Ep #372: Generating Referrals Naturally

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.

Today on our podcast takeover, we are welcoming a friend of mine from Down Under, Jay Tinkler of The Remarkable Project.

Jay and I connected when he reached out for me to be on his podcast, which is something I almost always say yes to. I understand what it’s like to have a podcast.

And if you have one where you constantly need guests, I know that’s like 52 weeks a year. You’ve got to be having people to talk to. When people ask me to be on their podcast, my answer is almost always yes.

And then after a great conversation that we got to have on his podcast, The Remarkable Project, he then invited me to present my referrals without asking methodology to his community of clients.

I love sharing with business owners that you can generate referrals without asking. I very rarely turn down that opportunity to speak to business owners as well.

So Jay and I had a great conversation when he interviewed me, and he has a really unique take on what he was asking me about and his follow-up questions and the thoughtfulness to his approach, just based on what they do over at The Remarkable Project.

So we’re going to link, of course, to all the ways that you can connect with Jay. We’re going to link to that here on the show notes page for this episode, which is StaceyBrownRandall.com/372. Don’t forget, Stacey has an E.

So here we go. Here is our conversation between Jay and I, and I’m excited to share with you.

Jay Tinkler: Hi, this is Jay Tinkler from the Remarkable Project podcast. I’m doing a podcast takeover of the Roadmap to Referrals podcast this week.

We had Stacey on our show back in, I think it was 2022. And so although there’s been a lot of time between now and then, a lot of the principles that Stacey unpacked for us during that interview are still probably more relevant today in what is quite an unstable economy internationally, as far as how you bring those four to six people around you that you can rely on for referrals for ongoing referrals.

We unpacked what a real referral is, and we looked at what are the little things we can do in our business to create those long-term profitable relationships. So I hope you enjoy. Here it is.

Jay Tinkler: Stacey, welcome to The Remarkable Project.

Stacey Brown Randall: Thank you so much for having me. I’m excited to be here.

Jay Tinkler: I am too. It has been a long time coming to get to organize this interview. And I do apologize, but we’ve had a couple of false starts, but I’m so glad to be chatting with you.

Because as I said, off air, we, we have had a lot of people on this podcast, but I’m really looking forward to getting a bit tactical and a bit sort of understanding of, I guess, getting into the weeds of how we start to drive more referrals and also, I guess, debunking some of the myths around referral marketing and driving referrals within your business.

Before we dive in, though, I wanted to ask a bit of background about you. And I guess you’ve gone really pointy as far as the topic area that you’ve spent so long, I guess, exploring and helping businesses with. How did you get into this area?

Stacey Brown Randall: Yeah, I’ve never had it described as I went really pointy, but that’s like perfect. That’s just like a perfect way to describe it. Like you just narrow focused in on those, like laser focused in on referrals and just went to a point. I think you’re so right.

Oh my gosh, I love that. I’m going to have to use that. It’s like when I’m talking to my kids and I’m giving them, you know, advice or telling them what to do. I’m like, I went really pointy with being a parent, so I know what I’m talking about here. You need to listen to me do what I do.

Jay Tinkler: Narrow, narrow. Yep.

Stacey Brown Randall: Yes, it’s very narrow, very pointy. It’s not just because I can take your phones and your Xbox away. You should listen to me anyway.

I really wish that I could tell you it was like this awesome story where I woke up one day and it was like a moment of Eureka and I was like, yes, I know everything that nobody has ever known about referrals. And now I’m going to go try to teach the world. That would be a pretty cool story.

That’s not how the story goes. I actually learned everything I learned about referrals through the School of Hard Knocks and sheer necessity of overcoming a business failure, starting a second business and needing it to be successful, and not having to become a two-time member of the business failure club. I needed a different way to grow my second business.

So my first business was an HR consulting firm, human resource consulting firm. My second business, which I would have for four years, not quite five years before it would fail and I would go back to corporate America, which is really hard once you’ve been a business owner.

And I started a second business later, which was a productivity and business coaching practice. And really, it was the sheer necessity of how do I make this business not fail? Like, how do I make this business be successful?

And one of the things I had learned, the hard lesson I learned from my business failure was how you bring in clients, whereas we can do anything for a short amount of time, whether it makes us happy or makes us miserable, we can do just about anything for a short amount of time, but how are you going to bring in business for the long haul?

And in a way that’s going to consistently work with you and strategies that you can put into place that not only feel good, but they have to work or like, what is the point?

And so for me, I built my first business, my consulting firm, straight up networking. And I had two small kids at that time. And sometimes I networked a lot because I was trying to avoid bath and bedtime, but not always. Sometimes it was, that’s what I did, I networked. That’s how I brought in every client that I had with my HR consulting firm.

And I had big name clients like KPMG, which is a very large accounting firm, Ally Bank, which is another large bank here in the States. I’m not sure if it’s global or not, but some big-name clients.

And so I was like, how do I make this business more sustainable, so that it can actually bring in clients more consistently without me having to constantly network or hustle to bring in those clients.

And so like most people, when they’re trying to figure out how to grow their business and they looked at what they did that kind of worked but didn’t work well enough, you start looking at other options.

And so I stumbled upon, like most business owners, you eventually hear about or know about, or maybe you just wake up one day and you just know it because you decide to be a business owner, that referrals is a great way to grow your business.

So I wasn’t unlike most people listening right now to this podcast episode. I was like, OK, Google, please tell me how I get referrals.

And Google was like, here’s a whole bunch of advice you’re not going to like, because it was all the advice. It was like, you’ve got to ask for those referrals or you have to compensate, pay kickbacks for those referrals, or you actually need to network and know a ton of people. I’m like, well, I’ve done that and that didn’t give me referrals.

And then it’s like, you have to be really promotional and gimmicky, like put the greatest compliment you can give me is a referral in your email signature. And I was like, that’s not how I want to show up.

And I don’t want to be the person that people see coming at an, at a networking event. And they’re like, oh boy, here comes Stacey. She’s going to be asking like a runaway, run away from her, go get a drink. Right?

Like it’s just all the tactics that have been taught. And I don’t mean they’ve been taught for like 10 years. I’m talking like 30, 40 plus years. These same tactics have been taught. They’re tired.

But the reality of it is, is that they were all that was out there. Like 30, 40, 50 years whatever it’s been maybe it’s been 100 years I don’t know but like how we’ve been teaching referrals as long, it’s never changed.

Like the basic premise of how people teach referrals, like people come up with a new way to package it, but at the heart of it, it’s still asking, or it’s still being gimmicky, or it’s still networking to know a ton of people, right?

And I was like, I don’t have time to go to a leads group every single Tuesday morning at 7:15. I have three children that have to get to school. It’s like packaging the same tired advice just with some new shiny wrapping sometimes.

But at the heart of it, it was all the same ways of generating referrals. And I was like, I can’t do it this way. This isn’t going to work for me. But why does that then mean I don’t get referrals?

And that truly started my journey of figuring out of where I am today, now almost 10 years later, of how I’m going to make referrals happen for me and completely flipping it on its head of what I teach and being called now a contrarian when it comes to generating referrals. And I love it. I embrace that title.

I think that just because something is decades old doesn’t mean that there can’t be something different and that you can’t do it a different way. But I had to learn it and I had to figure it out.

And there were moments where I felt like I was just throwing spaghetti on the wall and being like, will this work? Will this work? Will this work? Because I just don’t want to do those things.

And then ultimately it did work. And in that productivity and business coaching business that I had in my first year, I generated 112 referrals that I didn’t ask for. And that changed everything. And then I started teaching other business owners how to do what I do.

Jay Tinkler: Incredible. It’s interesting you talking about Googling and going back to sort of the tactics that have been there for, yeah, I think you said 40 years, but I’m sure it’s longer.

Stacey Brown Randall: I’m sure it’s generations.

Jay Tinkler: Generations. And I feel like it’s something that hasn’t really been unlocked yet, or it hadn’t been unlocked. And all the tactics that are up there are almost masking the fact that no one’s really come up with a proper strategy around how to generate referrals.

So the strategic approach seemed to, in the searching that I had done as well, being the same, we were probably Googling at the same time, that was what I was experiencing too, was this sort of lack of strategy around it. It was just kind of these actions that you would take.

The other thing I noticed was not a lot of customer listening going on or understanding or what they want. It’s kind of what you’re going to do to them to hopefully get a response out of them. Is that what you found?

Stacey Brown Randall: Yeah. And so replace customer or client with referral source.

Jay Tinkler: Right.

Stacey Brown Randall: It was all, it was always about like, what are you going to say to them? How are you going to say it? How often are you going to say it? Who are you going to say it to? And how are you going to manipulate reciprocity?

And how are you, and in some cases, I felt like I was being taught to take advantage of those relationships. And I’m like, wait a minute, pretty sure that wasn’t how I was raised.

I’m pretty sure respecting those relationships is actually probably the most important thing I could do, but that’s how everything felt to me, is like it was like taking advantage, right? And not really paying attention to how it was impacting the person on the other side.

But I knew clearly how it was impacting people on the other side because I had been on the receiving end of people doing those like tired old school referral tactics to me.

And I’d be like, oh, I don’t want to sit through one more coffee meeting where you ask me to introduce you or connect you to these 14 people you just snagged off of my LinkedIn profile. Like that’s weird.

Jay Tinkler: Yeah.

Stacey Brown Randall: And so like there’s oh my gosh I mean I’ve seen them, I’ve heard them all, I probably had most of them actually done to me.

So for me, it came down to what ultimately is happening when a referral is being made? And I just started paying attention to, well, when I refer someone, why do I do it?

Like when it happens and then that person hires the person I told them to go hire, what’s happening in that moment where it’s working, right?

Because there are actually a lot of people out there who can teach you that you just need to like, you know, meet with a hundred people and ask all hundred people and you’ll get a couple referrals and that’s all that matters.

But at the end of the day, I think about how those hundred people feel when they walk away from that interaction with me. And that actually matters most to me.

Regardless of the handful of maybe referrals I could have received, I was always looking at it from the perspective, but would those hundred people still take my call a month later if I actually really needed something? And did I just waste all that relationship capital on that hollow ask for a referral.

And so for me, it always came back to, if I don’t like it being done to me, why isn’t there a better or a different way? And I don’t know why nobody had figured it out until I came along, at least that’s of course the way I see it.

I don’t know why nobody else had been like, I don’t know, what is happening when a referral is being given, or what is the science behind why referrals are happening and why should we look at it this way and wait, you can actually build strategies around that.

I don’t know why it was what I would like to believe it fell into my lap, but I also know that I was searching for something and wanted something different. And so I set out to create it for myself. It just so happened to turn into something that a lot of other business owners were really, really interested in.

Jay Tinkler: It’s almost like a more natural way going back to just plain human relationship, right? Like just getting back to connecting and how we like to interact.

Okay, let’s start to unpack this a little bit further. And I think a really good place to start is defining what a referral is and what it isn’t, because I think a lot of people do a bit of a catch-all when it comes to what a referral is.

Can you make the distinction between what a referral is and in distinction with or indifference to other types of word of mouth, I guess, marketing and that kind of thing. And I guess also why it’s important to make that distinction.

Stacey Brown Randall: Yeah, so you’re absolutely right. I believe the term referral is used as like a catch-all, right? It’s kind of used as what we use to define a lot of different things that are actually very different types of what we call sales lingo or sales terms or types of prospects.

And when you take the word referrals and you apply them to things that aren’t referrals, you actually dilute the power of referrals. And I think that’s important for people to recognize.

And so let’s start with the why you should know what a referral is and then talk about the definition of it. The reason why I want you to know what a referral is when it arrives is because I want you to respond differently.

When somebody is referred to you, the conversation that you’re going to have with that prospect, because they’re now been referred to you, should be very different and way more fun and natural than a conversation you’re having with someone because they happen to click on your Google ad.

So the whole scenario of how you’re going to bring that referred prospect into your world through the buyer’s journey to get them to say, yes, it’s going to be a shorter time frame. It’s going to be a quicker time frame.

It’s going to be easier of that process of the buyer’s journey typically. And they already trust you. So they’re less price sensitive and they already value you. They see the credibility in you because somebody has effectively vouched for you.

And so everything about that prospect is really ripe for you to do the right things to more quickly close them into a paying client. It doesn’t mean you’ll have 100% closing ratio. Nobody does.

But it does mean that when a referred prospect shows up, like for my clients, I’m like, you better know it because then there’s some very specific things I need you doing in that first conversation with them that’ll get them to close themselves because they were referred to you

Which you cannot use those tactics with somebody who came through a Facebook ad or happened to answer a direct mail piece that you mailed in that you mailed out.

So that’s why it matters. But that doesn’t mean everything’s a referral that people want to call a referral.

So we always say that a referral has two parts to a definition for it to be a true referral. Number one, it’s going to be personally connected. You will be personally connected by the referral source to the prospect.

Ninety-nine percent of the time, this is going to happen over email, particularly in more professional service setting type companies. But it could happen in a text thread. And it could, of course, happen if you guys, the three of you happen to be at the same event. It could happen in person as well.

But the idea here is that you’re going to be connected to the prospect by the referral source. It’s not going to be, hey, Jay, I was talking about you the other day to my business buddy, totally told them they need to hire you. Don’t worry, I gave them your contact information. I’m sure they’ll follow up.

And we all know they don’t follow up. And it’s actually not because they don’t want to hire you. It has more to do with the fact that they probably lost your information, got busy, and forgot.

And so we always want that referral source, like take that word-of-mouth buzz, which is effectively what that is when someone’s talking about you but not connecting them to you, take that word-of-mouth buzz and flip it into a referral, by having them connect you to them, to that prospect.

So there always has to be a personal connection. It is also, when you’re looking at this in the science perspective, it is also where that trust transfer continues.

So the trust is transferred when you and I are talking about a problem that I’m having, and you come up with somebody you need to refer me to. That trust is built there. But then it’s sometimes it dissipates until the actual connection is made.

And I’m reminded, that’s right, my buddy Jay told me this is who I need to be talking to. And the trust is reformed in that email connection, which is why the connecting the referral source to the prospect to you is so very important.

The second thing is that there actually needs to be a need identified in the prospect. So lots of times people were like, hey, look at this email and tell me if you think this is a referral. And I’m like, no, it’s clearly an introduction.

And it says things like, hey, Jay, meet Stacey. Stacey, meet Jay. You two are awesome people and you should really get to know each other and this will be great. Yay, good synergies and all the buzzwords, right?

And you’re thinking to yourself, OK, wait, is Jay about to sell me? Or am I supposed to sell Jay? Or is this really just for the sake of growing our network?

Which an introduction is fine, if that’s the point, is just to grow your network. But you need to know that. Because actually, if in that email is a lost referral just hanging out there hiding from you, I need you to be able to pick it out by how you respond.

And so when people say the need identified, the prospect needs to know they are the prospect. Like at the end of the day, you need to hire someone to solve your problem. That is why they’re interested in being connected to you and they know it.

And that is what makes them quicker and easier to close and typically less price sensitive because they’ve already bought into the idea that I have this problem and I’m at least open to talking to someone about this problem.

And so personal connection, need identified, that’s why it’s so important to be able to tell what a referral is, which means word-of-mouth, buzz, introductions, warm leads, like those are all different terms and they’re not defining the same type of prospect.

Because a referral prospect will have both of those two things, need identified, personal connection, and the other three terms, word-of-mouth, buzz, introduction, and warm lead will be missing one or both of them.

And that’s why it’s important that we recognize it as well because how we then know what it is so that we can then respond accordingly is really important.

Jay Tinkler: I love the fact that you’re identifying the prospect in that interaction as well. Like, I feel that that’s such an important piece is that, you know, you often get people, as you say, introducing you, even if there is a need there, but not willing to point out the actual need in the introduction as well.

Because the fact they’re not willing to sort of put their neck on the line to sort of say, I’m handing over that trust or that reputation as to you’re the best person to solve that. I’ll let the other person tell you about that problem or those kinds of things. And that still is an introduction, right? Because it hasn’t had a need identified.

Stacey Brown Randall: Right. But so, but the referral source knows there’s a need, but there’s a bigger issue in that situation if they’re not willing to state it and put their reputation on the line.

Like the whole reason why trust is transferred, and the prospect says yes to hiring you is because of the trust they have in the referral source. But that’s because the referral source trusts you. And so that trust transfer has to happen.

So sometimes an introduction, people just don’t do them well. Sometimes an introduction is an introduction. Hey, you two should know each other, but no one’s doing business with each other. You should just know each other.

Like, I just got introduced to somebody last week and I read the email, and I was like, I don’t think this is a referral. This is clearly an introduction, because he believes that we should know each other because we operate in complimentary spaces.

And so we got on a call for that purpose, I didn’t have to worry that at some point she was going to pitch me, or I was going to pitch her, like we were really just getting to know each other.

But what you brought up was somebody who’s making an introduction because they’re not willing to put their reputation on the line and say, hey, Stacey’s the prospect. I mean, not in those words, right? But like, Stacey, you need to hire Jay.

If that statement’s not being made, we actually have a bigger issue as to why that referral source doesn’t want to put their reputation on the line or doesn’t want to say in that email that they should hire you.

And so I typically find that circling back around to the referral source just to get to the bottom of it offline is typically the most powerful thing you can do.

Because one time, I had a referral source send me somebody, and it was an introduction email. And I was like, he knows better. I’ve taught him how to do this. He was a client of mine. He knows it. I’m like, this is weird.

So I just took the email and removed the prospect, that I was hoping was a prospect, and circled back with my referral source and I was like, hey, what am I missing?

Like, and he was like, yeah, so he needs you, but he doesn’t want to admit it. So I couldn’t put it in the email, but I totally connected him to you because he needs you.

And I was like, that’s all I needed to know. So now I know how to proceed with caution. I know there’s a fragile ego involved. I’ve got to make sure that I don’t be like, yep, heard that you stink at referral, so let’s talk.

Because that was not that I would actually ever say that. But that was obviously what I needed, that information I needed to know so that I could proceed accordingly.

Jay Tinkler: I love it. I love the fact that there’s so many layers to all three players in this game of referrals. It’s so interesting. And yeah, I love the need identified is such an important piece to everyone knowing their role in that game.

Listen, we’ve spoken a lot on this podcast about remarkability and how majority of, I guess, the solutions when it comes to building a remarkable business start with customer in mind.

And in your case, you’re going to talk referral sources here, but they also taught that rather than within your organization, it’s not about who necessarily you are, it’s more about how you want to show up for your referral source or the moments that you want to actually create for them.

What is the biggest misconception about why someone will refer to you?

Stacey Brown Randall: There are so many. I think when I talk to folks about referrals, their initial reaction is, well, I don’t want to, insert ask, pay, network all the time. And that’s why I don’t focus on referrals.

That’s why they don’t look at it as a strategy. That’s why they don’t have it as like, you’ve got your prospecting plan, right? You’ve got your marketing plan. you have a third plan called your referral plan, right?

And when people don’t have that third leg to their sales strategy, it’s typically because they’re not looking at it from a strategic perspective. And there is obviously a reason for that.

And typically, it’s because they don’t like what strategies are being taught, right? Or what strategies they’re being told to do.

But if you go a little bit deeper, right? Sometimes it’s either gonna be one or two things. They just really have no idea how to start to do it in a way that’s gonna make them feel good and protect the relationship they have with their people.

So they just don’t know where to start because everything out there doesn’t feel good. So if it doesn’t feel good to me, how could it possibly feel good to the people I’m about to do it to, right? And so they just don’t know where to start.

And then there’s another group of folks and you, maybe you’re in both, maybe you got one foot in both camps and maybe you don’t, but somebody, usually most people have their foot in one camp.

And the other group of folks is, that they’re actually just not sure they believe they deserve referrals like they’re just not really sure what it takes to have what we call a referable client experience, right?

And so they think about the interactions they have with their clients. They think about that client experience journey that their clients go through and it’s choppy and it’s not perfect, right?

And they make mistakes, and Lord knows it’s definitely not repeatable. So somebody is getting it awesome because they had time and somebody is like getting breadcrumbs because they didn’t have time.

And so sometimes it’s like, when I talk to people about referrals, the disclaimer I always say is, you absolutely deserve referrals. You’re just not owed them. So you’re going to have to be willing to do a little work for them.

And if you don’t know what to do, let’s solve that. That’s easy. That’s my jam. That’s where I live all day long. Let’s solve it

But if you’re not sure you believe you deserve them, well, you need to be referable to be able to receive referrals.

And so something’s happening within your client experience, whether you believe it or it’s true because your clients have told you, right, there’s something happening within your client experience that isn’t making you referable.

And that may be the piece that needs to be solved as well, because to get referrals, you need to be referable. And then you need to have strategies in place to be able to receive those referrals because they do not grow on trees and they do not drop out of the sky.

Jay Tinkler: Okay, so obviously the referability pieces, right? Or the remarkability pieces, you need to have something to be able to share and that people want to refer you.

Why does Stacey refer Jay? What’s the motivation that sits behind that, that puts Stacey into action and makes her proactively out there referring Jay?

Stacey Brown Randall: Okay, so I’m gonna give you this answer, but I don’t mean to hurt your feelings.

Jay Tinkler: You’re not gonna refer me, are you? You’re not gonna refer me.

Stacey Brown Randall: No, wait for it. Actually, I don’t refer you because of you. And that is a common misconception that people have.

People think that, hey, you think Stacey refers to you because of you, but I don’t. If I refer to you, it’s because I know somebody who has a problem, and I know you can solve it.

Because in the moment that a pure referral, a true referral is happening, I know somebody who has a problem and then I want to help and I wanna be the hero. And how I’m gonna help and how I’m gonna be the hero is by connecting them with the best person, which just happens to be you.

So yes, you get a new client and yay for you. That is awesome. That is not where this journey began.

So most people, like I would say 99.99999 percent of the world doesn’t sit there with their phone open or their LinkedIn account open and thinking, okay it’s Jay’s day today, who am I gonna refer to Jay? let me just scroll through my phone or my LinkedIn. Right? Nobody does that.

I mean maybe the one unicorn anomaly does, and God love them. But I have not met that unicorn, I’d love to.

But the reality of it is, is when I refer you, I’m not thinking about you. When I refer you, it’s because I have somebody who has a problem, and I want to be the hero. I want to help. It’s how we were created. I want to help that person if I can.

And in that moment, because the opportunity is there, if I remember you, and you’re the person I choose to refer to and not anybody else that does what you do or any of your competitors, right?

It’s because of the relationship we have, and you were top of mind when that problem was being discussed with that prospect that I’m now trying to help.

So most people don’t understand that for a referral to happen, there are two things that have to be in play, opportunity and desire.

And when you think about opportunity, that is the I come across people who need what you do, right? That’s one way that we can kind of make sure opportunity is kind of working in our advantage, but we don’t control it. We do not control opportunity.

And the old school strategies like asking for referrals, it’s teaching you that you control opportunity. You control the opportunity for someone to refer you when you ask them or tell them to refer you.

But you don’t, because I can’t artificially create what just doesn’t exist. When the referral truly pops up and truly happens, the opportunity is there because somebody needs help and I have a decision to make, do I want to help them or not?

But what you do control, since you don’t control opportunity, is desire. Of all the people I could refer, why do I pick Jay? And that is the piece of our relationship that is your responsibility to manage and maintain.

And so when I talk to people about identifying their existing, their current referral sources, people who have referred them before, and then creating a plan that is memorable and meaningful, that will keep them top of mind while not being a stalker, right?

So we’re not doing this daily, weekly, or even monthly, but we are being, memorable and meaningful, we call the M&Ms, to our referral sources to develop that relationship so that they see those opportunities more often.

And when those opportunities come along, they’re only thinking about me. Because I can control the desire, meaning the relationship that we have, and how I take care of you. I cannot control the opportunity to refer you.

Jay Tinkler: Incredible. Okay, so let’s come down a couple of rungs on the ladder. Where do we start to look when we’re starting to play with that desire, as you say, and also the motivation, I guess also helping them be the hero? Where’s a good place to start strategically for this?

Stacey Brown Randall: Yes, you actually need to know who your heroes are. You need to know who your referral sources are.

And you would be surprised how many people I talk to, and they’re like, well, I came up with a list of my referral sources off the top of my head. Then I’m like, don’t do that.

Because you’re gonna fall victim to recency bias. You’re just gonna put on that list who you recently remember referring you or who happened to refer you your biggest deal you ever received, right? Not necessarily the people who are consistently referring you maybe medium-sized deals.

And so you have to identify through the data of your business who your referral sources are. And the only way to do that, and to do it correctly, and pray then only one time if you do it correctly, you should never have to do this again because you’ll also start tracking from this point forward so you’re never in this position again, is to actually pull your list of clients.

Now, when I’m working with a client, I want them to go back three or four years.If you’ve only been in business a year or two, so be it. That’s what we work with.

But if you’ve been in business more than three, four, five, 10 years, I don’t actually need all that data. I just really need three- or four-years’ worth of data.

What I’m looking for are who your clients are, those new clients that started over the last couple of years, what year they actually, you first learned about them or they became a client, whatever date metric you have. And then of course, how they learn about you, the source.

Did they come through a Facebook ad? Did you meet them at a BNI meeting? Did they come through, you know, a print advertisement that you did? Did you guys used to work together at a company before you started your own business and now they’re a client of your business.

Like, how do they know you? How do they come to work with your business? How do they come to know you? And if they were referred, I want you to have the referral sources named down.

So you could have, like, Stacey’s a client who was referred by Jay, and then Thomas is a client, but Thomas came through a Facebook ad, right? So you would have your clients written down and then the source of where they came from.

And then you’d be able to sort that by all the human names on your list. You won’t be able to give me perfection if you haven’t been tracking this and I do talk about it in my book I talk about some ways to do the walk down memory lane to recreate this information if you don’t have it.

It’s one of my most, if there is a dead horse I beat in my business, it’s this one, which is nothing that we’ve talked about so far today and nothing that you will learn from me in the future matters if you don’t know who your people are.

If you don’t know who the hero is of your business, being your referral sources, if you can’t identify by name who your business’s biggest asset is, anything else I’m going to teach you to do doesn’t matter because you don’t know who you’re doing it for, which means we don’t know what to do or what to say because we don’t know who the who is.

And so identifying, okay, where do my clients come from? And what are those sources? And which of those clients were referred to me? And then who are those referral sources? And then repeating that step again with your prospects.

Because not everybody who talks to you is a yes. Sometimes they’re a no. Sometimes they’re a not now. Sometimes they’re don’t ever call me again, right? I mean, it happens. So at the end of the day, you need to do this with your prospects too.

Because what I tell folks is your referral sources aren’t just the people who referred you prospects who then decided to become a paying client. Your referral sources are also the people who referred you prospects who didn’t become paying clients.

And so you have to go back to the step twice if you want the holistic look and a more holistic look at who your referral sources are.

So we do this with our clients and then we go back, and we pull as much data as we have six months, one year, 16 months, it doesn’t matter. Not everybody tracks their prospect data or keeps it from year to year.

Pull your prospect data, what was their source, then take out the prospects that were referred, grab those referral sources’ name and add them to your client referral source name. And that gives you your master list of who your referral sources are. And at that moment, So many things become real.

Jay Tinkler: Everything changes.

Stacey Brown Randall: Everything changes. So many things become real. It’s like this empowering moment.

I have a podcast episode, which of course I’m not going to remember off the top of my head because I’m over 230 episodes and they all start running together after a while. But I have a podcast episode. I think it was like beginning of 2021. I don’t remember it.

David Ferguson is a client of mine that I interviewed on him talking about, like, I just wanted other people to understand it and hear like, what does it mean to be a business owner who goes through this exercise?

And when David first came to me, he was like, I’ve got 30 referral sources. And I was like, yes, this is something I can work with. And then when I was done with him, he had like 12, because they weren’t all actual referral sources, right?

But listening to him talk about seeing those names in black and white, right? The number one thing he always says was, it was super empowering. I mean, it wasn’t the number I wanted, but it was really empowering to realize who’s sending business to me. This is amazing.

And then the next question is, oh my gosh, who am I ignoring? Like I haven’t talked to these people in nine months or whatever it is.

And then it was also, wait a minute, I spend every month at different networking events with this person, and they’re not on the list. But they talk about referring me all the time, but look, they’ve never actually sent me a prospect or a client.

And so you start realizing where you’re spending your time, who’s actually putting the reputation on the line. Everything changes when you see those names, and then you have a decision to make.

Do I want to take care of them differently? For the end result, yes, to be that I will generate more referrals, but also because that’s probably just the right thing to do to take care of the people who are taking care of my business.

Jay Tinkler: I think there’s a real path here where the road forks a little bit and old school thinking can take over.

So you’ve got your list of beautiful people and I’m guessing that old school thinking says, great, I’m gonna pick up the phone now and speak to these people and say, I was wondering whether you could refer me to X person out of your LinkedIn list or, I get these emails every now and then saying, our business is built on referrals, so what we’d really love from you.

So what’s the difference here, Stacey? What do we do instead of that path, without going down into the weeds of your method, so to speak, but top level, what are we doing differently here around looking after this group of people?

Stacey Brown Randall: Do you know the number one thing that a referral source wants from you once they refer you?

Jay Tinkler: Thank you.

Stacey Brown Randall: I’m putting you on the spot, yes.

Jay Tinkler: Is that a thank you?

Stacey Brown Randall: The number one thing, yes.

Jay Tinkler: Thank you. Gratitude.

Stacey Brown Randall: Yep. They want to be acknowledged. They want to be thanked. They want to know that you appreciate it. It’s not hard. Sometimes, sometimes legit. I feel like I’m teaching people, I’m reminding people how to be good people. Like be a good human, first of all.

Now, here’s the thing. I say that and it’s like this flippant response I give because truly it is true but just thanking them isn’t going to actually have them unleash a referral explosion for you.

Just thanking them isn’t going to be like the river referrals aren’t just going to flow in. But it’s definitely where it starts.

If the old school mentality in that moment is, let me go get some more referrals from them, and I think I can do it x, y, z, you’re already thinking wrong.

The way you need to be thinking is, wow, these folks have done something they didn’t have to do. I wasn’t paying them to do. And hopefully you didn’t ask them to do, but maybe you did, and they did it anyway. Lucky you.

But it’s the reality of looking at the relationship you have with them and really understanding how do I take better care of them in a way that is not like, weird or like over the top.

Like, we’re not gonna go buy everybody a set of Cutco knives and engrave their business name on it and give them all the gifts of the world. Like that’s what we’re talking about. Like we’re talking about how can I take better care of these people?

Now, the way my strategy and my system works, if you have existing referral sources, because there’s plenty of people who don’t have that list when they try to do that list.

But if you have current or existing referral sources, the way my strategy works is we need to impact how they feel about you. They need to feel cared for. They need to feel acknowledged and thanked. They need to feel like you don’t take them for granted.

And so they will feel that way based on the ways that I will teach you to take care of them. But ultimately, what that provides for us is an avenue also to direct how they think.

So if I can impact how you feel, and it’s genuine and authentic, and I mean it, right? I’m not doing this to manipulate you. I’m gonna get a bunch more referrals. Guess what? Everybody can see through that and know it will not.

But if you truly believe these people send me business, of course it is my responsibility to take care of them. Right? Then we are going to take care of them in a variety of ways that most people don’t see coming.

And they’re like, Oh, it’s more, way more simple than I thought. But it’s also the language, which is kind of our secret sauce. We call it referral seeds.

It’s the, what you’re going to say when you’re extending that gratitude, that’s going to like have them always be thinking of you from a referral perspective, because you’re just going to occupy more space in their mind because they know you actually care.

The people who go through my programs or work with me in my group coaching experience, at the end of the day, I love them all because they’re all really good people. Like in their hearts, they’re just good people.

They wanna be the best attorney they can be. They wanna be the best CPA they can be. They wanna be the best interior designer that they can be and it matters to them, and they care.

And at the same time, it’s also okay that they also wanna grow their business and they would like to get more business, and they would like that business to come by referrals.

But it starts from really understanding that these are your people and now you have to decide how you’re going to take care of them.

And usually sometimes that is resisting the fast way that we think will work to get someone to give us referrals, which is just go hit them up for another one versus why don’t you build out a plan to take care of them and then watch your referral explosion actually happen.

Because when I work with somebody, typically what we’re looking to do, and this is all based on a formula and we goal set, because how do you know you’re going to get the ROI if we don’t goal set.

Looking at the number of referrals you typically receive, my goal is typically in your first year working with me to double, triple, or quadruple that number. And it has a lot to do with where you’re starting from. But we’re looking at that number, and we’re trying to increase it.

So I actually have an accounting firm in Australia, Notion Five, that I’ve been working with for about the last year, and their goal was to put strategies in place to take better care of the people that refer to them but to recognize those moments when people could be referring them.

And so working with Matt, he’s amazing. He’s got your, your voice I could talk to him all day long right, and so I love my conversations with him.

But they were able to in they’re like their first 10 months of the year to generate 17 referrals, which they’ve never done before, specifically by focusing on relationships.

And I’m like, and Matt, you’re actually really good at this. You just needed to have a strategy behind it to be consistent with it, and then to use the right language. And they’re having amazing success, which is awesome.

Jay Tinkler: Amazing. I wanted to ask about the roll-on effect quickly, because from a financial standpoint, once you start to set up the systems and you set up the process, do you find that referred customers tend to be great referrers as well?

What’s your experience? I’m curious because of the fact you’ve got this great data set of clients that you see this playing out. Is there little things that you see as roll-on effects?

Stacey Brown Randall: So you have a greater potential to turn a referred client into a referral source.

But one of the hardest things for people to wrap their mind around is that some people just aren’t built to refer, which is why having strategies in place to identify the people who are or have the propensity to refer is actually really, really important.

Okay, so I’m gonna use my business as an example. I teach people every day how to generate more referrals. This is what we talk about, is receiving referrals, right? So obviously most people are like, well, all your clients probably refer you.

I’m like, nope. But I have some that do, and I have some that don’t, like every other business. And this is our topic. This is what we talk about.

And the crazy thing is, is Matt, that I was just talking about, he was referred to me by a brand agency in Australia that happened to stumble across my book. And she read it, and she was like, oh yeah, I got some clients that need this. She’s referred three people to me.

And so the idea there is, is that sometimes you just never know. Nobody walks around with a neon sign that says, I’m an awesome referral source, hit me up. Like they just don’t do it.

And people that you want to refer you, that you think will refer you, they will refer themselves. Yes, there are strategies in place to help like nurture them to think about referring you, but at the end of the day, not everybody will, and that’s okay. It’s about identifying those that can and will and then nurturing that.

Jay Tinkler: Incredible. We’re going to start to finish up Stacey, but I wanted to get super practical with you.

If I’m a business owner listening today, and I want to start to be a bit more proactive about the way I plan for, and I guess, encourage referrals in my business, what would be the top three things that I could action today?

So just really actionable things that I could do today that would start to, I guess, shift the needle or increase the warm referrals coming into my business.

Stacey Brown Randall: Yeah, so the number one thing is, is that you have to decide that you want referrals to be the third leg of your sales strategy.

So whatever you’re doing in the prospecting space, whatever you’re doing in the marketing space, good, keep them, there’s nothing wrong with prospecting and marketing, it’s all good, but you need to look at referrals differently.

And you need to be willing to have a strategy in place to actually generate referrals. So that means if you have a sales team, they have to start thinking about referrals differently than they have before.

Referrals do not belong in marketing, and they do not belong in prospecting. The activities are different because the humans at play are different.

So that’s the first thing is that you are actually going to have to shift your mindset to think this is what I want to do, because the truth is it’s a long-term play.

This is yes, I’m super excited to say like in nine or 10 months, Matt got 17 referrals, which is more than they’ve ever received in that amount of time.

But I’m more interested in Matt telling me three years from now, we kept it going and now we’re getting 50 referrals in a year or whatever the number is that he wants.

So it’s a long-term play. You have to think about it differently. You have to shift your mindset to think about it in that way and create a strategy around it.

Number two, you have no idea which direction to go until you know what you’re dealing with. And what you’re dealing with is, do you have referral sources now, current existing referral sources, or do you not?

Because you don’t know what strategy to deploy or even who to have a conversation with if that’s the tactic you want to take if you don’t know who they are.

So identifying your referral sources and going through that process, we just went through a little bit ago to actually identify who your referral sources are.

And then the third thing I would say is you really need to understand the science behind it. Because if I blew your mind when you asked me the question, why would you refer me? And I’m like, it’s not about you. And you were like, what?

If that blew your mind, that means you don’t know the science behind why referrals are actually happening. And I want you to know the science.

So we actually have a 20-minute training that you can get from our website. Just go to staceybrownrandall.com/roadmap. It is our referral ninja roadmap. There’s actually a quiz that goes along with it too.

But it is a 20-minute short training that you can watch that’ll explain to you the science behind how referrals work naturally the way I teach it. And then it’ll walk you through those steps again to identify your referral sources and give you resources to do that.

Because I fundamentally believe you cannot get to a place where we can unleash a referral explosion, whether you consume my free resources and make it happen, or you decide to work with me one day, right?

We can’t get to a place of unleashing your referral explosion until you believe it’s possible, you understand why it works, and then you actually know who we’re doing this for, being your referral sources. So those would be the three things I would tell someone to start with.

Jay Tinkler: Incredible. Incredible. I wish we could keep chatting, because I think we have to have another episode and go a bit deeper on a couple of different topics, because this is so much more I wanted to talk to you about, but we’ve run out of time.

But Stacey, I want to thank you for your time today. It’s so cool to sort of get into the weeds of this and really unpack the science of what’s going on.

If people want to connect with you, learn more about what you do, purchase your book, or just be part of your community, where do they go?

Stacey Brown Randall: Yes, all the ways, right? Like too many ways. I don’t wanna give too many calls to action of like how to connect with me. On most social media platforms, particularly LinkedIn, Instagram, and Facebook, you’ll find me at Stacey Brown Randall. I do use my full name, and Stacey is spelled with an E.

And then of course the website is a great home base to get started with, staceybrownrandall.com. And just search Amazon or wherever you like to buy books. For my book, Generating Business Referrals Without Asking, you can purchase the book wherever books are sold.

Jay Tinkler: Incredible. My final question, having helped thousands of businesses from around the world to unlock the power of the natural referral in your business, how do you build a business that people feel compelled to talk about?

Stacey Brown Randall: They need to be able to make this statement at the end of their time working together. I just didn’t expect that from, insert whatever it is that you do.

And it may be in terms of how you communicate. It may be in terms of how you make them feel. It could also be the results that you’re getting them.

But if you want to receive more referrals, it really does start with you being referable and having that referable client experience, and then have the strategies in place to keep those referrals consistently flowing in.

Jay Tinkler: Incredible. Guys, there is so much there to unpack and I hope that Stacey has shifted your mindset around how to start thinking about referrals in a much more natural and dare I say caring way to your referral sources, looking after them, taking care of them.

I think there’s some stuff there that we haven’t touched on around unexpected moments, really diving into what it really means to build long-term profitable partnerships.

I saw a statistic the other day that’s 87% of us believe that referrals is one of the number one sources of income in our business and yet less than 5% of us do anything strategic around it. It’s quite incredible.

Guys, go and get the book, have a read. That’s probably a great place to start and connect with Stacey because I think there’s some decent stuff there to actually unpack inside your business to improve the way in which you’re building referrals. Stacey, thank you for your time today.

Stacey Brown Randall: It was a pleasure. Thank you.

Jay Tinkler: Until next time, everybody, stay remarkable.

Jay Tinkler: Hey, thanks for joining me on my podcast takeover of the Roadmap to Referrals podcast. I hope you got a lot out of that episode, certainly I did and have been able to implement it since then in my business with great effect.

If you’re interested, jump over to our podcast, we’re called The Remarkable Project. We unpack the topic of how do you build a business that people feel compelled to talk about.

And connect directly with me on LinkedIn. I’d love to hear what you think. Anything out of Stacey’s episode that I’d love to hear what worked for you. It’d be really, really good to hear from you.

Of course, any other links to connect with us and what we’re up to you can find in the show notes. But until next time, I think it’s back to you, Stacey.

Stacey Brown Randall: I hope you enjoyed this episode and interview. And please don’t forget to show our host Jay some love by following and connecting with him on social media, checking out his podcast, The Remarkable Project, and of course, checking out his website as well.

Links to all of those resources for Jay will be put in our show notes page at StaceyBrownRandall.com/372.

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.