Ep #352: The Referral Must Dos (Part 2)

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.

Alright. Welcome to part two of our series on the referral must-dos. If you are a brand-new listener to the podcast, well, first, welcome. I’m so glad that you are here.

I do want to let you know that we did a series a few weeks ago that was the referral must-knows. So you definitely want to check those episodes out and then get yourself up to speed with where we are here with the referral must dos.

So the referral must knows are the things I need you to understand and actually like mindset shifts around referrals, definitions around referrals, understanding who the players are when it comes to referrals, your role when it comes to referrals.

In case you’re wondering, you’re not the most important person, but I bet you already knew that. So a lot of things you just need to understand about how referrals work. We talked about the science of referrals. It’s a lot of good stuff.

So I encourage you to go back and listen to those episodes. It starts with episode 347, and goes all the way to 349.

And then episode 350 is actually an interview with a client who kind of brings some of those things that we talked about in the referral must knows, that three part series, kind of brings it full circle with hearing a client talk about what they learned and how it transformed their business, specifically to working with me as a client.

So it’s a great series for you to go listen to. It’s a great place to start before you dive in to this. series. So this, now of course, we are on our second of the referral must dos. So go back and listen to episode 351 if you haven’t yet. Because in 351, the focus was on identification.

And we covered making sure you’re capturing the right information in your intake when it comes to new prospects, making sure you’ve identified your existing referral sources, and making sure you’ve identified your potential referral sources. So that was last week’s episode on part one, that was episode 351.

For this episode, we’re going to dive into what comes after you do your identification. So you can’t do this step, part two, the what comes after identification, until you’ve actually identified some people. So really important that you actually go in order.

Now, as I mentioned in the last episode, this is not an exhaustive list. This is not everything that I teach my clients. There’s no way I could get that into a 20-minute podcast episode. I wouldn’t even want to try.

There are many different places where referrals are probably hiding in your business, or there are many different places where you could put some strategies and tactics in place to start generating referrals pretty quickly.

But you’re not going to learn all of those bits and pieces and all of those things you need to know in this podcast, in this series or in this podcast overall.

And specifically for that, is because I want you to understand that this is not, I say this a lot, but let me just go ahead and say it again, referrals are not a nail, and your solution, your tool for your solution is one, just a hammer.

Referrals are so much more than that. And you need a fully equipped toolbox to be able to generate referrals in your business. Some things are like set it and forget it, just get the process in place, right?

So like in the backend of the operations, let’s just make sure we’re getting some of the processes in place when it comes to referrals, right? Let’s just make sure we know that we’re capturing the correct information, and we know how to send a proper thank you card to the person who referred them.

Like those are like, put them in place and then just do them when you need to, right? Or sometimes those are happening automatically in the background because it’s where you’re capturing information.

Other times we need to spend a little bit more time focused in on, hey, this is a group of people we wanna cultivate referrals from, so we need to put a plan in place for that. And we’re gonna dive in more to that today for this episode.

But if you haven’t listened to part one, I want you to go back and listen to it because it talks about the identification piece before we dive into our next step, which is cultivation. So first you identify before you can cultivate.

So today’s episode will be based on cultivation. But before we dive into the must dos as it comes to cultivation, please pardon the interruption.

Stacey Brown Randall: I have a live workshop coming up on March 27^th, where I am going to break down my three-part framework on how I teach my clients to double, triple, or quadruple their referrals.

I haven’t taught a live training like this since January of 2024. So it’s been like a long minute, but I am really excited to teach this workshop. But this training, this workshop is going to have a twist and I’ve never done this before and I’m very excited.

Once you sign up for the training, which of course is free, you’ll be able to submit your name to do a hot seat during the training where I will walk you through your personal roadmap to increase your referrals this year.

So when you raise your hand after you register and you raise your hand, you’re like, yes, I want to do a hot seat. You’ll have to complete some information, right? You’ll have to give me some information so I can be prepared to do your hot seat.

And then, of course, you have to show up live and be prepared to turn on your camera and have your mic on. And we are going to do a quick hot seat. This is not like an in depth like 20–30-minute hot seat.

We’re talking like just a couple of minutes, but you’re going to answer the questions that I need, so that based on the data you give me and then the questions I’m going to ask you, we’re going to roll out right there for you. We’re going to map it out what it would look like for where I would have you start to start generating referrals, more referrals this year.

So the first step though is you got to get registered for this training. It’s coming up on March 27th. You have to get registered. So you can do that at stacybrownrandall.com/workshop. That’s stacybrownrandall.com/workshop.

So first get registered and then you’ll get details on being able to say, yes, you want to be in a hot seat. I’m very excited to do this training and do this training live. So get registered, get it on your calendar, and tell me if you want to do a hot seat.

You don’t have to do a hot seat. I will only pick a couple of people. It will not be like I’m picking 10 people. So definitely let me know if you want to do it, and we will see if you are a fit for that hot seat. OK, let’s get back to the episode.

Stacey Brown Randall: Part one is, again, was all about identification. Now part two is about cultivation. First and foremost, I just need to start off, like there’s three things I really wanna hit in this episode, kind of at a high level and go in a little bit deep on part of them.

The first one though is, is your thank you process. I know this sounds pretty like elementary or rudimentary, like, oh yeah, of course we have a thank you process.

Actually, I would say you’d be shocked how many businesses say they do it but don’t or know that they should be doing it and don’t, but you’re probably that business. Sorry, I don’t mean to be super direct and straight like that, but chances are you know you need to be sending thank you notes when people refer you and you’re not doing it.

You think about doing it, you have the right intentions about doing it, but it’s like I tell my kids when they tell me, well, I intended to put my shoes away. I’m like, your intentions don’t mean anything to me if the act doesn’t actually get done, if you don’t do the thing I needed you to do.

So having a thank you process is very, very important. Now, we have done episodes on the podcast about the thank you card and what does it look like, what language goes in it. I also talk about the thank you card process in my book, Generating Business Referrals Without Asking. And I talk about it a lot because it is such a fundamental piece of the baseline.

Because here’s the thing. Why should I send you more referrals if you can’t thank me for the referral I just sent to you? So you should have a thank you process. It’s a pretty simple process. It’s you get a referral; you write a thank you card.

Now, you can track that you’re doing it. You can have somebody remind you that you need to do it. There’s lots of different ways to make that process as automated as possible to make it as efficient as possible. But at the end of the day, you got to sit down and write the thank you card.

So we have a download that you can grab that’ll walk you through the thank you card process. It really just kind of giving you the idea of like, what do you say, right?

Like, what do you say in the card? I’m pretty specific on at least one specific line that we call the immediate thank by name script that I want you to put in that line, which is always making sure that you are thanking the person by name.

So when you’re writing the card, let’s just say for sake of argument, I’m writing this card to Mark because Mark referred Thomas to me. So I would say the card is written to Mark, of course, Mark, right?

And then the very first line, or at least by the second line, I want to be saying, thank you for referring Thomas to me. Of course, now I would use a first and a last name because you need to do that. But that’s called the thank by name. That’s the most critical line that you can put in your thank you card.

So we’ve got like, we’ll link in the show notes to some resources that’ll help you with your thank you card process. Not just the language, but maybe like what the card could look like and other tips that we have.

We’ve talked about this in other episodes, so we’ve had this download available for a while. So we’ll get that out to you on the show notes page for this episode. And the show notes page for this episode is StaceyBrownRandall.com/352. That’s for episode 352.

So thank you card process, super, super important. And it’s a process. Right? When you receive a referral, you just need to write a thank you card.

And I’ve talked about this before, but just to kind of give you a bird’s eye view into my business of what this looks like, first and foremost, when I get a referral, 99% of the time it comes through email.

For most professional services and creative industries, it is going to come through email. Maybe secondary, some will come through text message, because that’s the mode of communication your referral source uses. So, but they’re usually going to come through email or text messages.

Now, I’m not talking about in this case, like somebody reaches out to you and says, hey, I told somebody about you, right? Like, I’m talking about actually in the case of when you get a referral, and you know it’s a referral.

If you get word-of-mouth buzz or introductions, obviously there’s things we need to do prior to that to flip that into a referral. But I’m talking about when a referral shows up and it is a true referral, your process should be, hey, just got a referral, track it, write a thank you note.

There’s a few other things you can do after that, but the big ones are tracking it and writing a thank you note.

So in my business, when a referral comes to me via an email, the very first thing I do before I even hit reply all, which I know some of you are like, that sounds crazy, but it’s my immediate process so that I know it all happens.

Is the very first thing I do is I hit forward, and I forward it to my assistant, and she captured it on our tracker, and then she sends me back the referral source’s address, which is my trigger to write a thank you note.

Now, when I hit forward to my assistant and I’m like, hey, I got a referral, and she’s tracking it and sending me back the address so I can write the thank you note. When all that’s happening, then, of course, I’m hitting reply all.

And I am doing the immediate thank you in the email to the referral source. And then, of course, I’m following up the rest of the message to the prospect that was just referred to me.

So I’m doing all those things. It’s just the order in which I do them allows for the thing that is most important, in my mind, is to thank that referral source, not letting that be left up to chance.

Because if I immediately were to respond to the referral source and the prospect and say a quick thank you and then get busy and forget to forward it to my assistant so it gets captured and I get the reminder to write a thank you note, I’ll probably forget.

And that email that I sent, in the email that I said, hey, thanks for this referral, that’s great, but that is not impactful the way I want it to be with a handwritten thank you note.

So first and foremost, please make sure you have a thank you process in place. This is a big part of cultivation. It’s like the first, like, I don’t know, it’s like the step before you can put in your foundation, think about building a house.

Before you can put in the foundation, you have to actually dig out the footers. You got to dig out where the footers are going to go. I think I’m saying this right. I’m sure some contractor, home builder, construction person can correct me if I have it wrong.

But you got to dig out the footers first before you can start actually pouring the foundation. And so that’s really what your thank you card process is. It’s like the, hey, I want you to know you’re worth my time. And I’m super thankful of the referral.

And one way I do that is by always making sure I thank you properly, which is by a handwritten thank you card. That’s number one.

And I really, I’m going to say this, and I talk about this with my clients too, so this is not like, people are not immune to this, but people are always looking for somebody else to write their thank you card.

If you get hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of referrals every single year, maybe you and I can have a conversation about how you really do need to hand that off to somebody else to write.

Like, if you’re getting you know, like 25, 50 referrals every month, right? You’re getting 100 or 150 every quarter, like maybe we can have the conversation that yes so that things don’t get lost in process or so that you don’t get busy and forget, that maybe we do need to actually look at this from the perspective of having somebody help you write those cards.

But most of my clients, the people that I work with, when they get a referral, it’s not worth $500. When they get a referral to a new client, that new client is worth thousands of dollars to them.

So whether it’s worth $1,000, $10,000, $50,000, $100,000. I have clients I’ve worked with when every time they get a new referral that they close, it’s worth $300,000. You’re not looking for 400 referrals in a year.

Most of my clients are like, hey, some of them are at that level where like, I only need 12, or 22. Or maybe I only need 54. So when you’re getting that level of referrals, and I have some, of course, who are getting 100, but that’s 100 over the course of a year. Like those are the type of businesses that I work with.

There are lots of businesses out there that are off after client volume. It is their main focus, massive amounts of client volume. That’s not who I work with. I work with professional services and creative industries, and when people hire them, they pay them a lot of money to work with them.

They are paying them $5,000, $50,000, $100,000 and up. So they don’t need hundreds or thousands of referrals, but they probably need, depending on their business, 20, 40, 80, 100, maybe 125, maybe 150.

So remember, the reason why I’m able to teach my strategies to be impactful for my clients is because I know exactly what we’re looking for when it comes to referrals.

This is not a strategy that I would teach to like an Uber that is sending out referral codes to people, and they are hoping to get maybe 100 referrals in a day. I wouldn’t teach any of my strategies to them.

First of all, I’m not qualified. And second of all, that’s not who they work for. So it’s really important when I say a thank you process, it’s because I know when I’m talking to my clients, you may write 50 in a year. You may write 75 in a year.

Some of you only may write 12 or 20 in a year. And that is important to recognize. It’s important to note. So this thank you card process is very, very important. So you’ve got to have one.

And we’re going to link to another episode I did where I walk you through all the goods. And then you’ll be able to get some resources to help you around your thank you card and your thank you card process if you don’t know what to do.

If you don’t want to go to the show notes page to get that link and you have my book, then just go to the book where I talk about language and I talk about what to write in your thank you card. And you can fill in all the blanks from there. That’ll give you at least the language to get started.

So that’s the first thing I want you to think about when you’re thinking through cultivation when it comes to what you must do. These are the must dos.

There’s a lot of dos. Lots that you could do. But these are the must dos. There’s actually more must dos than I’m going over in this three-part series, but these are the biggies.

So this is number one. You must have a thank you process where you are thanking the person for referring to you. Okay, let’s move on to the next piece.

This is the second thing that I want you to consider as a must-do when it comes to cultivation, and that is your outreach to your existing referral sources.

So in the last week’s episode, we talked about identifying the people who refer you now. We call those, in my world, existing referral sources. So now that we have existing referral sources, and for most of you, you have some.

Now, whether you have four, or seven, or 12, or maybe you have like 30, 40, or 50, you’re gonna have some. There will be some businesses listening right now that don’t have any.

And maybe that’s because you’re newer in business, or maybe it’s just because you haven’t focused on receiving referrals. You’ve been more focused on other types of lead gen strategies, and you’ve never really given any time or thought to referrals.

So the idea here is that you will eventually have people who refer to you, or you already have people who refer to you. Please hear me when I say this. This is your low-hanging fruit, so take advantage of it.

This is your low-hanging fruit to get more referrals quickly. Or quicker, I guess I should say. So it’s the outreach that you do to your existing referral sources.

Now, one of the strategies that I teach to my clients is a framework that is based on the science of how we want to show up and take care of the people who currently refer to us.

And that means, so when we think about this framework, it’s not just like, hey, we just send a card to them every month.

Like we’re not trying to be like keeping in touch. We transcend keeping in touch and we are much more in what we call top of mind, which means what we do, how often we do it, the cadence in which we do it, and of course, what we’re doing from a variety perspective matters.

And this is one of those processes, this framework that I have built out over years, testing it and refining it and now having done it with hundreds and thousands of actually business owners going through it, of what it looks like to build out a touchpoint plan, which is what we call it.

You can think of it as an outreach plan. But internally, we call it a touchpoint plan with our clients, the touchpoint plan of how you are going to stay top of mind with your referral sources.

And there is a framework behind it. It is like a four-part framework behind it. And each one is very, very important.

And so this is one of those things that when I teach this to my clients, I always tell them, these are the things you didn’t think about. And now that I’m going to bring them to light, you’re going to be like, this makes perfect sense as to why this framework, these pieces of the science base.

And some of it pulls from behavioral economics. Some of it pulls from the psychology of trust. But of course, it also pulls with the ability to make sure that we are sticking in the memory of our referral sources.

And so how we build that out always means, and this always, I know this is frustrating for people to hear, it’s never the same. What one person builds out will always look different from what somebody else builds out. And that’s the point of it. Like that’s what we want.

We want it to be different for you because who you’re delivering it to, you are different and who you’re delivering it to are your referral sources. And so it’s okay for your touchpoint plan to look different than the person sitting next to you.

Like when I did the in-person referral accelerator last month back in February, we had a group of 10 business owners that were with me, and we spent two days, and they learned everything they needed to know about putting a referral strategy in place.

And one of, of course, the strategies we spent time on was building out their touchpoint plan. And when you listen to these business owners talk about what felt authentic for them, what felt right for them, it was always within the understanding of who they were doing it for.

So Bruce, one of the guys that was at the referral accelerator said, you know, I really want to do this because this feels like in alignment with who the people are that I would be doing it for, which were his existing referral sources.

And I was like, now we’re there, right? Now we’ve arrived. Now we get it. So most people always say, Stacey, just tell me what to do. And I’m always like, no. And it’s not because I intentionally want to be difficult.

It’s because I don’t know anything about who your people are that are referring you now. And I don’t really, if I don’t know anything about you, I don’t know what’s authentic to you. And all of that matters.

It’s a framework for a reason. It’s based on science. And the reason why it works, the reason why people get feedback when they do these touch points five, six, or seven times throughout the year, it’s why it works.

And then, of course, those touch points give us the opportunity to deliver the referral seed language that we want to plant. Not every single time, but most of the time. And so you need to have a process of how you’re gonna do outreach to your existing referral sources.

At a base level, you probably should just figure out how to make sure you’re staying in the face of, I guess I would say, but in a way that works for them, not necessarily that’s easy for you, at least once a quarter.

But again, I tell folks, you can’t do four times a year. You’re gonna, at a minimum, do five. Most people in their first and second year, they land in the six to seven, sometimes eight. It really just, that’s a very specific reason. But they land around six to seven outreaches in a year.

Now, once you’ve been taking care of your referral sources pretty consistently for at least one to two years, you can get away with more of the four to five range. That’s where I am with my referral sources, but I’ve been doing this for over a decade. And I still change it up.

And that’s the other thing. It’s not the same thing every year. It may be the same time frame, the same cadence, but you’re probably going to change it up and do some different things. And some things you do that stay the same because your referral sources love it and they come to expect it.

Like there’s one touch point that I do every year in May for my top-level referral sources and like it kind of, they kind of come to expect it and that’s important.

Okay, so now we’re talking about our existing referral sources. You’ve got to have a plan for how you’re going to nurture the relationship with them in a way that works for them, not necessarily what is easy for you, that keeps you top of mind, not just trying to keep in touch.

So we’re not talking about emails and mailing a card every month. We’re not talking about your e-newsletter. And also gives you the opportunity to deliver the messaging that we want, the language that we want you to use, which is planting referral seeds.

So you’ve got to do outreach to your existing referral sources. That is a must do. Now the third piece here is with this must-do within the cultivation is actually outreach to potential referral sources.

So with the last episode, we talked about identifying your potential referral sources and figuring out that ideal referral source profile, whether it’s your clients or whether it’s centers of influence. Now that you’ve started to identify people who could refer you, you never know for sure.

I mean, when you’re identifying and cultivating potential referral sources, oh, man, are you going to kiss a bunch of frogs before you find the prince and the princesses that ultimately do refer to you.

And you’ve got to play the long game because nobody decides to start referring to you just because they met you once or had one great conversation. Like, that is not how it works. So you need to make sure that you have a plan in place for how you’re going to cultivate your potential referral sources.

Now, in my program, I teach this, like when I’m working with my clients, no matter what level it’s at, whether it’s Referral Accelerator, the Building a Referable Business coaching program, or my VIP Referrals in a Day program, all three of those, we do the exact same thing.

All my strategies are always the same across all of my programs. It’s just how you want to work with me is really the biggest difference. And of course, there’s a budget difference to it as well.

But when we’re doing outreach to potential referral sources, we first have to make sure we’re engaging in a relationship with them. And that typically is going to start with a conversation, a first conversation.

Now, that doesn’t mean you’re going to have coffee with all these people, because I’m going to guess, like most of my clients, some of your referral sources, and for some of you, all of your referral sources, are not local.

So we’re not talking about you have to do this over coffee, but you do have to have a first conversation. And then after you have a first conversation, then you have to have a way to continue to cultivate a relationship with them.

Internally, with my clients, we call this the running five, keeping warm process. And so it is your ability to meet with someone, make the decision that I think they have the potential to refer me.

And not because you’ve asked them to, and not because you’ve even talked about referrals. Like that is a huge no-no within that first conversation.

But having a conversation with someone, getting to understand them, getting to know them, figuring out how you can help them, and then seeing like, hey, like to yourself, you’re saying this, I think they actually may have the potential to refer to me. Not that you’re expecting that right away, of course not.

You’re focused on how you can help them, do things for them, be there for them. And then you have to have a keeping warm follow-up process where you’re maintaining that relationship and that you can show up differently than everybody else who shows up trying to get referrals from them.

There is a huge piece to how this works, and it is based on understanding the science behind how people want to be treated and nurtured and you have to do it from an authentic place and a genuine place.

I can’t work with people who see other humans as just a dollar sign or a number. I just can’t. I also cannot work with humans who are dead inside and they’re just like, how much money is this going to make me?

I’m like, nope. You’re not my people. My people are the folks who are like, yeah, I want referrals, and I’m also OK doing it right and taking care of people in the process to generate those referrals. Those are my people.

So these are the three things I need you to think about doing from a cultivation process. First, make sure you have your thank you process in place, locked and loaded, that it happens every time without fail.

When you receive a referral, you are thanking somebody for that referral received. And then, of course, you are tracking it appropriately on the back end as well.

And then you have an outreach plan to your existing referral sources and an outreach plan for how you’re going to cultivate potential referral sources starting from that first conversation to how you’re going to cultivate a relationship with them until the point that they refer you or you make the decision that they’re not going to refer you and that’s okay too.

So, three key things, must-dos. We’re not done yet though. We do have another episode coming up. Part three will be next week, where we talk about the third part of our must-dos. But these are three biggies.

I would say like 9.9 times out of 10, when a client starts working with me, we are talking about these things very early on. Not always the very first thing, like sometimes we have some other things we need to focus on, but usually one of these three must-dos, well the thank you card process happens no matter what.

But either outreach to existing or potential referral sources, either of those two are going to be within somebody’s first 90 days, more than likely first 30 days, if they’re in my coaching program. It’ll be one of the first things we build if I’m working with them in my accelerator or my VIP program.

So these are really, really important. I have some clients that they just do these, and that’s all they do. Maybe they don’t have the capacity or the logistical lift or the willingness to do other things that I teach, but these are the ones they do, and that’s why these are on the list for the must-dos.

Okay, so we did identification in episode 351. Now we talked about cultivation in episode 352. I wonder what we’ll talk about next week in episode 353. Well, you’re just going to have to come back to hear.

Alright, so again, the resources mentioned in this episode, including the link to the live March 27th workshop that I’m doing where you can get a hot seat, that workshop link will be on the show notes page along with episodes that we’ve talked about previous with the thank you card process. So you can go get all that information.

All of that can be found on the show notes page at StaceyBrownRandall.com/352. Just go to StaceyBrownRandall.com/352. And don’t forget, Stacey has an E.

Alright, we are 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.