Ep #356: 5 Questions You Should be Asking About Referrals

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

Okay, here’s a quick update for you before we dive into this episode. Do you love baseball? Okay, your answer may be a no, maybe it’s a maybe, or maybe it’s a yes.

I do. If you know about me, you know that I love baseball. I am a Boston fan who happens to be married to a Yankee fan, which, as you can imagine, makes spring training in this household very, very interesting.

So in honor of the kickoff to spring, which in my family is the start of baseball season, whether it’s my son playing or of course watching it on television, I am doing a three-part spring training on referrals.

That’s right, it’s coming up at the end of April and I’d love for you to join me. It’s going to be free. So you can sign up to join me at StaceyBrownRandall.com/springtraining. That’s StaceyBrownRandall.com/springtraining. And don’t forget, Stacey has an E.

We will also put this link in the description below this video. And of course, on the show notes page for this episode, which is StaceyBrownRandall.com/356. Alright, let’s dive into today’s episode.

Here are five questions that you really should be asking about your referrals. Now, note, I said that you should be asking about your referrals, your referral reality, questions you’re asking about what’s happening, what’s going on with referrals in your business.

I did not say asking for referrals. That’s a big no-no. You never ask for referrals, at least not in this world, at least not in Stacey Land.

So these are five questions that you should be asking yourself about what’s going on with your referrals. These are five questions that you should have an answer for. So I’m going to give them to you in rapid fire format, and then I’m going to come back and expand on each one just a little bit.

But really what I want you to do is I want you to pull out a piece of paper, and I want you to see if you can answer these questions. Can you answer all five questions? And I don’t mean a guess. I mean an actual answer.

Okay. So I’m going to ask you these questions. You answer them. And then of course, I want you to share with me what you wrote down. So let’s start with question number one. Here they are. Rapid fire format. Can you answer these? Here we go.

Number one, who’s referring you now? Do you know their names? Who’s referring you now?

Number two, who used to refer you but stopped? Meaning maybe it’s been more than a year or two since they referred you.

Number three, who do I wish was referring me but isn’t yet?

Number four, what am I gonna do differently for the rest of this year to get more referrals?

And number five, question number five, what are my past results with referrals? Like how many do I average in a year? How many referral sources do I have? Are there any gaps I need to close?

Alright, let’s talk about these and break them down. For question number one, can you answer this, who’s referring me now?

By this question, I mean the exact number of people, not a range, not a guesstimate, the exact number of people who are referring you now. Who’s been referring you over the last year or two?

Do you know the number of them? And to know the number of them, that also means you must know their name. So you’ve got to know the number of people referring you and the names of the people referring you.

Question number two, who used to refer me but stopped? Now, this goes into how I teach my clients to think about referral sources from an active versus inactive perspective.

For the work that I do, because I teach a re-engaging your inactive referral sources, we define active as that they’ve referred you in the last two years. And we define inactive as it’s been more than two years since they’ve referred you.

But for your purposes, if you don’t have a re-engaging strategy for your inactive referral sources, maybe you just want to look back on, hey, who used to refer me over the last year but hasn’t, right?

So you get to define this how you want, but the question is, who used to refer you that now doesn’t anymore? And the doesn’t refer you anymore, what’s that timetable? Is that longer than six months or longer than a year or longer than two years?

Okay, and the who means that you know how many, and you know their names. The people who used to refer and aren’t anymore.

Alright, question number three. Who do I wish was referring me? This is like a wish list. That’s all this is. This is you writing down the names of the people that you wish were referring to you. Who are they?

Maybe it’s clients that you have that you know love you and have given you an amazing testimonial, but they’ve never actually referred you.

Maybe you are in a networking group or in a leads group, or maybe you belong to an organization, and you have a really strong network and you’re like, there’s people in these groups and in my network that should be referring to me. They come across my ideal client, but they’ve never referred to me. Who are they?

Now, here’s the thing. Just because you put them on a wish list doesn’t mean they’re going to magically start referring you. Of course, you know that.

I know I don’t have to say that, but you do need to come to terms and come to grips with who you wish were referring you and putting those names down on a list.

Okay, that’s where you start with being able to answer this question. Do you have a list of people that you wish were referring you? Maybe it’s a list of five, maybe it’s a list of 25. Great. Write them down.

Okay. Question number four, what am I going to do differently to get more referrals?

If you’re not receiving the number of referrals or the quality of referrals or the size of referrals that you want, if you’re not getting the number of referrals that you want and the right kinds of referrals that you want, the question you then have to ask yourself is what is my action plan to get referrals?

What is my action plan to do something different this year than I have done in the years past to generate referrals? What is it? Have you learned a referral strategy in the past? You’ve just been a little slack on actually implementing? Well, then go dust it off and start implementing it, right?

Or do you need to learn how to generate referrals in a way that works for you? I happen to teach referrals without asking for them. But maybe there’s a different methodology that you think will work better for you.

But you have to decide if you’re going to do something different if you want more referrals. You’re going to have to do something different. This isn’t a should I do something different. It is a what are you going to do different if you want to get more referrals.

Okay, and question number five, what are my past results with referrals? Like you should know, I average about seven referrals a year. I average about 60 referrals a year. Whatever it is, you should know what you typically average in a year.

You should also know how many people you have referring you. I have 30 referral sources. I have 102 referral sources, whatever it is. And then you should also know the gaps that you’re probably seeing in your business when it comes to referrals and a plan to close them.

Is it quality? Is it your closing ratio? Is it your follow-up process after you’ve received a referral so that you’re actually communicating with the referral source about what’s happening with that referral they just sent you?

I know there are going to be a lot of gaps, but those are some other things you need to think about when you are thinking through your referrals.

So again, these are five questions that you should know the answer to. You should be asking these questions about referrals within your business.

And of course, I have one bonus question for you. Final question, what is your biggest frustration with referrals?

Whatever it is, write it down. And then I want you to send your answer to me. I want to know what is your biggest frustration with referrals, because I want to feature it on the podcast or here in our YouTube channel. And I want to answer your biggest frustrations.

I want to teach you, show you, walk you through, have you understand how you can solve your biggest frustration when it comes to referrals.

Now, the truth is, for some of you, your biggest frustration in referrals really probably lies in you eventually deciding to pull the trigger and work with me. But some of you just have questions and frustrations that we can knock out here in the video form, on the YouTube channel, of course, and the podcast.

So I want you to send me your answer to what is your biggest frustration with referrals. If you’re on my email list, well, you get an email from me every Wednesday. So just hit reply on any of those emails and let me know what is your biggest frustration with referrals.

And it may be it’s easier for you to hop on Instagram or LinkedIn and just send me a DM. Send me a direct message on Instagram or LinkedIn. Those are my two platforms of choice. I’m just more active on, so I’m more likely to see your questions, your biggest frustrations when it comes to referrals.

Alright, the resources mentioned in this episode can be found in the description below the video and on the podcast show notes page, which is StaceyBrownRandall.com/356. That’s for episode 356.

Alright, 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.