Ep #345: Deep Dive on Your Referral Reality

Ep #345: Deep Dive on Your Referral Reality

A referral-first strategy is about prioritizing actions that will generate referrals as the main goal, rather than viewing them as a bonus.

I had a recent conversation with a business consultant who is eager to increase his referrals but feels overwhelmed by the numerous tactics available. This scenario is common among many business owners and highlights the need for a structured approach to generating referrals.

Understanding the Referral-First Strategy

Methods like paying for referrals or relying solely on digital marketing often fall short. The referral-first strategy focuses on consistently doing the right things, including being intentional about your referral-generating activities.

Analyzing Past Referral Data

To build a successful referral-first strategy, conduct a thorough analysis of your referral history. Consider how many referrals you received, who referred them, and the outcomes. Be sure to include data from the previous year. This analysis will help you answer critical questions about what has been working and what has not.

Actionable Steps for Referral Growth

Simply analyzing your past referrals is not enough; you need to take action based on your findings. Consider what changes or improvements are necessary in your approach to referrals. Whether it’s doubling down on successful strategies or trying something new, the key is to be proactive. For your referrals to grow, you must be willing to put in the work!

Links Mentioned During the Episode:

Time is running out to join us for the upcoming Referral Accelerator workshop in Charlotte, North Carolina, where you can learn to create a fully functioning referral system in just two days!For all the details, go to StaceyBrownRandall.com/referral-accelerator.

Next Episode:

Next episode is #346 which is another episode created with you and your needs in mind.

Download The Full Episode Transcript

Read the Transcript Below:

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

I’m your host, Stacey Brown Randall. I’m a card-carrying member of the Business Failure Club, have taught my referrals without asking methodology and strategies to clients in more than 14 countries around the world. And my mission is to help you unleash a referral explosion by leveraging the science of referrals and respecting your relationships.

Knowing where to go, or where you want to go, always starts with looking back. Referrals? They’re no different.

I was on the phone recently with a business consultant who’s considering attending my referral accelerator that’s coming up in late February. He receives some referrals, about 10 to 12 a year.

He is unclear though on the number of referral sources, that’s the number of people who refer to him, and he’s trying to figure out the best path forward to generate more referrals.

Now he totally gets it. He knows that referrals make the best clients, that it is the most cost-effective way to bring in new prospects, it’s typically easier, and the quality is usually better.

Getting more referrals is definitely his goal. It’s probably your goal too, which is why you’re listening to this podcast.

But he, probably like you, has been hit with a lot of different options on how to generate those referrals. Should he pay for them? Should he be asking for them? Should he write a book and give it away to generate referrals?

Okay, all of those make me laugh. And is there something else that he’s missing? There will never be a shortage of tactics people are selling for how you should generate referrals.

I was actually on a website earlier that a real estate agent told me about, and this direct marketing company was selling referrals as the main benefit of why you should put in place one of their direct marketing packages.

Doesn’t matter if it’s postcards, magazines, digital newsletter. When it comes to other businesses trying to get your attention to buy whatever it is that they are selling, they will use referrals as their bait to get your attention.

Because it works well. Because we all want referrals. We see the word referral in marketing, and people are like, ooh, yes, that’s what I want. I want referrals. Ooh, your solution will give that to me?

They say, buy their thing, and it’ll get you referrals, when in reality, it typically gets you leads, prospects, but not necessarily referred ones. And if you do get referrals from whatever service or offer that you’re buying from them, it’s typically a bonus.

That can happen, but it’s going to happen maybe sporadically and definitely not consistently. It is not a referral-first focused strategy. For me, what I teach and provide is a referral-first strategy. What I teach you is to get referrals.

So what I teach you to do is for the main benefit of getting referrals. Referrals are not the added bonuses that may or may not happen with the strategies that I teach.

Now, not every business needs a referral-first focus strategy. I know some businesses who solely rely on digital marketing and as long as it works for them and they can afford the budget, that’s great.

I know some law firms that spend upwards of $20,000 or more per month on digital marketing lead gen strategies. I don’t care how big your business is, that’s a lot of money every month.

If you decide to put a referral-first strategy in your business this year, here are some things you need to know about last year to help you figure out your direction.

Stacey Brown Randall: Hey, pardon the interruption. If you’ve ever wanted to receive my best referral strategies in the quickest amount of time, the answer is the Referral Accelerator.

It’s being held in late February over two days in Charlotte. All details can be found at StaceyBrownRandall.com/referral-accelerator.

The referral accelerator is a small group in-person workshop where we’ll design a fully functioning referral system to grow your business with referrals without asking, manipulating, incentivizing, or being gimmicky and promotional.

The Accelerator includes two 7-hour days with me in Charlotte, North Carolina. Workbooks, templates, and all the scripts are included. There are no video trainings to watch. You’re going to learn from me and build as you go.

Make plans now by registering to join me for the Referral Accelerator, the most affordable shortcut to getting your referral machine up and running, done in a small group setting.

You can find the link for more details and snag one of the last few seats remaining on the show notes page for this episode. Now, back to our episode.

Stacey Brown Randall: What do I mean when I say a referral-first strategy? It means you have specific focus on doing the things that will generate you referrals. They’re not a bonus. They’re not just a great little add-on that we didn’t know was coming.

They are the reason we do the things. And these are, of course, separate from your marketing activities and your prospecting activities.

So the first step in building your referral-first strategy is you really do need to get clear on what happened last year with referrals. Here’s how to do a deep dive on your referrals reality.

First, how many referrals did you receive last year? I need an exact number, not a range. Okay, so let’s say, for our example, you received 15 referrals last year.

Okay, so the next thing is, I need to know what are the names of those 15 people who were referred to you. Now, if you listened to last week’s episode, episode 344, you really should already have this information.

Okay, now, the third thing is, is I need to know what are the names of the referral sources who referred those 15 prospects to you.

Next, of those 15, just using that as our example, of those 15 referrals, how many became a client? And what was the revenue for each client?

How many are still in process, meaning you’re still working them through the buyer’s journey, they haven’t yet decided yes or no to working with you? And how many of those 15 said no or not yet to hiring you?

Alright, next up, I need you to know how many times do you think, and this is more of a guesstimate, but how many times do you think you hear, I told someone about you, but it goes nowhere?

How many times, okay, so on the flip side of that, right, so it’s how many times do you hear, hey, I told someone about you, but it goes nowhere because you don’t actually know who they told about.

Like they don’t know who they told about you to. Like you have no idea who they were talking to because it doesn’t go anywhere.

And how many times, the flip side of that, how many times do you get lucky and the prospect follows up directly and tells you who referred them to you? Capture that information.

Alright, here we go, two more. Next up, I want you to answer the question is what are you doing now to generate referrals?

Like the task, the activity, the thing you do is specifically to generate referrals. It’s not an add-on. I want the actual steps you are taking to generate referrals.

And then finally, how confident are you that what you are doing actually attributed to those 15 referrals you received last year?

Take a minute and look over that information. There is a lot that can be revealed in that data. What aha moments did you have? Write them down. Any light bulbs go off? Write those down.

Did you connect any dots you hadn’t connected before? Write down the dots. Did you have any of those hit your palm to your forehead moments because of something you failed to do or missed knowing you should have been doing? Write those down too.

I want you to sit with all of that information and write down your thoughts in ink or pencil. Don’t type, write. There’s always a method to that madness, but trust me, I know this means you’ll actually do it.

But here’s the thing, you’re not done yet. I need you to repeat all of that for one more year. I need you to go one year back further and pull this information for 2023 as well. All of it.

All those seven things I just told you to list out, and then as you took a minute and looked over that information, and then you wrote down what your aha moments and light bulbs and dots connected, and oh, I can’t believe I forgot to do that moment, and you wrote down all your thoughts about all that data, I need you to do it one more time.

I need you to do it for 2023 as well. All of it. Now, you may have to pause and come back to me to be able to answer this final question, because you really need to be looking at your data and your thoughts on your data for 2024 and 2023 to be able to truly answer these next two questions.

But I want you to consider the last two points that I asked you to answer. What are you doing now to generate referrals, the actual steps you are taking, and how confident are you that what you are doing is actually attributing to the referrals you’ve received last year and the year before.

Consider what needs to change or be improved. Or maybe there’s some things you need to double down on for 2025.

If you want to take those 15 referrals from last year and get to 30 or 45 referrals this year, what do you need to be doing? What is clearly lacking and what can you build upon that is quite possibly starting to work or maybe has been working a little bit?

What are you doing now to generate referrals? The actual steps you are taking. What did you do last year and the year before to generate referrals? And how confident are you that what you’re doing is actually attributing to the referrals you received over the last two years?

And then what needs to change, be improved, double down on for this year if you want to take those referrals and double them or triple them or more. It is totally possible. Happens every year with my clients.

But you need to do a deep dive and get really clear on the reality of referrals that is already happening in your business. Then decide if you want to get serious and deploy a referral-first strategy in your business to get to the next level.

So what’s your next step? Get to work. I just gave you a bunch of things I need you to do. Get to work. And let me know if I can help you.

The resources mentioned in this episode, like more details on the Referral Accelerator, can be found on the show notes page at StaceyBrownRandall.com/345. That’s for episode 345. And don’t forget, Stacey has an E.

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 referral business. Bye for now.

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

I’m your host, Stacey Brown Randall. I’m a card-carrying member of the Business Failure Club. Have taught my referrals without asking methodology and strategy to clients in more than 14 countries around the world. And my mission is to help you unleash a referral explosion by leveraging the science of referrals and respecting your relationships.

Every year, without fail, there are a few tips I teach my clients to do specifically because it’s the beginning of the year. There is something magical about January, specifically if you have things that work best when done at the beginning of the year.

So these tactics or tips that I teach always help us kick off a strong start on cultivating referrals. That doesn’t mean it’ll kick off an avalanche of referrals headed your way. I mean, it could, but that’s not what I’m saying.

What I’m saying is it’s gonna help you kick off a strong start and focus on cultivating referrals and give you the opportunity to start planting those very important referral seeds right now at the beginning of the year.

So if you’re hearing this in January, get started. If you happen to be listening to this episode and it is later in the year, that’s okay. You can make some modifications to it and do it anyway.

There’s one of these tips, and I’ll talk about which one that is, that I actually tell my clients, you can do this one multiple times throughout the year. But it always has a certain I don’t know, like it always has a certain ability to have a longer leverage or a longer lifespan, I would say, when you do it at the beginning of the year.

So there are four things on this list. As I go over this list, I want you to notice which ones maybe you already do and you already have in place, which kudos to you. Let’s do a little happy dance.

And then of course, I want you making a list of the ones that you need to do because maybe you’re not doing them or quite possibly, you’ve never thought about doing them. Well, that’s okay. That changes now because now you’ll know.

Alright, let’s talk about these. Number one. Number one is to reach back out to all referred prospects from last year who didn’t become a client and reference who referred them to you. So this means anybody that was referred to you.

Now this only works with prospects that were referred to you, not ones that came in maybe because they heard you present, or they heard you on a podcast or maybe they were part of your SEO and they happened to fill out a form on your website.

It’s not for cold leads that maybe you did cold outreach to, you did a cold call or a cold email. This only works for those prospects that were referred to you, okay?

So, you’re gonna reach out to those referred prospects from last year. The ones who, of course, they didn’t say yes, because had they said yes, they would’ve already be a client, right? And they didn’t say a flat out, no, I’m going in a different direction.

These are the prospects that were referred to you that you don’t know what decision they made. They either said, no, not yet, or talk to me later, or nothing. Maybe they ghosted you, or maybe they were just like, they went silent.

So you don’t know the decision they made. You don’t know if they made the decision to solve their problem. You don’t know if they decided their problem was no longer a problem.

You don’t know if they went with a competitor. You don’t know what happened. And in that case, this is who you wanna follow up with. So hopefully you’ve got a list of who these referred prospects are.

I mean, one of the foundational things that I teach, and it’s even in my Your Next Five Referrals starter course, is you need to be tracking this stuff. You need to be tracking every referral received.

And you need to start a new tab in that Excel tracker. If you’re not using a CRM, some type of software, you need to start a new tab at the beginning of every year. So open up a new tab for 2025 and start tracking any time you get a prospect.

But definitely make sure you’re tracking the ones that are referred to you and who referred them to you. OK, that’s like basics. You can do this. Alright. So if you’re tracking, then you have this list. If not, you’re going to have to go compile this list.

But you wanna reach back out to all the referred prospects from last year who didn’t become a client. That’s who we’re reaching out to. And you’re gonna see, hey, is it time?

They didn’t make a decision last year, maybe they’ll make one this year. And just make sure you reference who referred them to you as well.

Okay, number two. And okay, let me just go back and say quickly, for number one, that can absolutely be done in an email. I know that’s a question I’m gonna get, so let me go ahead and answer it for you. So yes, reaching back out to your referred prospects, you can certainly do that in an email.

Alright, let’s move on to number two. The second one I want you to do is I want you to send a New Year card to all of those new connections you made last year that you identified could be a good new referral source.

So if you work with me, this is known as your Running Five, Keeping Warm. And it’s taught within one of my foundational strategies called Referring Machines.

It’s the process and I would really say the system behind how we take someone who’s never referred you and move them through a process to cultivate a better relationship with them and to have them thinking about referring you where that’s not what they’re actually feeling like you’re doing, right?

And so this is a very specific process that I teach about how we cultivate someone who’s never referred you to actually refer you without you telling them to do it. Because, you know, I am completely against you asking people or telling people that they should refer to you. That’s really bad.

So if you are following some type of process where you are meeting with new people, or maybe you’re reconnecting with people you just haven’t seen in six months or a year or four years, and you identify them as like, wow, this person actually probably has potential to refer me.

First of all, I hope there’s a process that you follow that you’re staying in front of them, right? You’re staying in touch with them throughout the year.

You can’t just go to coffee with somebody once or virtual or in person or whatever, meet up with them at a networking event or an event and think like that’s all it’s going to take for them to start referring you. So let’s like we all know that’s not how it works.

So what I want you to do is if you have a list of folks that you did meet with last year, whether you went to coffee with them and never talked to them again, or hopefully better, that you actually did something to continue to cultivate and nurture that new relationship or that reconnecting of a relationship and you did something throughout the year.

It’s a great time now to reestablish that connection as well. And a great way to do that is to send out a New Year card because it’s the new year. That’s why we’re doing a New Year card, right? It’s to send out a New Year card to all the connections that you made last year, that you’re like, hey, these folks have good, strong potential to start referring me.

Now, you can’t just send out a New Year card and think that, of course, is gonna unleash a whole bunch of referrals from that person, but it is a step in your system. It is a step in the process.

But please, for the love of pizza, do not reference in that note you’re sending them that they should be referring you. Don’t do that. That’s bad. Like, so bad. Just please don’t. You’re above that. We’re all above that. So don’t do that.

Okay, so that’s the second thing. You’re gonna send out a New Year card to all the new connections you made last year. Of course, you don’t have to send it to every single person you connected with. Some people you probably met with and you’re like, they’re awesome, they’re amazing, but they probably can’t refer me.

This is for people we’ve identified can refer. That’s the people we wanna make sure we’re staying connected with. Now, you need more. I just, I’m sorry, I gotta say this again. You need more than one card sent in January for them to actually start referring you, but it is a great place to start.

Okay, number three, finalize your outreach plan to your existing referral sources. And existing referral sources are those who have referred you before. You’re gonna finalize your outreach plan to those folks.

Now your aim is five to seven touch points within 2025, so within one calendar year, 12 months. And please keep in mind, your cadence of when you do these five, six, or seven touch points throughout the next 12 months. Your cadence of when you’re doing them matters as much as what you do and what you say.

So you can’t be like, okay, I’ve got motivation and I’m going to do referrals differently this year. And I’m going to take what I’ve learned from Stacey by reading her book or listening to the podcast. And I’m going to create a plan, and you go out, you come out strong out of the gate.

You’re like, woo, we do something in January. Then we do something in February. Then we do something in March. And then maybe you’re like, wait, is it working? I don’t know. Maybe I should stop doing it. That’s the first thing you’ll think.

Or maybe it will work for you, and you’ll get some referrals and then you’ll get busy. And then you’ll be like, I’m too busy now in April to do the next touchpoint.

A couple of things happen here. Number one, the cadence matters, yes, to you and your ability to keep it going. Because if you had to do everything the first five months of the year, you would become overwhelmed. We all would.

So on some level, it matters that the cadence allows you to make this manageable. But that is not the most important piece of this. The most important piece of this is the experience that your existing referral sources feel when they’re receiving these touch points.

And an experience, well, it unfolds. And so you need this touchpoint plan of these five, six, or seven touchpoints, whatever it is for you, you need these to unfold over the course of a year.

Here’s a tip. Knowing now what your five or six or seven touchpoints are going to be throughout January through December of 2025, will make your life so much easier. You’ll be more likely to do it and have consistency with your actions so that the cadence can work for you.

Now, you’re gonna have to figure out what it is that you’re gonna do, and that’s gonna be important. And of course, what you’re gonna say throughout those touch points too, all that’s really important.

But please just remember what I’m asking you to do with this tactic number three is just finalize that outreach plan. Like what are you doing? What are the things you’re gonna do? Sit down and make a list.

This is what I’m doing this month, and then I’m gonna do this a month or two later, and then I’m gonna do this, and then I’m, right? That’s what I’m talking about. What is it that you’re gonna do, right?

Okay, so you’ve got those first three tactics. Let’s move into the fourth one.

Number four. Determine your referral goals for the year. I recommend tracking at least two things as a goal, and then that’s the metric you track throughout the year. But I recommend two goals.

Number one, the number of referrals you want to receive this year. And number two, the number of new referral sources, new people, you want to start referring to you.

So two goals, the number of referrals you want to receive, and of course, the number of new referral sources, new people you want to start referring you. Those are two key goals my clients track every year. We have a spreadsheet.

In January, they all got brand new spreadsheets. They start tracking this stuff. They have their 2025 dashboard. It is in a spreadsheet, if you’re wondering, yes. And they have it, and they have their goals that they’ve also set for 2025. All that’s really important. That is if they’re in their first year with me or they’re in their eighth year with me.

We do this religiously every single year because it matters. And if we’re tracking it, we can see it working, and then we will keep it going. And that is most important to me, is that it’s working, and then that helps you keep it going so you can keep having success.

Here’s the thing, this list is a great place to get started. Of course, it’s not everything you could be doing, and it’s not everything you would be doing if you were a client of mine, but it is a great place for you to get started and turn your focus to a strong start with referrals.

Now, I do wanna dig in a little bit more to each of them, because there’s a couple of things I wanna bring to your attention. Particularly if you’ve never set referral goals, I wanna walk through the math really fast on that too. Okay, so stick with me, here we go.

For the first three tasks or tactics, that language you use in your outreach to the referred prospects, in your card to those potential referral sources you connected with last year, and within the touch points you do for your existing referral sources throughout the year, your language is really important.

We call that referral seeds or planting referral seeds, knowing how to do it and when to do it and when not to do it. It’s really important. So you need to spend some time on it to get it right. Think through the messaging and the language you would use in each of those moments.

Again, outreach to the referred prospect, in the new year card to the potential referral source that you connected with last year, and within those five to seven touch points you’re gonna do for your existing referral sources throughout the year. The language is important, so spend some time with it to get it right.

Now, if you want my help, you can consider joining me for the in-person workshop I’m hosting in February called the Referral Accelerator. Speaking of the Referral Accelerator, let’s just go ahead and do the pardon the interruption now, kind of get it out of the way.

Stacey Brown Randall: Hey there, pardon the interruption. If you’ve ever wanted to receive my best referral strategies in the quickest amount of time, complete with what to say, the answer is the Referral Accelerator. It’s being held in February over two days in Charlotte.

All details can be found at StaceyBrownRandall.com/referral-accelerator. Again, that’s StaceyBrownRandall.com/referral-accelerator.

The Referral Accelerator is a small group, in-person workshop where we’ll design a fully functioning referral system to grow your business with referrals without asking, manipulating, or incentivizing.

The Accelerator includes two seven-hour days in Charlotte, North Carolina. Your workbook, templates, all the scripts you need, including checklist, no video trainings to watch. I will teach it to you, and then you will workshop to build out what I just taught, and you will learn and build as you go.

Make plans now by registering to join me for the Referral Accelerator, the most affordable shortcut to getting your referral machine up and running, done in a small group setting.

Find all the details on the show notes page for this episode, StaceyBrownRandall.com/344 or go to StaceyBrownRandall.com/referral-accelerator. Now back to the episode.

Stacey Brown Randall: Okay. We’ve talked about the first three tactics. We’ve talked about why they’re important and what you need to do. And we’ve talked about tactic number four, which is setting referral goals.

But if you’ve never done it, I just want to quickly walk you through the math behind it so you can understand, like, we’re not just pulling numbers out of thin air here. Like, there’s a rationale to them, right? There’s a way that we do this.

So the best way to set referral goals for this year is based on your results from the last few years. Three years is ideal. But again, not all of you have been in business for three years.

And for some of you, tracking this is going to be hard because you haven’t been doing that very well. So you just work with what you have. But you want to find your average number of referrals over the last couple of years.

For example, let’s say you counted up your referrals, and here’s what you came up with. Last year in 2024, you got 18 referrals. In 2023, you got 20 referrals. And in 2022, you got 15 referrals.

Now, if you take those numbers, 18, 20, and 15, and you add them together, divide by three, your average referrals per year are 17.

Now, to set your 2025 referrals received goal, I want you to double that number, so double 17, and your goal would be 34 referrals this year. That is your new goal. Okay, so we take the 17 and we just simply double it. How does that sound?

What difference would that many referrals make in your business? Now, of course, I mean, your number may not be 34, but you totally get the point. Whatever your number is, your average is, just simply double it as a starting point.

Now, here’s the thing. You can’t just double your numbers to set a goal and do nothing different. As with all metrics, you need a plan in place to make the goal a reality.

So if 2025 is the year you finally take control of your referrals, then let’s do a happy dance. You’ve got four tactics you can start with right now. And if you do these, future you is already celebrating.

You’ve got this. And if you need my help, just remember, I’m here.

Alright, the resources mentioned in this episode, like more details on the Referral Accelerator Workshop can be found on the show notes page at StaceyBrownRandall.com/344.

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.

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