Ep #353: The Referral Must Dos (Part 3)

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. We do that by leveraging the science of referrals and respecting your relationships.

Welcome to part three of the referral must-dos. OK, so if you have been following along on the podcast, you know that for a couple of episodes, I did a series of the must-knows, the things you need to know and understand about referrals.

And we did a three-part series on that. And then we ended that with a fourth episode where I interviewed one of my clients. So you could kind of hear it all kind of come together.

Now, we’re doing that again. We have been doing a three-part series again on the things you must do. So the first round was on the must knows, and now we’re talking about the must dos, the things I need you to do.

Of course, it is not an exhaustive list of what I teach my clients. That’s not the purpose of this three-part series. This three-part series is to get you thinking about your referrals in a different way and to get you taking some fast action.

And well, hopefully fast action. Hopefully you’re actually putting into place what you’re learning. But not only putting into place some fast action but also understanding that you need to be operating differently when it comes to referrals.

Now, we’ve done two of the three parts in this, and then we will wrap up this must-do series with another interview coming up with our next episode, with one of my clients.

So, but real quick, before we dive into this part three of the must-dos, I want to do a quick recap on part one and part two, because they really do all fit together.

So part one was episode 351, and we covered three main things I needed you to be doing, which was making sure you’re capturing the correct information from your prospects in your intake process, so you know where people are coming from.

And, in particular, for what I care about, you know where people are coming from that have been referred to you. And you’re capturing that information correctly.

There is not a month that goes by that I am not helping a client figure out how to get that set up within their CRM. There was a real estate agent I was just helping do that while we were actually together live and in person during the referral accelerator I had back in February.

And right now, I’m actually helping another client do that with HubSpot. So it’s possible no matter what CRM you’re using. I always tell folks, I am CRM and software agnostic. I don’t care what you use. I just need it to work for us.

So of course, the first thing I wanted you to do is capture the correct information. And then we talked about your ability to identify your existing referral sources and to start identifying your potential referral sources. So that was episode 351. That was part one.

Then we moved on to part two, and part two of the must-dos kind of built upon, all these kind of built upon each other, but this one built upon the, okay, now you’re correctly capturing the information, you’re correctly identifying the people, right? So now let’s make sure we understand how to cultivate.

So part two was episode 352. And first, we covered the importance of a thank you card process or the handwriting of a thank you card and how important that is. And then, of course, we talked about the cultivation of those existing referral sources and those potential referral sources.

Of course, this was kind of at a high level because, as you know, most of my podcast episodes are in the 20-to-30-minute range, and I can’t teach that in just that amount of time.

But we did talk about understanding what that cultivation of our existing referral sources looks like and what it looks like when you have people referring you, what you should be building and putting in place.

And then when you have people you want to refer you, the ability to go in the side door, not the front door, and focus on them and helping them and releasing your expectation from referrals.

But also, at the same time making sure that you’re planting the right language while you’re attempting to cultivate them into referral sources. Those are for people who are not referring you now. So we went through that.

Okay, so now we’re gonna dive into part three. Now, I have said this on the last couple of episodes and I wanna say it again just in case you’re first time listening.

This is not an exhaustive list, right? This is not everything that I teach my clients. I don’t teach everything that I teach my clients on this podcast. That is why that I have a business, and I have clients that learn all of the other pieces and parts to what I teach.

We do cover a lot on this podcast and in my book and in my second book that’ll be out later this fall, fall of 2025. So there is, of course, lots of information available, but it’s not an exhaustive list.

So when I say these are the must-dos, I’m talking about the things that at a baseline, if you kind of did nothing else, these are the things I need you to put in place. These are the things I need you to be thinking about.

These are the things that I need you to execute on. And if you don’t know how to execute on them, of course, I’m always happy to help and be of service. And we can certainly have that conversation.

But I want to talk about this final piece of the puzzle of what it looks like with the things you must do. And this may not be exactly what you expect, but it is critical. But before we get to part three of the referral must-dos, can you please pardon the interruption?

Stacey Brown Randall: I have a private live training coming up on March 27th to show you the behind the scenes of how I double, triple, and yes, sometimes quadruple my clients’ referrals in a year.

Now, I haven’t taught a live training like this since January of 2024, so as you can imagine, it’s been a minute, and I am very excited to teach it again. And this training will actually have a twist.

I’m actually going to be offering hot seats to a couple of people during the training, where you’ll submit some information in advance of the training. Just, when you register, you get the questions to answer, and you can send back your answers. And I’ll be picking a couple of people to feature as a hot seat, where we talk through your referral reality.

And then, of course, I will also walk through the roadmap of what you need to do to increase your referrals for this year and, of course, moving forward into the future.

So first thing I need you to do is get registered for our workshop. All you have to do is go to StaceyBrownRandall.com/workshop and make sure you get registered by March 26th. That is the deadline to make sure you are registered, you have your seat, and of course, if you want to submit your information for a hot seat, you can do that as well.

I will be letting the folks know who are on the hot seat live on the training. So definitely make sure you’re planning on being there. The training again is on March 27th. Go to StaceyBrownRandall.com/workshop and get yourself signed up.

Stacey Brown Randall: All right, so let’s talk about this third part of the must-dos, right? So now I know you’re tracking correctly. I know that you’ve identified correctly. I know that you’re cultivating correctly. You have the correct thank you note process or the thank you process in place.

I know you have all those baseline basics in place, right, which are really, really important. The next thing I always want you to consider is what are your gaps?

And when we think about gaps when it comes to referrals, most people are like, well, I’m not getting enough. And that’s a fine gap. You’re allowed to know that that’s your gap right off the top of your head, like super fast. That’s cool.

Most people would say that they are here listening to this podcast, or they are a client of mine, or they read my books because they want more referrals too. But that’s not always the case.

Sometimes you are actually receiving referrals, you’re just not paying attention to it. And you’re certainly not capturing what’s happening with those referrals. You probably have more than one gap.

And that’s my point for this episode. My point is, is not just for you to default to that, well, I need more referrals and that’s my gap. That is one gap you may be experiencing, yes. But that’s not to say it’s your only gap.

And I find when my clients can get really clear on the different things they need to solve, whether that’s two or three, or to be quite honest, maybe that’s seven or eight, things that they need to solve when it comes to referrals, then we can put in our well-oiled machine from that referral machine and get that running. And then that can run for us year after year after year.

So it is important that you take a totality look at what referrals are doing in your business. So it’s not just, are you getting enough? It’s more than that. It goes deeper than that.

So if you’ve been a longtime listener to this podcast, you know I talk about how I teach 20 different strategies. At the time of this recording, we’re always adding new strategies when something deems to be taught differently or something new bubbles up because of just the changing landscape of the business world.

But currently, right now, we teach 20 different strategies. And what most people don’t understand is the majority of them, like 17 of them, so that is the extreme majority of them, are situational, or what we call next level.

Some you don’t need until you get to a certain point. But the majority of even of those 17 are really situational. And that’s what’s really important for people to understand is that, yes, there are some foundational strategies that I want you to have in place.

I want you to know how to get more referrals from the people already referring you. I want you to know how to turn new people into referral sources, so they start referring you.

And I want you to have a referable client experience where you’re actually worthy of referrals, and you know what to do throughout your client experience to percolate the idea of referrals within your clients. So those are our foundational three.

And I want every business to have those three in place. You don’t need to always operate all three of them consistently. More referrals from existing referral sources and the Referrable Client Experience, those run all the time, always. Year after year after year, those are running.

But cultivating new people to refer you, you only need to do that when you need people referring you, because your list of referral sources is never static. It will always grow and change. People will always be referring you, and then stop referring you, and they will fall off the list, so to speak.

So when we think about those 17 other strategies, and they are based on a situation, and that’s where our gaps come in. That’s where understanding what’s happening.

So for example, understanding your gaps and really getting down into like, okay, yes, I have this gap is, do you ever find yourself in a situation where people tell you, hey, I gave somebody your name?

Like, oh yeah, Bob, I gave someone your name the other day. I told him how amazing you are. I even gave him your contact information. I gave him your cell phone number, or I gave him your email address. Don’t worry, they’ll follow up. And then they don’t.

That is what we call an almost referral, and you’re almost about to lose it if you don’t know what to do to flip that almost referral, word of mouth buzz, into an actual referral. That’s a gap.

If you are out and about and people are constantly introducing you to other people, but you don’t actually know if you’re being referred to them or not, that’s a gap.

If you are receiving referrals, but you’re not actually cultivating enough of them or as many as you think you should into clients, or you’re not actually turning them into clients once you receive that referred prospect, maybe you have a quality issue.

Or maybe it’s not quality. Maybe you’ve got amazing quality. All the right people are being sent to you, but you can’t close them. So maybe you have a closing issue.

How we close and how we walk a referred prospect through the process of being referred is just slightly different than how we do it for somebody who maybe met you at a networking event. Because there’s a trust factor there, and we need to make sure that we are continuing that trust factor.

So not everything that I teach is like, we’re going to overhaul everything about how you do this, right? So let’s just say, for sake of argument, you have a closing issue. You’re getting the right people referred to, but you’re not closing enough of them.

The question could be a couple of different things, and only one of them actually has to do with referrals, right? It could be your closing process in general, right? I mean, if you’re not closing enough of any type of prospect that you have, then that could be a closing issue.

Now, for some of you, you don’t have a closing issue, like, oh, this is a problem that I need to fix. For some of you, you’re like, I’m closing enough, business is great, but it could be better because I want a little bit of a higher closing percentage, right?

So for instance, if you’re at like, let’s say for argument, a 42% close ratio, and you’re like, wow, but things would be drastically different if I was at a 55% closing ratio.

That’s like looking at a problem and being like, it’s not really a problem as much as it is an opportunity for us to grow and an opportunity for us to get better and refine something that is working but making it better.

So when I say gaps, I guess what I want you to understand, is I’m not saying all the gaps are negative. Sometimes they’re like, hey, things are good, but they could be better. So keep that in mind as well.

But if you are receiving people that are being referred to you, so people are being referred to you, at the end of the day, if you’re not closing enough of them, it could be your closing process. It could be the overall sales process of how you walk someone through the buyer’s journey and get them to the point of saying yes or no. It could be that, right?

It could also be, though, that you’re not, for the referred prospects specifically, it could be also that you’re not maintaining that trust factor that is so very important as the whole reason why they’re willing to talk to you.

And I think that’s a thing that people overlook a lot and more often than they really, I would say ultimately want to admit, is that they’re overlooking that perspective.

So when I talk about the gaps, maybe it’s quality. Maybe it’s your closing ratio. Maybe it is looking at it from the perspective of when you are actually paying attention and you’re in those networking moments and you’re getting word of mouth buzz or introductions, it’s knowing what to say in that moment to flip that almost referral into an actual referral.

These are what we call gaps. And now, not all 17 of my situational strategies that I teach are to flip a gap, to be honest, right? Like we have one situational strategy that I teach to my clients that’s called extending the referral ROI of your events.

So for those of you who do events, whether that is client appreciation events or whether that is open to the public type events. Not necessarily open to the public public, but I mean like you’re inviting maybe your clients and you’re inviting prospects, right? You just do a lot of events within your business.

Most of the time I see these done as client appreciation events, but they can be done for events that are referral sources in nature as well. So the idea there is there is a way and there’s a couple of moments throughout those events where you can leverage the opportunity to plant referral seeds. You just got to know how and when to do it.

So when I say there are 17 other situational and next level type strategies that I teach, it’s not because they’re all filling a gap. Sometimes they’re taking what you’re doing and leveraging it to make it better. But the idea here is that you need to know how to identify your gaps. So let’s talk about that.

The best way to identify your gaps is to make sure that you have the right tracking and the right metrics in place. I know we talk about tracking and metrics a lot on this podcast because it is so very important.

I cannot impress upon you how important it is to make sure you are tracking the right things and that you have metrics for the right things. So let me just put this in perspective from my business’s perspective.

So at the end of every year, I kind of make a decision on my goals for the next year. And I don’t mean my big goals, right? Because my goals, when I say goals, I mean things that are bigger.

And they are usually multi-year kind of things, like writing a book, particularly the second one that’s been taking entirely too many years than it should. But that’s here nor there. I digress.

But when I look at my business for the next year and I’m thinking about how many clients do I want to help? Like, what does that look like so that obviously it fulfills the revenue and income expectations I have for my business but also creates the environment and the lifestyle that I want to be living as well.

A lot of people I know, they’re like, I want 100 clients. I don’t ever want to work with 100 people in a year. You know, that sounds crazy. Now, if 100 people showed up and said, here, take my money, I’m pretty sure I’d probably take it. But that’s actually not what I’m after.

When I look at my coaching program, the Building a Referable Business, BRB coaching program, the goal is to welcome about 12 people a year. Because I really want to make sure that with the people who are already in the program, and the new people that are joining, that there is always space for them to get access to me.

We give a lot of access to me in the programs that I do. And I’m just talking specifically about the coaching program, BRB, right now. There’s an unlimited number of one-on-one calls that you can have with me.

We can hop on Zoom whenever you want to. You just have to schedule it in advance. So there’s a lot of availability. And then we do weekly office hours, where I’m available for an office hour every week. And so that’s also something else that we focus on and do.

So for me, this isn’t about bringing on 50 people and then not being able to get them access to me. This is about having 12 new people come on board, and then knowing that when they need me, I’m available.

When you email me, my inbox, unless I’m on vacation or sick, my inbox will not be overflowing to the point where I can’t get back to you for weeks and weeks. You’ll hear back from me within a day or two, sometimes faster, sometimes it’ll take a little longer. It just kind of depends, right?

So the idea there is that I create space with what it looks like for what I want to do from a client perspective where I can give them my best, but I also can have the best lifestyle that I’m looking to have as well. And so I’m very intentional about that.

So we’re looking at 12 new people coming into BRB for that year. Knowing that, knowing that number is very, very important because that’s going to trickle out to all the other metrics I have in place to get to that 12.

So it’s going to inform part of the number of referrals that I want to receive for the year and what my closing ratio will be for those folks as well.

Now, BRB isn’t the only way that I work with clients. I have my VIP option where I work with folks, like them and their team, one-on-one for an entire year.

And then, of course, I have my Referral Accelerator, which is a two-day you come to me and you learn the strategies and put them in place. And then you’ve got access to me once you go home for a certain period of time.

And so the idea here is for people to understand that when I look at how many people do I want to help in the Referral Accelerator, how many people do I want to bring in new into the BRB coaching program, and how many VIPs do I want to work with, that informs the number of prospects that I need.

And how many of those prospects are going to come through referral is informed from that too. So having metrics in place and knowing what I’m after, that is really, really key to what I’m looking to accomplish. And so it’s the tracking of that. It’s the metrics of that, right?

Like, you know, my assistant and I have our weekly Monday meetings. And every time we get on a call, we are very, very clear as to where we are with hitting those numbers.

How many Referral Accelerators folks do we have? How many new people have joined BRB this year? How many VIPs have we closed? Like, we’re very clear about what that tracking looks like and what those metrics are.

But it is the best way to identify your gaps is to be tracking. So I can track not only, hey, referrals are a little light right now, but what’s really important is I’m tracking, well, how many have I received that I’ve closed?

And here’s a big one, particularly for those of you who are like, I need something to happen, it’s third quarter still, and I need to get a jumpstart on this year, I need to, the first part of the year was a little slow, I need a jumpstart.

I also am able to look back on all the prospects that I brought on board in 2024 that didn’t say yes to working with me, and in 2023, and circle back around with them and be like, hey, is now the time for us to work together?

So having the right tracking in place allows me to do that. It also allows me to identify any gaps that I’m having. And so knowing what your gaps are in your business is really important. Knowing what your gaps are with your referrals is even more important because it informs the decisions you need to make.

If you’re not getting enough referrals, that’s definitely a gap. If you’re not getting enough referrals and the ones that you get, you don’t close as many of them as you want, that’s another gap. So there’s different types of gaps to consider. And everybody looks at their gaps a little bit different.

Maybe for you, your gap that you’ve recognized is that, hey, you get prospects in the door, and you get referred prospects in the door, but they all seem to ghost you. Right? They all seem to get referred to you and then never actually schedule time to talk to you.

So you actually never talk to the person, just refer to you. Well, from a gap perspective, that could be how you’re following up with that referred prospect. It could also be how you’re being set up by your referral source to that referred prospect. So there’s lots of things to pay attention to.

So in this third part of our referral must-dos, the one thing I want you focused on is starting to pay attention to your tracking and your metrics. What are the metrics you’re setting for yourself this year when it comes to referrals specifically?

And then, of course, are you tracking what’s happening so that you can identify your gaps? That’s the best place. Now, if you have the tracking in place and you have the metrics in place, then you’re ready to move into the place where you identify what are my gaps when it comes to referrals.

And if you do this, if you go through the process and you’re like, I think these are all the gaps that I have when it comes to referrals. Again, you may have one or two. You may have six or seven. You may have more.

When it comes to those, I would love for you to shoot me an email. If you’re on my email list, you know what my email address is. You just hit reply on any of the emails I send you.

And definitely on that weekly email we send out every week. But reply back to me and let me know what, or of course you can slide into my DMs on Instagram or LinkedIn but let me know what your gaps are.

I think it’s really, really important that when you take the time to assess what your gaps are, that you are then acknowledged for doing that work. And I would love to know what your gaps are.

And if I have some easy fixes for those, I would certainly share those with you in email form or direct messaging form if you reach out to me and share what your gaps are. I think that it is such a valuable thing to understand your gaps.

So, these are the things you have to pay attention to with the must-dos. You’ve got to make sure that you are identifying correctly, right? You’re identifying in your intake process where your prospects are coming from, you’re identifying your existing referral sources, identifying your potential referral sources.

Then you need to make sure you have a cultivation process in place first as your thank you card process, but also making sure that you’re cultivating your existing referral sources and cultivating those potential referral sources.

And those can all be found when I talked about those in episode 351 and 352. And then this one is all about identifying your gaps. And you start off by identifying gaps by making sure you’re doing the right tracking.

Tracking is like just a spreadsheet. Just let me know, like, what’s the date a prospect fell into your world? What’s the prospect’s name and where did they come from? And if they were referred, you should be tracking who the referral source is. You should also be sending a thank you note after you get that referral.

But look at your tracking, right? Understand what your metrics are. Figure out what metrics you’re tracking towards and make sure you’re doing the tracking. Very, very important. Those are your three parts. That’s your three-part series on the must-dos for referrals.

Now, of course, the resources mentioned in this episode, including the link to join me on March 27th for our live workshop, first one I’ve done in about 16 months, can be found at StaceyBrownRandall.com/353. That’s StaceyBrownRandall.com/353.

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.