Ep #361: “Why won’t my team members just do it…”

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 protecting your relationships.

Before we hop into the episode, I just want to make sure you’re aware of how to work with me. Now, there are a couple of ways of how I work with clients. It all depends on how you want to learn.

It’s always the same strategies, whether you’re in my Referral Accelerator or my Building a Referable Business coaching program or my VIP Referrals in a Day program. It doesn’t really matter which of those three you choose because I’m always teaching from the same 20 strategies.

But when you decide to work with me at the VIP level, that engagement looks a little bit different. After completing an assessment, I will understand a lot about your business. I review the assessment you complete, and then I build for you your custom, multi-layered referral strategy.

Then I come to you, and bring it on a silver platter, of course, right? I come to you and teach it to your team. To work with me at the VIP level, you do have to have a small team, at least one, preferably two other people on your team that can help you with implementation.

I’m going to show up with it completely done. I’m going to walk you and your team through it. You’re going to know what you need to know, and then we’re going to start implementing while I’m there.

I’m there with you on site for two days. And then you and your team have a year’s access to me after those two days. Whenever you have questions, you can hop on my calendar with unlimited one-on-ones and unlimited email and also text messaging. It is, of course, a very hands-on approach to implementing my referral strategies.

But like anything I teach, you still have to actually do the implementing. I may be there for you telling you what to do and how to do it and when to do it, but you still got to be the one who does it, which is why it’s important you have a small team to work with me at that level.

If you’re interested in learning more about the VIP, well, I’m going to include the links to it and the description below the video. And then for those of you listening on the podcast, we will put the link to the VIP Referrals in a Day level program in the show notes page.

Alright. Let’s dive into today’s episode. So this is our final scenario that I’m unpacking as part of our scenario series. So if you’re interested in checking out the other episodes where I unpacked different referral scenarios, you can find them in episode 359 and 360.

For this scenario, I actually pulled it from a conversation I had with a sales manager responsible for getting his sales team to generate referrals.

But this could be a law firm owner trying to get her attorneys to generate referrals. It could be a consulting firm trying to get his account reps to generate referrals. The question is the same.

I tell my team to ask for referrals. I give them the scripts, but they won’t do it. I don’t know how much easier I can make it for them. Okay, as you can imagine, this is one I’m loving unpacking and I’m loving digging into.

It kind of reminds me of that saying, don’t ask someone to do something that you aren’t willing to do yourself. You’ve heard that in leadership before. But except in the case of referrals, I feel like I always need to add in repeatedly.

Don’t ask someone to do something repeatedly that you aren’t willing to do yourself, repeatedly. Because there’s a reason why your attorneys, your client account managers, your intake specialist, a sales team, anyone on your team, there’s a reason why they don’t ask for referrals.

There’s a reason why no matter what you tell them to say and how you tell them to do it, they still figure out excuses for not asking for referrals. And here’s what I want you to know.

They’re right. They are on to something. When your team does not want to ask for referrals, or refuses, or just seems to forget every single time they get on a call with someone, they are doing something right. And you really need to lean in and understand that.

Now, there are definitely companies out there that teach their team to ask for referrals, and the teams do it, they follow the scripts, they read what’s in front of them, they do what they’re supposed to, and they don’t have any problems asking for referrals.

Those are usually what I like to call unicorn type people and unicorn type companies because most people don’t want to ask for referrals. Most business owners don’t want to ask for referrals and neither do folks that are working for a company.

They don’t want to be told they have to ask for referrals because asking for referrals is something really close to being a cousin of cold calling. It’s like your soul dies just a little bit every single time you have to do it or you even have to think. about doing it.

Why? Why don’t folks and why don’t your folks specifically want to ask for referrals? Well, for them, it usually boils down to a combination of a couple of reasons.

Number one, it’s uncomfortable and it’s awkward. Even if your people can’t tell you exactly why it’s uncomfortable and it’s awkward, that’s the feeling that they get inside. I’m going to unpack these for you in a minute.

The next thing is, if it’s done, and if they’ve ever done it before, is really how I need to think about this. If they’ve ever done it before, they know that asking rarely leads to a real lead, a real prospect being referred to them.

Sometimes they get half names and half contact information. Sometimes they get responses, oh yeah, let me get back to you on that. And then they don’t, and then the chasing game begins.

And they know that if they’ve had to ever do it before, they’re not actually getting quality. So why do something that doesn’t provide the quality that any of us are actually looking for?

Another reason why your team members may be like, uh, giving you the stiff arm in terms of not wanting to ask for referrals is because they know once they start asking, they have to continue to ask repeatedly.

Let me unpack that one for you. This one’s really important as well. But the last one also, as to reasons why your team members may not want to be asking for referrals, is because they know it’s burning up their relationship capital. And that stuff is precious.

And people are not interested in burning up relationship capital, doing something that they know is awkward and uncomfortable, or rarely leads to a real prospect being referred, and then once they do it, if they want it to keep happening, they know that it’s the trigger that they have to keep doing it over and over and over again.

If your folks refuse to ask, whether they do it flat out by telling you they’re not going to ask, or they just seem to forget every single time to ask, they are onto something. They are right. Listen to them.

What they need, though, is for you to show them a different way to do it if you want referrals. So why aren’t your folks comfortable asking for referrals? Because asking for referrals violates the science.

When a referral is being given, it’s being given because you know someone who has a problem, and you want to help that person by connecting them to a solution provider. In this scenario, you’re just the solution provider.

So when a member of your team gets on the phone with a client or a center of influence, or heaven forbid, a prospect, and then has to end the call with asking them to refer them to another potential client, they know they are manufacturing something that does not exist.

They are artificially creating something that does not exist, and they’re putting that person on the spot, and usually they’re not ready for it.

And so they usually get answers like, oh yeah, let me think about it and I’ll get back to you. And they don’t. Or they’re like, oh yeah, well, I think so-and-so could use this but let me reach out to them first. And then you never hear back.

Or you get like a name and maybe half a contact information, and then you reach out to that person, they have no idea why you’re even calling or reaching out. Your team knows this instinctively.

They may not be able to put it into words exactly what’s wrong and exactly why it’s uncomfortable and it’s awkward, but this is the science that they instinctively know but maybe don’t actually know how to articulate to you.

And that is when you’re asking someone to refer another client to you. You’re asking them to put their reputation on the line. You’re asking them to do work. And you’re artificially creating something that doesn’t exist. So now they’re like, wait, I have to come up with something for you. And that’s why it’s awkward and uncomfortable.

So that’s why your team isn’t interested in asking because it violates the science. They don’t always know to articulate it as it’s the science of how referrals happen, of how referrals work, but that’s what’s happening. They just know it in their gut.

The other reason why they’re not asking for referrals is because when they start asking, it becomes the never-ending trigger. Because you asking me to refer you and me being uncomfortable and having to do it, does not necessarily build goodwill that I’m just like dying to do it again.

And so now if you want me to remember to refer you, you’ve got to repeatedly ask me. That becomes the trigger. That is an exhausting trigger that doesn’t work, doesn’t work well, even when it does work.

And as one, and this is that fourth point I mentioned, burns up relationship capital. When you go back to the same person to ask them for the sixth time to give you some referrals, what are you going to say and how are they going to respond? Heck, how are they going to respond after the third time?

Your team instinctively knows, even if they can’t tell you exactly why, that asking for referrals isn’t working for them. And that is important for you to recognize. What they need is a better way.

You need to teach your team how to develop the right relationships, how to nurture those relationships, and in the process, how to plant referral seeds. It is so much easier, and you can do it with such less resistance, if you will nurture relationships and plant referral seeds.

Sometimes it’s just as simple as changing the language that you’re using so that you can plant the idea of referrals being the other person, that prospect’s, that client’s, that centers of influence’s idea.

Let it be their idea to refer you, but you can certainly have the right type of language that will allow that idea to be planted in their mind. But you have to be focused on helping others first and nurturing those relationships.

I know it seems like the easy answer is we want referrals, go ask people to give them to us. But everything about that statement is wrong. And if it were right, let’s be honest, everybody would be doing it and everybody would be referring each other.

But people aren’t because they know it’s awkward and uncomfortable for a reason. There’s nothing wrong with you if you think that it’s awkward and uncomfortable to ask for a referral. Actually, there’s something very, very right with your gut.

And if you know it’s been done before and it leads to pretty much a junk lead or a prospect that has no idea why you’re calling or why you’re even reaching out. And then, you know, if you even do ask, if you want that person to keep referring, you’re going to have to ask repeatedly. You’re burning up your relationship capital.

And that’s what people don’t want to do, particularly if they’re in sales. But also, if they have to work with that client month in and month out, they don’t want that awkwardness hanging over their head.

Think about the attorney that’s working on a case for a client and then is also told, hey, I need you also to make sure you’re asking that client to give you some referrals every other time you’re on the phone with them. There’s no way.

You can’t show up like the expert that attorney wants to show up as if you’re also always asking your clients to refer you. It doesn’t really matter if you’re doing it with whatever level that you’re doing it, whether you’re an account rep or you’re the subject matter expert.

Asking for referrals violates the science and it burns up relationship capital. So teach your team a better way, different, better language to use, which we call referral seeds, and teach them how to develop the right relationships.

And this doesn’t mean you’re sending a gift to people every month or you’re taking them to coffee every quarter. You don’t have to invest in relationships the whole lot of time.

But you do have to invest in relationships coming from the right place, from a genuine place, from an authentic place, and putting a little bit of thought into it, in addition to making sure you’re planting referral seeds.

So much easier. Such less resistance. And I think ultimately, that’s what we’re all after.

Alright, the show notes page for this episode can be found at StaceyBrownRandall.com/361. Or if you’re watching this video on YouTube, of course, you can find any of the resources I mentioned below the description below this video.

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.