Ep #355: Quick Quarterly Referral Review

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. I 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 protecting your relationships.

Okay, here’s a quick update for you. This is not an April Fool’s joke. It is true. The Roadmap to Referrals podcast is now available in video form. I don’t know how I feel about it, but we’re doing it.

So if you’ve been waiting for me to finally do a video format of this podcast, your wait is over. Just head on over to my YouTube channel. You can find me at Referrals Without Asking and definitely check out this episode and all future episodes in video form.

Okay, one more other update. If you’ve ever considered joining my Building a Referable Business coaching program, we call it BRB for short, now is a great time to apply.

If you apply by April 2nd, so like, tomorrow, if you are listening to this episode on the day it drops, which is April 1st. So if you apply by tomorrow, April 2nd, you can lock in our 2024 pricing, which will save you thousands of dollars.

But you have to have your application in by April 2nd. Find out the details and the link to the application by going to StaceyBrownRandall.com/referable. Okay, let’s dive in to the episode.

So it’s the first of the next quarter, right? So it’s the first day of a new quarter. In this case, it is quarter two. So I thought it’s a great time for us to spend just the right amount of time really focusing in on a quarterly review.

This is something I have all my clients do. So I’m gonna walk you through what their quarterly review looks like so you can actually do it in your business as well.

Alright, so first things first, where do you put your quarterly review? Now, for my clients, they actually have a dashboard. Dashboard is our fancy term for spreadsheet. It’s a spreadsheet with a couple of tabs, actually more than a couple.

But for your purpose, you’re just going to need two tabs for this quarterly review. So pull out Excel or a Google spreadsheet, whatever works best for you, and you’re going to need two tabs.

Your first tab is actually going to be your tracker tab. Now, you should have a tracker tab. If you’re a longtime listener of this podcast, you should definitely have a tracker tab, meaning you have a tracker spreadsheet. You should be tracking the referrals that you receive.

There’s a couple of things I recommend that you’re tracking. And if you are tracking your referrals as you receive them, like, you know, day after day, week after week, month after month, it makes the quarterly review process like so much easier because you just go to one place, count up some numbers, and add them to your quarterly review. It’s great.

So I want to recommend that if you’re not tracking referrals as you receive them, that you’re definitely going to want to start doing that.

So in this tracker tab, if you’ve heard me talk about this before, I’ll be done in just a second. But let me just say in this tracker tab, you have five columns that you’re going to put into place.

Number one is the date. We want the date that the prospect arrived in your business.

Second column is going to be the prospect’s name. That’s just whoever the prospect is. We don’t know yet if they’re going to become a client. We are tracking them at the point they are a prospect.

Third column is going to be the source. Where did they come from? Now, for my purposes, usually my clients are just tracking those prospects that were referred. So in that third column for source, they actually just put in the referral source’s name.

But maybe you’re going to use this tracker tab or this tracker to track every lead or every prospect that comes into your world. That’s fine. You may also be putting this information in your database or CRM, client relationship management tool. That’s fine too.

I know it feels like extra work or double duty, but trust me, you need a special place where you’re tracking your referrals because we need to track specific things about them.

And so even if you’re putting your prospect information in through an intake process or just manually adding it into your database, you’re going to want to pull out the information for this tracker.

So like I said, in the third column, you can just track referrals received, which means in the third column, you’re just tracking the referral source’s name. Or you can track every prospect received, and so you’ll have different things in the Sources tab.

Maybe one for you would be Facebook ads, or maybe it would be a repeat client, a previous client. Maybe another source for you would be that they came through maybe a pay-per-click ad. Maybe they met you at a networking event.

And then, of course, your referrals. Now, your referrals will be the ones that they have a name to them, because it’s the referral source’s name.

Then in column four, you’re going to be tracking the outcome. Did they become a client? Are they in process? It’s whatever the outcome is. Did they say no, right?

And then in the fifth column, you’re gonna track the amount of revenue or commission that you generated if that prospect became a paying client.

So again, quick recap, five columns. One, date. You’re gonna wanna make sure you’re tracking the date that that prospect entered into your world. Two, you’re gonna wanna make sure you’re tracking the prospect’s name.

Three, where do they come from, the source? And in our case, you’re going to be tracking the name of their referral source. Four, outcome. Do they become a client? They say yes, no, not now, in process, maybe check back with me in the fall.

And five, what was the revenue generated, the amount, whether that’s revenue or commission, depending on what type of business you have. So that’s our tracker tab.

If you are tracking referrals as they arrive on an ongoing basis, daily, weekly, or monthly, like some of my clients put it in the minute they get a referral, it goes in the tracker.

<p>Some of my other clients are like every Friday they go in and they load up their tracker with the referrals that they received. Other clients kind of do it more like every once or twice a month or at least at the end of every month.

But if you’re tracking this every single month, then you have the information we need for our quarterly review. So let’s talk about what that quarterly review will look like. This is the second tab in your spreadsheet.

So with this second tab in your spreadsheet, you’re going to be tracking a few things. Now for me, this isn’t based on columns. That’s not the way I set up this tracker tab. It’s really just like questions and then you’re tracking it in the column next to it.

So for those of you watching this on YouTube, we’ll do like an overlay screen so you can actually see what this looks like for one of my clients and get a sense of the layout. But let me first walk you through what we’re tracking on this quarterly tab.

The first thing we’re tracking is how many referrals did you receive in that three-month quarter. So for the purpose of this example, it’s April 1st. So we would be doing a quarterly review on first quarter of 2025.

So we’re tracking how many referrals did we receive January 1st through March 31st. So in that first quarter, how many referrals did we receive in those three months?

Now, this isn’t anything about outcome. It’s just how many referrals. It isn’t about quality. It’s not, were they the right quality or the wrong quality? Did you close them? We’re getting to that. Right now, the number is just how many referrals did you get?

So for example, I’m working with an attorney in my BRB coaching program, and she received 12 referrals in her first three months. So she put in the number 12.

I have a consultant that I’m working with also in the BRB coaching program, and he received eight referrals in his first three months. So he put in eight. It’s that simple. It’s just a simple number of how many referrals received.

Now, the next question you’re going to want to answer, so the next thing you’re tracking is how many closed into clients. So let’s stick with my attorney example. She received 12 referrals in her first three months, and she closed four of them.

So then on the second question, when she would write in how many closed into clients, she would put four.

Now, the next question is, well, how many of those 12 are still in process? Meaning you haven’t gotten a yes, but you also haven’t gotten a no or not yet. You don’t really know.

Maybe they’re still going through your sales cycle, your sales process, the buyer’s journey, and you’re just not sure if they’re gonna say yes or no.

You know the ones who’ve said no, right? Those are nos. But these are the folks that they’re just still in process because they haven’t made a decision.

So of those 12, four have closed, and another four are in process. So the other ones, so that would leave four other ones that either said no or were not the right fit, so she referred them to another attorney that could help them.

I’m really glad these are easy numbers, because it makes the math easier for me to do as well. So, okay, we have 12 referrals received in three months. Four of them have closed into clients. Four of them are still in process, meaning we’re not sure what’s going to happen yet.

And then, of course, we also know that the other four did not close. But you don’t need to track that number, at least I don’t, in this quarterly tab of tracking.

So the fourth thing you’re gonna then answer is how much revenue, like how much revenue if you are tracking, hey, I had four clients that closed in that quarter. The next question is, well, how much revenue did you make?

Now the initial revenue for this attorney is $20,000 in retainer, which is amazing because that’s already an ROI on the BRB coaching program, but it’s $20,000 in retainer.

But what this attorney knows that if they move from this initial signing with her and then work with her, it’s actually the ability for an additional $100,000, which is huge.

But we’re only tracking what we know to be real right now, which is that $20,000 number. As those clients say yes to working with her more, then she can go back and add in more revenue.

So we’re just like, hey, what’s the initial revenue that you know of? So in this case, it’s $20,000. We’re not putting in the $100,000 of the expectation. We’re putting in what we know, which is $20,000.</p> <p&gt;Okay, and then the next question is, how many new referral sources did you add? One thing you really need to be tracking is any new people that you’re converting into a referral source. Anytime someone new starts referring you, you want to track that specifically.

So in her case, she added, I believe it was two new people referring to her. So that’s impor

tant t

o track too, because we want to make sure that we’re always growing our list of referral sources.

And so knowing on a quarterly basis, hey, how many new people started referring me is a great way to make sure that if you’re following a process to cultivate new referral sources, it’s working. So it’s really important that we know that too.

Alright, let me recap what are these five things that we’re tracking in this quarterly tab, the five questions that you’re answering. And you answer these same five questions every single quarter.

So we would come back to this on July 1st, and we would answer these same five questions for quarter two.</p>

So those, again, are how many referrals did you receive in three months, in the last quarter? How many of those closed into a client? Num

ber three, how many are still in process? There’s not a no and there’s not a yes, so they’re just in process.

Number four, how much revenue did you bring in from those clients? And number five, how many new people, new referral sources did you add, meaning you received a referral from them for the first time?

So when you’re looking at these numbers, these are just the five data points I want you tracking every single quarter based on your quarterly results. So let’s talk about a couple of questions I usually get from this. And then why this matters so much and what I want you looking for.

So one of the questions I always get with this is that not every client or every referral you receive will turn into a client within a nice little quarterly bucket, right? They won’t all fit perfectly in quarter one.</p>

Some of those clients that this attorney has received that haven’t said yes yet, they may not say yes until later in quarter two or quarter three, or maybe even next year.

What I recommend doing just for your quarterly tracking, this is completely separate from your bookkeeping and your accounting of how dollars come into your business.

But just for this tracking, I always tell folks, if one of these in-process referrals says yes, and later on, like in the second quarter or third quarter, I still go back to this quarter and I add those numbers in. I add the revenue in, and I add them in as closed clients.

Because I want to know the referrals that I received in this quarter, how many of them actually became clients, even if it wasn’t in that particular quarter. That’s really important for me, because I want to know the results that’s happening when those referrals are received.

I’ll know by my bookkeeping and my accounting that that referral closed, but it closed six months later. That’s going to be reflected somewhere else.

But for the purpose of this quarterly tracking tab, I want to make sure that I go back when a client becomes a client and I adjust how many closed into clients, I adjust that number, and then I adjust the revenue number so that the referral results stick within that quarter.

It’s just because I want to know which of those referrals received performed, and it’s just easier to keep it all in that same quarter. So I know that can be a little confusing for folks. And I always tell my clients, it doesn’t matter to me which way you do it, just be consistent.

I tell folks that if you have a referral that comes in this quarter and it closes next quarter, like the following quarter, you can always update it within that quarter. But you don’t have to. If you decide to track it differently, that’s fine. Just be consistent.

I find it cleaner that if a referral comes in in first quarter, no matter when it closes, I’m going to go back to the first quarter tab. I’m going to go back to that first quarter piece, and I’m going to update that a new client came on board and the revenue piece as well. So that’s up to you how you want to do it, but that’s the way I recommend you considering doing it.

Alright, so let’s talk about why this quarterly review is so important. When I’m talking with my clients, I always remind them that whereas we’re looking for fast results, right, we want things to happen quickly.

So for example, I had a client that’s in the coaching program. They got like four referrals after they sent out one particular touchpoint,t I tell all my clients to do. And they’re like, oh my gosh, we got four referrals in like a matter of weeks. It was amazing. It was awesome.

And they could pretty much know that it went back to that note, like the note that I had them send out, that touchpoint I had them send out. And that’s great.

But that means you start looking at each of your outreaches or your touchpoints that you’re doing to your referral sources. You’re starting to measure what happens right after the touchpoint is received.

And that keeps you focused on individual touchpoints and how good they are, right, in theory. But that’s not how referrals work, because you control desire, not opportunity.

So what we really want to do is we want to be looking over an entire year. And the five, six, or seven touchpoints that you do for your existing referral sources, we want to be measuring the experience of that. All of them together, following a cadence, create an experience over the course of a year.

Because we want to know that as we do these different touchpoints, the idea of referrals is building with our referral sources, and then they’re starting to refer. So it’s not about how well did this one touchpoint work to generate referrals right away, and did this next one not do that, right?

Now we’re looking at the individual touchpoints, whether they’re successful or not, and that’s not how it works. The touchpoints, if you’re following a touchpoint plan and you’re doing a touchpoint plan for referrals from your existing referral sources, you have got touchpoints happening throughout the course of a year.

All of them together build a cadence and provide an experience to your referral sources. So it’s really, really important that you’re not looking at individual touchpoints and what actually happened, which is why I have my clients make sure that they are tracking quarterly so then we can look at our four quarters together and look at that over the course of a year.

Because the increase in referrals is going to come over time, it won’t be tied to any one outreach or touchpoint that you do, even if we want it to be. It’s just not how it works.

So that’s why I want my clients not just looking at their tracker tab of when referrals come in but also looking at it on a quarterly basis. And then we can look at that at the end of the year on an ongoing like one year basis as well, because that’s where we’re actually looking at our results.

When you hear me talk about doubling, tripling, or quadrupling the number of referrals that my clients receive, some of them absolutely hit that in 90 days. And that’s fabulous. They hit it in the first quarter they’re in the coaching program, or they’re working with me at a VIP level or an accelerator.

But the reality of it is most people aren’t going to experience that. Some will, and some won’t. What we’re looking for is double, tripling, or quadrupling your referrals over the course of a year.

So we’re going to track as every referral comes in the door. Then we’re going to track quarterly how many referrals we got and what happened with those referrals, how many became clients, how many didn’t become clients, what was the revenue, how many new people started referring us, over a quarter.

And then we’re going to look at that from an entire year’s perspective. And that’s really, really important that we’re tracking it like this.

The other reason why we want to track it and look at how many became clients and how many are still in process is because if you’re getting a bunch of referrals, but you’re not closing any, well, I’m going to start paying attention to, do you have a closing issue?

Like maybe it’s actually part of your sales process through the buyer’s journey, or maybe it’s a quality issue. Well, those are two problems we can solve.

And that’s what I tell my clients. I’m like, if I can see you have a quality issue or I can see you have a closing issue, we have strategies that you can use to solve those problems.

But you don’t always see that when you’re just looking at one to one referrals coming in. Sometimes it’s better to look at it on a quarterly basis. So that’s why we do a quarterly review. And then, of course, some things for you to think about in terms of what you want to be tracking.

Now, you can track other things. These are just the things I want you tracking or what these five things are and understanding why it is so very important.

Alright, so now you have it. You know what to do with your quarterly tracking. You can start tracking now. Go ahead.

If you have to go back and recreate the data from first quarter and write down on a spreadsheet or on a piece of paper, all the referrals that came in, then go do that. And then you’ll be able to start your quarterly tracking tab.

If you want to see it, if you’re listening to this on the podcast and you’re like, I need to see a visual, what is she talking about? And then come on over to YouTube.

You can find me at, at Referrals Without Asking. Come on over to YouTube and you’ll actually see the video and you’ll see the screenshot that we show of what this quarterly tab looks like.

Alright, the resources mentioned in this episode can be found in the description below the video, or of course, on the podcast show notes page at StaceyBrownRandall.com/355.

Now, real quick, before I say goodbye, I don’t do this often, but because we are now doing a video podcast, I would love it if you would like this video and subscribe to our YouTube channel. You’ll notice our YouTube channel is baby tiny.

It may have been around for a couple of years, but I do not utilize it the way I need to. And I’m starting to do more. And knowing that you like this video and that you’re subscribing to the channel, it’s definitely encouraging for me.

So I would love for you to do those two things. Make sure you like this video and subscribe to the channel. And if you want to leave a comment telling me how much you like this episode, well, please do that too.

Alright, we are back next week with another great episode 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.