral strategy. The Referral Accelerator is a small group in-person workshop where we’ll design a fully functioning overall referral strategy to grow your business with referrals without asking, manipulating or incentivizing.

This is the most affordable shortcut to getting your referral machine strategy up and running, done in a small group setting. The Referral Accelerator is a hands-on and super-fast way to go from creation to execution.

There will be early bird pricing and it’s going to hit just after the new year. So if you want to learn more about it and snag your spot fast because there’s only a limited number of them, then start checking your email as I’ll be emailing out information about the Referral Accelerator and our limited early bird pricing. That email will first come out on Friday, January 3rd.

I hope you’re going to be one of the folks who joins me in Charlotte in February so we can build in record time with great laser focus, your referral strategy so you can finally take control of referrals in 2025. I cannot wait to see who will be joining me in Charlotte late February.

Alright. This is what we’re calling the mystery referral episode. Why are we calling it that? Well, that’s about the best name I could come up with.

But here’s what I wanted to do. I asked Chris who edits this podcast, what was our most listened to episode so far in 2024?

Now, it’s not exactly a fair question because this episode wasn’t included in that. And of course, last week’s episode wasn’t included in that. And most of the December episodes weren’t really a part of that.

But for the most part, in the first 11-ish months of the year, what was the most listened to episode we had? And I never know what this is. Actually, this is not something I track in my business. I don’t know why. Maybe I should. Maybe I shouldn’t. I don’t know. It’s like sometimes you can track too many things, right?

But I was just curious, like what is the episode that people seem to be listening to the most? And I’m always surprised sometimes when I hear what the most positive, what was listened to, right? So I guess technically the most favorite episode of the year. And so it was episode 321.

Now, what’s really funny is if you listened to this episode, like in the very beginning, like you know, seven minutes ago or five minutes ago, whatever it was when I started talking about this Referral Accelerator that I’m hosting in February, I talked about you guys are always in that need for speed, like how fast can we do this?

So isn’t it fitting that the most listened to episode, so maybe we would call that the favorite episode of 2024, was episode 321, which was titled, “What Impacts How Fast You’ll Receive Referrals.”

Man, as business owners, we really have a thing about speed, don’t we? And I get it. I’m like you. I don’t want to mess around. I want to make the right decision the first time and get it going.

But the truth is, usually we do have to slow down to speed up. We all know that, right? Instinctively, we all know that.

But we still constantly are like, how fast can I go? How quickly can I get this done? Why isn’t this already done? Right? And then we start doing it and we realize, well, some things take a little bit more time than we give them credit.

So I thought it was really interesting that the most listened to episode was this one about our obsession with how fast can we go and how fast something will take. It comes down to speed.

So since it is the holiday, I thought, well, since it was your favorite episode, maybe you’re going to want to listen to it again, because this episode hopefully has you thinking differently about speed when it comes to referrals. I’m going to bust some speed myths in this episode.

So if you happen to be one of the few people who missed episode 321, now you get to hear it. And if you heard it and you’re like, it was so good, I could listen to it again. Well, guess what? You’re going to get to, because we’re going to play it for you right now.

We cut out all the extras in this episode and just drilled down into what I need you to understand about how fast you can receive referrals. Enjoy this episode.

Stacey Brown Randall: In last week’s episode, which is episode 320, so if you haven’t listened to it, it’ll be easier and less confusing for you if you go back and listen to that episode. So if you haven’t listened to 320, hit pause, go back, listen to that, then come back and join me here for episode 321.

But on 320, I talked about what impacts how long it takes for referral seeds to actually come to fruition, meaning you receive referrals. The answer was always going to be, well, it really depends how long it’s going to take. It’s going to depend on who you’re planting referral seeds with and what you can and can’t do to impact the process.

So when you think about who you’re planting referral seeds with, you can imagine if you’re planting referral seeds with someone who’s referred you before, it’s probably going to work faster than when you’re trying to plant referral seeds with someone who’s absolutely never referred you. So that potential referral source.

And, of course, impacting the process will also be the consistency of your language, your willingness and patience to work backwards, and then, of course, a few more things we talked about in that episode.

But that episode was really, really tactical into what you’re doing specifically to impact referrals happening at a very tactical level, like boots on the ground, very tactical level with referrals, referral sources, if they are, if they’re not, and your language, consistency, things like that.

But I felt like I left something out, like something was missing. So in this episode, I want to add in what I feel like was missing with last week’s episode, because I want to go a step further to make sure you understand the bigger picture of referrals. So I kind of want to take you up to the 30,000 foot view.

And this isn’t very specific to referrals, but this is things that do impact how fast you’ll receive referrals. But it’s kind of taking you up to that 30,000-foot view and kind of having that overview looking down on your business more likely, like specifically your business before we get into the nuts and bolts about actual generating referrals. But all this ultimately impacts referrals.

So the first thing I want you to consider is us looking at this from a business perspective. One thing that will impact your referrals has a lot to do with the business you chose to run. And I know you’re like, wait, what?

But the truth is, the business you decided to start or the industry that you are ultimately in, that will impact referrals. It’ll impact volume. It’ll impact speed, and it’ll impact the metrics that we like to track when it comes to referrals, just in terms of how many am I receiving from a volume perspective, and then how quickly or how often am I receiving them as well. So the industry you’re in will definitely impact your referrals.

For example, when I’m having a conversation with, let’s say, a CPA, we are going to have a different conversation about the volume, the number of referrals they can generate and how fast it may go, which will be vastly different from the conversation I have with an investment banker who is looking to work with clients to help them buy and sell, buy or sell businesses.

It’s just different. The volume is different. The speed is different because the industry and the business itself is different. And you really can’t overlook that.

I have conversations with people and they’re like, oh, I want to get referrals like you. I just want to get so many referrals. And I’m like, well, first of all, I’m getting less referrals now than I was 10 years ago, because how I run my business is entirely different. I don’t need hundreds of referrals every year.

It used to be that when I looked at my business and the referrals that I was bringing in, it’s because I could sell an unlimited amount of online programs. And they were $1,500, $2,000, $2,500, and then I had a few things a little bit higher than that. So to make any money off of a $2,000 client, you need a lot of them. So obviously, my need for referrals was larger.

But when I shifted my model a number of years ago, and now I work with clients in a more intimate way, whether that’s in my VIP one-on-one, where I go to them and work with them and their team, or I do it in my BRB, Building a Referable Business Coaching program, those price points start at $10,000 and go up. And so from that perspective, I need less. And so the volume changes.

So the industry you’re in, but also the types of clients you work with and how you work with your clients. Like, what are your price points? How many of those clients do you need?

So back in May, I released a new starter course. I affectionately refer to it as the starter course. It’s called Your Next Five Referrals. And the idea is, is that it’s the things I wish business owners would put in place before they actually hired me. It just allows me to go a lot faster if these things are already in place.

So as you can imagine, obviously one of the things that we talk about in the Your Next Five Referrals, it is an online program. But one of the things we talk about is making sure you just have a process for intake about how you are tracking the referrals that you receive, and obviously your thank you card process, and identifying who your referral sources are.

And there’s a lot more to that, but that’s some good baseline stuff that we go through. And I give the templates and show you how to do it and walk you through it step by step.

But there’s one thing I do in there, part of Your Next Five Referrals, we also talk about like establishing what your referral goals would be as well if you’re looking at how many referrals you want in the next 12 months.

And there’s an exercise that I have those clients do and that is called client capacity. That determines so much about your referral goal in terms of how many referrals you need and what conversion to paying client from referred prospect you ultimately need to hit.

And so I always tell folks, don’t set a goal for how many referrals you want until you know how many clients you ultimately want to work with in a year. So it’s not just how many clients you want to work with or how many clients you want to work with in a year, but it’s also the types of clients you work with and how you work with those clients.

So all of that affects, like, if you were looking at this from a business perspective, it’s the industry you’re in. It’s the how many clients you need to work with. It’s the types of clients that you work with. Exactly how do you work with those clients?

Like, what does that look like? Your price points come in to play there as well. Like, what is the price points of your different service offerings? And then, of course, how often folks are actually looking to solve your problem.

And so some problems only come around every five to seven years. Like if you’re a real estate agent, I may be looking to only buy or sell the house that I’m in maybe every seven years. I believe that is like the reoccurring statistic for how often a repeat client comes back to a real estate agent. And so that’s every seven years.

So that’s going to impact what you’re looking for in terms of referrals for deals you want to close this year. So there’s a lot that actually goes into this, and you really need to take some time.

Like, you are a smart business owner. So you need to take some time thinking through, ultimately, what does your business look like? What are you ultimately after? And understanding how that plays into your referral results.

This isn’t like, oh, because you’re in this industry, you’ll not get any referrals. That’s not what I’m saying at all. But what I am saying is, because you’re in this industry, maybe you only need 5 or 10, versus some of you need 50 or 75.

And you got to know that, because that is also going to impact how fast you’re going to receive referrals. It’s based into the fact of where are you in terms of how clients work with you, the types of clients you work with, how often are they looking to solve their problems, what industry are you in, what does it look like to work with people in your industry, and what is your capacity for clients?

So while there’s a lot of tactical things that I know you can do to impact how fast you’ll receive referrals, and again, that was more on last week’s episode, episode 320, I just feel like I would be remiss if we didn’t have a conversation about some other things that impact your referrals that are actually out of your control, because it’s a little bit, it has to do with, I mean, it’s in your control turning.

I mean, you could change your business, but you don’t need to do that. You just need to understand and consider hey, there’s some things that impact referrals in my industry, how often folks are looking to solve problems and working with people like me, the types of clients that I work with, how I’m working with my clients, the price points that I work with my clients. All that matters.

Okay, so that’s the first thing I want you to kind of keep in mind is that we need to look at this from a business perspective, your business perspective, as it comes to impacting referrals. Now, let’s talk about the second part, and that has to do with what you believe.

The second thing I want us to look at is what you believe. And I know you’re like, oh no, here comes the word mindset, the M word. I know, I think that mindset gets a lot of overplay when it really should, it should really be seen as most important and most serious, and it is and all those things.

But I think sometimes, you know, it’s like we latch onto something and then in our world, we just have a tendency to like, overdo it. But I really do know that what you believe will impact how fast you receive referrals, and if you receive referrals, and how many.

And so your mindset of like, do you believe you deserve them? Which may sound like a weird question, because maybe you’re sitting there and you’re thinking, of course, I believe I deserve referrals, Stacey. I show up to listen to this podcast every single week.

But the reality actually is, is it’s not about what you say that you believe. It’s about what your actions prove in private. Like, what are you doing? to be able to generate those referrals. What are you doing within that client experience that’s making you referable?

Do you believe you do valuable work? Great. Do you believe you’re doing the things you need to do to receive referrals? A lot of people will tell me, yes, I believe I deserve referrals. But then they don’t actually do anything to be able to cultivate them.

And sometimes it’s just because they don’t know what to do. But a lot of times, it’s because even though they say the words, I deserve referrals, there is this little part of them that’s not quite sure. And so they just choose to do nothing to start generating those referrals.

Referrals are not going to show up. I don’t care how good you are. They don’t just magically appear. They don’t grow on trees, and they’re not just going to show up. So you have to actually do some things to be able to generate referrals.

And sometimes when I’m working with folks and they just don’t trust the process, I see it keep them from the success that they should be having. If you don’t believe you deserve referrals, trust me, that is what you’re putting out there into the world. And so you’re not going to receive them.

You have to trust the process. You have to believe you deserve referrals. And then, of course, you need to do the work to back it up, so you are worthy of the referrals that you receive. I’m not looking for perfection, but I am looking for a business that is worthy of someone putting their reputation on the line to refer someone to you.

So it really does come down to that mindset. For me, this always comes down to, do I walk my talk? Here’s the thing. I am in a unique position where I teach people how to generate referrals. Can you imagine how weird it would be if you learned that I didn’t receive any referrals? What? That would be crazy town.

And of course, that’s not true, because I do receive referrals, lots of them, because I walk my talk. Now, again, I’m in this unique position where I teach referrals, which is our topic, of course. And so, of course, I walk my talk and do the same things I teach my clients to generate referrals. And I actually track this stuff just like everybody else.

And just last week, I was on vacation in Colorado, and I received two referrals while I was on vacation. And so I track this stuff just like everybody else, just like I teach my clients to do.

But if you believe you deserve them, if you believe you deserve referrals, and my question for you is, are you walking your talk? What are you doing that you can out really show that you believe you deserve referrals? What are you doing?

And that’s not just having this most amazing client experience and having your clients love you. It’s also taking the next step to really understand how you generate referrals and then doing the things that actually generate those referrals.

But I truly believe there are people that I talk to, maybe they become clients, maybe they don’t. And deep down, they’re not 100% sure they believe it’s going to happen for them. And guess what? It won’t.

This isn’t one of those, like, believe it and it’ll ultimately just happen. Like, believe it once and it’ll happen. I mean, you got to believe it and you got to do the work for it as well. You got to do your part. But the mindset of what you believe regarding referrals is usually what you make happen in the world.

So if you’re not giving it any time and attention, please don’t expect the referrals to happen. And don’t be mad at anybody but yourself. Like, if you’re not giving it the time and attention it deserves to happen, that’s your fault and you’re a business owner and a grown-up and you can take it and you can make a different decision if you want to. So just keep that in mind.

Okay, finally, I do want to break down some aspects that are a little bit closer to referrals as well that I believe impact how fast you’ll receive referrals. And here’s a couple of things that I want to make sure that you understand. Because this one has a tendency for people to like get stuck going down a rabbit hole. And that’s not what I mean for you in this section.

So the first thing we talked about, let me just back up for a second. The first thing we talked about was understanding where you are from a business perspective in terms of your ability to generate referrals from a speed perspective, or how quickly that would happen for you.

Then we talked about your ability to generate referrals because you believe that you deserve them and then you take the action to be able to generate them. The next thing that I think really impacts your ability to receive referrals is three things.

Number one, it’s actually how you’ve treated your network. Up to this point, how have you treated your network? And I think some people are like, I don’t even know how to answer that question, because I think it’s a very loaded question, but a very important question.

Let’s be honest. We all know takers in this world, where they meet with us, they have coffee, they talk about themselves for 45 minutes, and they stand up as they’re walking out the door and say, oh, by the way, let me know how I can help you. And then they’re gone. They’re just takers, right?

And so how you’ve treated your network matters. And I don’t mean you’re having coffee with everybody you know because nobody has time for that. But there are so many ways to impact your network on an ongoing daily basis where you’re not even thinking about referrals. You’re just thinking about staying connected and being a good human or being a good friend or checking in on people, like how you’ve treated your network.

If you’ve ignored them, if you’ve ignored your network and not been connected to folks and not talked to people for years and years and years, and then those are the same people you want to go back to to generate referrals from in the future, it is going to take a long, long time.

And you should just be like, yep, got it. I assumed that. You should not assume that you can somehow short-circuit that because how you’ve treated your network matters. And a lot of times people will ask me, they’re like, what are some of the ways, like what are some things that may get in the way of me being able to generate the referrals I want when I go through your program?

And I always tell them what I can’t solve for you, at least I can’t solve it quickly, is how you’ve treated your network up until the point that you decide to join my program. Now, does this mean, again, does this mean you’re having coffee with everybody? No. Does this mean that you’ve sent thank you cards to every single human just because? No. It doesn’t mean any of that stuff.

It just means if you’ve been ignoring your network because you’ve been, quote unquote, so busy with your business, you just need to prepare for this to impact how long it’ll take for those folks to ultimately start referring you. Because how you’ve treated your network matters.

Another way is it’s just how you show up. When you show up and you are more of a giver than you are a taker, and you are genuinely interested in hearing about people and talking to people, and you just show that you care, that always will make your life easier when it comes to ultimately generating referrals.

So how you show up in the world, how you show up in business, how you show up in your industry meetings, how you show up at your networking meetings, whatever it is, how you show up matters. And it impacts how people feel. And that will ultimately impact if they decide to put their reputation on the line to refer to you.

So if you show up, and you’re always running around like a crazy person, and you’re always so busy, and those are the only words that ever roll out of your mouth, oh, I’m so, so busy. I’m just so busy. I’m just so busy. I just got all these things happening.

Most people are going to be like, duly noted, not verbally to you, but how you show up matters to how people receive you and perceive you. And so you need to keep that in mind.

And the other thing is, I find with some folks, it’s their inability to identify the right people to refer to them. And not because they are not capable. It’s because they haven’t made the time to sit down and figure out, okay, who are the right people to refer to me? They just want it to magically appear on a piece of paper. That’s just not how it works.

I teach this in one of the strategies that I teach called Referring Machines. where I go into identifying who are the right people to refer to you. It’s not everybody. There’s usually a subset or a group, and they have things in common. Not always identical things in common, but there’s some commonality amongst them. But you have to take time to do that.

I can’t begin to tell you how many times I have conversations with people and they’re like, I’m not getting referrals. I’m like, well, who should be referring to you? Like, who’s the right people to refer to you? Who comes across your ideal client with some level of regularity? And they look at me with a blank stare on their face like I have no idea.

Like, that’s a part of our first problem is that you don’t even know who should be referring to you. And sometimes it’s because you just haven’t identified, should it be more focused on clients referring you or centers of influence referring you? Or should it be a blend of both?

Do you know who swims upstream from you, meaning they come across your ideal client before you do, so they would have that problem acknowledged and they can send them downstream to you? You gotta spend some time on this stuff.

And I find that people don’t do that. They just want the easy answer, like tell me who should refer to me. I can’t do that. I mean, I probably can if you’re like a very generic type of business.

Because obviously, I’ve worked with so many interior designers. Yes, I do know who should be referring to you. But who those ultimate people will end up being, there may be others that could refer to you that you haven’t identified. And that’s important for us to note.

And so, yes, I think about from attorney’s perspectives, or the consultants that I work with, or the business coaches, yes, there are usually people who could be referring to them that are commonality from business coach to business coach, or interior designer to interior designer, or attorney to attorney.

But you still have to take the time to identify the right people to refer to you. And that is a little bit of work. And so you need to add that to your to-do list and make sure you understand.

So again, how you’ve treated your network, how you show up in business and in life, and then if you even know who needs to be ultimately referring to you, that stuff matters in terms of impacting how fast you’ll receive referrals or the volume that you’ll receive as well. So that’s just something for you to kind of keep in mind.

Stacey Brown Randall: Hey there and welcome back. I hope you enjoyed listening to episode 321, all about speed, all about how fast something can happen.

Maybe you didn’t hear it originally, and so now it’s been a great addition to what you can understand and know as you move into 2025 with referrals. And for those of you who heard it for the second time, well, maybe it was just an excellent reminder.

Of course, the resources mentioned in this episode can be found on the show notes page at StaceyBrownRandall.com/341.

We’re back with another great episode next week created with you and your needs in mind. Until then, you know what to do, my friend. Take control of your referrals and build a referable business. Bye for now.