Ep #364: The Trust Recession

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 respecting your relationships.

Alright, I am looking forward to diving into this episode. But before we do that, because this is a very important topic, but before we do that, I just want to give you a quick reminder. Did you know that there are three ways to work with me?

More than just being a part of my starter online course, Your Next Five Referrals, there’s actually three premium ways to work with me if you want to be able to be coached by me directly.

We have our Building a Referable Business coaching program. That’s our 12-month coaching program where you are able to access all of our strategies and an online learning portal. And then, of course, come weekly to get your questions answered and schedule one-on-one calls with me and shoot me emails whenever you need to.

Then, of course, we have our Referral Accelerator option. And I’m very excited that we will be back with a second one later this year in September. So if you’re thinking, yes, the Accelerator is for me, that’s where I take all the referral strategies that I teach and I put them into a two-day learning format.

Where you come to Charlotte and we spend two days together and you leave with everything you need to know about executing on your referral strategy. The Accelerator is perfect for the person who knows they won’t watch videos to get through the trainings.

And then, of course, my high-end, I guess you would say, way that I work with clients is my VIP Referrals in a Day. That’s where I custom build your strategy for you and then I come to you to your office with you and your team. And I teach and deliver your customized referral strategy in two days. And then I support you for 12 months once I’m back from spending time with your team.

So that is the Building a Referable Business Coaching Program, the Referral Accelerator, and the VIP Referrals in a Day. Just go to StaceyBrownRandall.com, click on the Work With Me, and check out each of the ways that I can help you really unleash your referral explosion in a way that is customized and works for you.

Stacey Brown Randall: There’s something that a referral, receiving a referral, says about you and your business that no other lead generation source or lead generating source can say.

Do you get prospects from your Facebook ads? Well, that just means you have great copy and probably a compelling offer.

Do you get prospects from a networking event? Probably means you’re good at conversation. Has somebody landed on your website and filled out your contact form? Probably means your SEO strategy is working.

But a referral? That says something entirely different. To be referred by someone that they know isn’t about your compelling copy, your graphics, how lovely you are to chat with.

Receiving a referral speaks directly to your value, that somebody else believes in you, is willing to put their reputation on the line to vouch for you, and most importantly, they trust you.

There is nothing, nothing else quite like a referral. The trust factor of a referral is huge, and it’s more important now than ever. Why? Because we’re in a trust recession.

In my first book, Generating Business Referrals Without Asking, I share that a fundamental belief that I have is that business trust is the real currency, and relationships are the economic driver.

Let me say that again. In business, trust is the real currency, and relationships are the economic driver, which means finding ourselves in a trust recession is kind of a problem, but with huge, huge opportunity.

As most problems always have, there is an upside and there is an opportunity. So let me set the stage for you. I just want to explain some key details on what is a trust recession.

I think the name trust recession kind of says it all, but just in case, here are just a few more stats pulled from a very, very easy Google search.

A trust recession refers to a decline in trust. Makes sense. Similar to an economic recession, but specifically in consumer trust towards brands, businesses, and institutions.

This decline can be attributed to factors like increased skepticism due to past experiences, a deluge of conflicting information, and a general feeling of distrust.

So there’s some key aspects that are a part of a trust recession, right? Of course, at the cornerstone, or I guess at the main part of a trust recession, is declining trust. There’s a lot more skepticism.

Consumers, your buyers, your potential clients, they’re a lot more skeptical. And when they become increasingly skeptical, it just leads to a decline in making decisions, and their loyalty, and their willingness to spend dollars.

And another aspect of a trust recession is this like over-marketing and the over-hype, right? Sometimes I’ll hear people refer to it as like the bro marketing, the hustle culture, you can be a $7 million business too by tonight, right? That kind of over-hype, over-marketing kind of copy and content that we see.

And it happens with a trust recession when there’s like this constant barrage, like it’s just constant with all these marketing messages and what is and feels like and seems like exaggerated claims that is what is actually possible.

Because when you have a barrage of marketing messages and these exaggerated claims of what is actually possible in business and what it’ll take to get to whatever seems to be the exaggerated claim, when that exists, it can completely erode trust.

And consumers, you know it, I know it, we’re all consumers, right? We may be business owners, but we’re also consumers of other people’s businesses. We are becoming more and more discerning on the daily.

And so when there’s a constant barrage of marketing messages and these exaggerated claims, it just wears us down and our trust starts to decline. We start to become more and more skeptical.

And it also means that there is also an over commoditization of the industry as well or as individual businesses. Like there’s just this feeling of things becoming more commoditized.

And that means also sometimes that happens because when we have a barrage of marketing messages, we can’t tell one company or one brand from another because we’re in this now state of being worn down.

And so we’re starting to tune things out, which of course we all know then has an impact on our sales and our growth, right? If we’re in a trust recession, if your business is experiencing this, right, now, collectively, we’re in a trust recession.

It doesn’t mean every business feels the impact of a trust recession in the same way. But being in a trust recession can absolutely stunt your sales growth, which means you find it harder as a business to take your leads and your prospects and convert them into clients, into paying clients.

It’s harder to build relationships. It’s harder to nurture people while they’re in the buyer’s journey, making the decision to hire you. And it’s just even harder to get more prospects or more leads even into your funnel, to even take a look at your business.

And so what’s really important for people to understand is understanding this idea of, okay, we’re in a trust recession. So what are you going to do about it?

Because one way of how a trust recession will manifest itself is really in your potential clients and your existing clients’ behavior.

People are going to be more hesitant to make purchases, to say yes to hiring your firm, to say yes to working with you as a consultant, to say yes to having you do their legal work, to saying yes to having you, if you’re an interior designer, help them design their home.

They’re just more hesitant to spend money, to open up their wallet. They also will seek out, this is the piece I love, they will seek out more reviews and do more research before making a buying decision.

And one thing we need to recognize, if they are more likely to do research and seek out reviews, guess what else? They’re also going to be talking to other people about who they should be selecting and who they should be giving their business to, who they should be hiring, because they are really more than anything, they want to trust whoever they end up hiring.

And the fastest way to get to trusting the business you are gonna spend money on, you are gonna hire, is to have someone tell you, you can trust them.

Because if people are less trusting and they are tired of the gimmicks and the false promises, they will be more reliant on asking other people that they trust for their recommendations to businesses that can solve their problem.

This one statistic has been like solid, like decades now. And it’s the statistic that says about, it’s always over 80%. It does fluctuate from like 83% and then one year, say it’s 89%. I don’t know, maybe this year it’ll get up to over 90% because of the trust recession.

But there’s this one statistic that’s pretty like solid, always in the 80s and has been for years, which is that 80% of people, 80% plus of people prefer to make a buying decision based on a recommendation from someone they trust.

What does this mean for you? You need to have your referral strategy locked in now. In a good year, in a non-trust recession year, over 80% of people typically choose to make a decision to hire whatever company they’re going to hire because somebody else has vouched for that company.

Somebody else has said, I used to them, and they were great. I know them and they’ve taken great care of my clients. You can trust them. And in a trust recession, we are looking for that more, which means you need to have your referral strategy locked in so that you can ride whatever wave is there, past this trust recession.

There is one quote that I really love. It’s in the book Speed of Trust. This is Stephen M. R. Covey’s book. It’s called Speed of Trust. And he says, the trust we have in people comes in part from believing that they do care.

And I think that sums up so much of the basis of how I teach my clients to build up their referral strategy. Because the truth is, in a trust recession, referrals are the antidote. Referrals are what people are going to be leaning on.

Can you refer me an attorney that you trust? Can you refer me an HR consultant that can help me with these issues that I can trust? Can you refer me a business coach that can really help me grow my business and get out of my own way?

Can you refer me? Can you recommend? Can you tell me about the best designer you know because you have had experience with them? Can you tell me? Can you help me? Can you refer me to someone you trust?

That is going to happen more and more in a trust recession. And we’re in one, which means you need people out there in the world, on the streets, what we call our referral sources. You need them out there and you need to be taking care of them so that they are able to take care of you, that they are able to refer you to others.

I always teach there are two things you need for a referral to happen. Makes me different from like 99.9% of everybody that teaches referrals. And I teach the two things that have to exist for a referral to happen because we see it time and time again, right? The research doesn’t deny this.

The two things that has to happen is desire and opportunity. You don’t control opportunity. I know you want to. People will teach you that you can control opportunity of when someone refers you just by asking them all the time or reminding them in an email every week that you’re paying for referrals.

That actually doesn’t work. Certainly not over any kind of long term. So you don’t control opportunity. You don’t know when I’m going to come across someone that needs you, that I can refer to you.

But you do control desire and the desire to refer to you over any of your competitors comes based on the relationship that we have.

And if you are nurturing and cultivating that relationship, when those opportunities present themselves, you better bet, you better believe you’re going to be the person that gets referred over anybody else.

You’re not getting referrals from someone you’ve ghosted and not talked to for nine or 12 months. And if you do, it’s probably random, happens once, and it probably won’t happen again.

It’s why it’s so important for you to have your referral strategy locked in because it’s how you maneuver through and get through a trust recession.

Because referrals are great no matter what’s happening in the economy, good economy, bad economy, global pandemic, right? Economic recession, trust recession, bull market, it doesn’t matter.

Referrals are always a standard. They’re always a way that people wanna make purchasing decisions when they’re looking to hire somebody else, when they’re looking to work with another company.

They want to know that the decision they’re making is the right one. And how they do that isn’t through reading your website, and it isn’t through seeing your ads.

Those things may help, but at the ultimate, usually they want to know that somebody else is vouching for you, trusts you, and then that trust is going to be transferred to them.

It’s why I believe that in business, trust is the real currency, and relationships are the economic driver.

So when we’re in a trust recession, and that’s the real currency, which is not surprising that in a trust recession, people close their wallets because trust is the real currency, how you continue to drive is through your relationships.

How you keep the business going, how you keep that economic driver going for you is on the time you decide to put into the relationships that you have or the relationships that you’ve been needing to have.

Because a trust recession is real. It’s here. You will survive it. But one way to survive it better than not is to make sure that you are dialed into your relationships.

You are doing your part to make sure that the desire, your referral sources, or potential referral sources feel you’re nurturing and cultivating.

You’re not leaving it up to chance. So that when those opportunities present themselves, you’ll be the one getting referred and not somebody else that does exactly what you do as well.

So super important just to remember this as we move through the rest of this year, not knowing how long a trust recession will last. People are tired.

Nothing feels very stable in some ways for folks, and that is compounding and impacting the trust that they have, which you can easily overcome the trust recession as long as you have the referral antidote.

Alright, if you want help with generating more referrals, you know where to find me. Just go to StaceyBrownRandall.com and you can find all the free resources we have.

You can find out more about my book. I’ve got another book coming out in October, my second book. I’m very excited. And so you can learn more about referrals.

You can go to our research page. You can go to our articles page. You can read articles. We have a ton of free content out there where you can start learning more about how to shore up and tighten up and build the right referral strategy for your business.

And when you’re ready, if you want to work with me, of course, you can go to our Programs tab or the Work with Me tab and learn how to work with me as well.

The show notes page for this episode, which can be found below the video, or of course on the podcast show notes page is StaceyBrownRandall.com/364.

And 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 referral business. Bye for now.