Ep #380: Referral Q&A

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.

More than a decade ago, I developed a science-backed methodology and framework to generate referrals without asking. As I’ve refined it, I’ve had the privilege to help thousands of business owners take control of referrals on their terms. Join me every week, right here, as I break it down for you.

So I am just finishing up two days of my Referral Accelerator, which that means if you’re paying attention to when the referral accelerator was and when this episode is going live, I’m at the 11th hour to get it recorded.

This is not a situation of batching in advance. This is, oh my goodness, this episode needs to be to Kathy, my assistant, to get the video up on YouTube, and Chris, my podcast editor, to get it edited and into your earbuds.

So, this is not one of those moments where I’m like, I’m so ahead. This is one of those moments that’s like, I’ve been prepping all week to get ready for our Referral Accelerator, and I fell behind and did not get this episode recorded, but that’s okay because I’m doing it now.

The Referral Accelerator is my two-day in-person workshop where a small group of business owners come to me right now, of course, here in Charlotte. We may be taking the Accelerator on the road next year, so stay tuned for that.

And if you think the Referral Accelerator should come to your city or your town, you want me to host it there, let me know. I’m definitely looking for places to host it, so not everybody has to fly all the way to Charlotte to do the Accelerator with me.

But we’ve done two of these this year, and right as I got back to the office, I mean, I’ll be honest, I’m kind of tired. I mean, I went all day yesterday and all day today on teaching the things, all the things that business owners need to know about putting a referral generation machine in place.

And we go like all morning, all afternoon, both days. So I am a little tired, but that’s okay. I think I’m more like, I guess the terminology is like punch drunk happy, but I’m not drunk. Anyways, it’s just high on adrenaline, right?

And I was getting ready to record this episode and I got a video. I got an email with a video on it from one of the attendees, Candice, and she shot the best video for me. And I was like, you know what, this is how I’m going to start this episode.

So we are going to run the video that Candice recorded for me once she got back to her hotel room after the second day of our in-person workshop, the Referral Accelerator, and you can hear what she has to say about how valuable these two days were for her.

It was incredible. And I love what she says about the mentality she took when she showed up to spend those two days with me. So let’s get to Candice’s video, and then we’ll come back to the episode.

Candice Frazer: Hi, I’m Candice Frazer, and I just came out of Stacey Brown Randall’s Referral Accelerator Workshop.

It’s a two-day workshop where Stacey takes you through the best and brightest and helps you to build your plan in very short order on how to build out your referral program for your business. Not even a program, though. It’s more of a proactive referral generation plan and an ability to help and serve others.

I’m quite literally two hours past the very end of this workshop. And let me tell you, I drank from a fire hose, but there was a mentality that I showed up with. I didn’t come to play. I came to learn a little bit, but more than anything else, I came to win.

I dug in, I did the homework assignments. I brought a friend with me who will ultimately become my accountability partner and I’m ready to go.

The amazing thing about this workshop is you get Stacey Brown Randall’s depth and level of expertise to help guide you. And in more than one instance, I looked at Stacey, and I asked her a question, and she was able to pull on over a decade of experience and helping me to guide something that felt authentic and true for me.

So for those who are thinking about attending, I’m here to tell you two hours past the workshop, absolutely worth it. I was jumping into activities straight away during the workshop, getting responses from potential referral sources and potential clients.

And I do believe that this is going to change the way that I operate and help to increase the amount of referrals that I have coming into my business. So I’m here to say, if you’re thinking about do it, do it, but don’t come to play, come to win.

Stacey Brown Randall: Alright, welcome back. I hope you enjoyed what Candice had to share about why she chose to attend the Referral Accelerator and the mentality she brought to it and the work that she put into place.

She was an ideal, ideal attendee because she absorbed everything. She took a ton of notes and when it was time to do an activity, she did it. She was like, I’m knocking this out. I’m getting it done. And she had all of her pre-work done. She was just a dream.

So Candice, thank you for your kind words. Thank you for encouraging other business owners to join me at a future Referral Accelerator.

We won’t have any more accelerators in 2025, but don’t worry, we’ve got more coming back in 2026. Tentatively right now, we’re looking at the end of January, early February for our next Referral Accelerator.

Okay, so for today’s episode, recently on LinkedIn, I posted a poll about thank you cards. So I wanted to post a poll to ask a pretty easy question, which was, do you take time to handwrite a card and mail it every time after you receive a referral?

The voting options in this poll were yes every time, most of the time, or the last option, no, but I mean to. I assume people mean to, even if their answer is no, I would like to think people are like, no, I’m not gonna do that. Those people aren’t usually in my world, so they probably wouldn’t have seen the poll anyways.

So the percentages of each option, like the number of votes that each option has received, has definitely fluctuated over the course of this poll being live.

Now, by the time you listen to this episode, the poll may have closed, because I know LinkedIn like only gives us like a week’s worth of having a poll be live, I think.

So you may be listening to this, maybe when the episode drops on the Tuesday it’s supposed to drop on, you’ll be able to go in and vote on that poll, more than likely you’ll be able to go and see the results.

So I don’t know what the final results are. But I do know at the time that I decided to record this episode, there were more yes votes, like yes, every time I stop and hand write a thank you card when I receive a referral.

And I gotta tell you, that makes me so happy. As I was watching the fluctuation in the votings, the yeses were not winning. At least the times that I would go in and check it, I’d be like, why are there more most of the time in nos than yeses?

So we even actually sent the poll to the people who receive emails from me. Those are on my email list. And I was like, if you’re on this email list and you haven’t for a while, more than likely you have learned the lesson of writing thank you notes. So go vote on this poll.

Because I actually wanted to have more yeses than most of the time or no. But we’ll see how the voting actually all kind of shakes out. But at the time of this recording, there were more yes votes and there were no’s or most of the time.

In addition to the voting on that poll, it also brought up from two folks on LinkedIn, two really good questions, and I wanted to answer them here.

We haven’t done a 10th episode Q&A in a while, so I wanted to bring that back, and I thought, hey, this is perfect. I’ve got these questions that popped in on the LinkedIn poll.

Why don’t I go ahead and answer them for the benefit of you, my listener, here on the podcast as well, or of course, if you’re watching this on YouTube, then the benefit of the viewers who are watching this video. So here I’m going to answer the two questions that I received.

Now, if you’re new around here, we used to do like every 10th episode, I would do a question and answer episode where listeners or viewers could send in questions and I would answer them.

And we will still continue to do those moving forward. Obviously, we’re doing it here for episode 380, but we have gotten away a little bit from it more recently just because we had some other things on the editorial calendar for the podcast. But I’m excited to bring it back and answer these two questions for you.

OK, so the first question came from Gabrielle, and she said, “I usually send them a little treat of some kind, like chocolates or a gift card. Does that count?” So instead of sending a handwritten thank you card, she’s usually sending some type of small treat, like she said, a gift card, chocolate, something like that.

So here’s how I responded to her. And if you’re a longtime listener, you already know this answer, but for everybody else, and maybe I’m having to say it again for the folks in the back of the room, here’s what I would tell you about receiving referrals.

When you receive a referral, all your referral sources need is a handwritten note to be thanked and acknowledge that you received a referral. I recommend that you do not include a gift with that thank you note that is being written specifically for one referral received.

One of the reasons for that is that it sets the expectation that that’s what they get for referrals. And in my world, what I want you doing is yes, sending a handwritten thank you note every time they send you a referral, but also having a plan on the back end where you’re actually taking care of your referral sources with a referral experience.

So the ability to take care of your referral sources throughout the course of the year, this referral experience is a 12-month plan with five, six, maybe seven touch points or outreaches that you’re going to be doing that impact how your referral sources feel and, of course, keep you top of mind.

And it allows you to extend gratitude and thankfulness and, of course, plant the very important referral seeds.

So instead of sending a gift, small or large, when you receive a referral, that’s like almost like a one and done. Hey, I gave him a gift because they referred me. I want you to do better than that. I want you to do more than that.

I want you to thank them in a handwritten card for the referral they sent you. But I also want you to have an experience that’s kind of happening in the background that’s continuing to show up and make sure they know that you care.

And of course, throughout that plan, if you decide to include a gift, great. Don’t include five to six, seven gifts. That’s actually kind of creepy. I feel the need to say that to folks listening.

So do you need to include a gift, or should you do a gift, a small treat in lieu of a card? No, send the handwritten card. And then of course, have a plan, a referral experience plan of 12 months long, five, six, seven touch points that really impact how your referral sources feel and keeps you top of mind.

OK, the next question that was asked within this poll is from Jesse. And Jesse asked that a sticking point for him is getting the addresses he doesn’t have.

This is very, very normal. I actually probably get this question from almost everybody that I work with or everybody that reads my book that’s like, OK, I’ve got this script for how I send a thank you card, but how do I mail it if I don’t have their address?

So two things I always tell folks. Number one, you can look up addresses online. If it’s a business, then usually you can find their mailing address on their website, on the contact form page, or maybe somewhere in the privacy discloser or the terms of service.

They’re supposed to have an address where they collect mail in their privacy policy or terms of service. Or you may find it on the contact page. So if you can look it up online, do a little sleuthing, do a little Googling, and see if you can find that address online.

But if that doesn’t work, then the next thing I would want you to consider is just reaching out to the person and asking them for their mailing address.

The script that I gave to Jesse, and I want to give to you guys as well is really simple. It’s just basically, hey, I have something I want to mail you, but I don’t have your address. Is there a mailing address you’re comfortable sharing with me?

That’s it. It’s like two sentences, right? You’re not telling them what you’re mailing. You’re creating a little bit of a mystery, right? But you’re also giving them an out if they don’t want to share their address.

But you’re saying, do you have an address you’re comfortable sharing with me? And that language is really, really important. As long as you’re treating their address with respect and care, it makes you sound normal. So like they’re more likely to actually give the address.

And of course you’re going to be thanking them for a referral, so it’ll be fun whatever shows up in the mail for them. In this case, it should be a handwritten thank you card.

Now, thank you cards usually bring up way more questions than just these two, but those were the two that were raised, so I wanted to go ahead and answer them.

Of course, I’m a big proponent and believer in your thank you cards for your referral sources when they send you a referral. I’m a big, huge proponent of those things being handwritten and then being mailed.

But I don’t care necessarily as much as what type of cards you use, just make sure it’s an appropriate thank you type card.

Okay, if you wanna get more resources mentioned in the transcripts of this episode, you can find them on the show notes page at StaceyBrownRandall.com/380. And that is Stacey with an E.

If you are watching this online as a video on YouTube, of course, all of the resources and the link to the transcripts that I mentioned are below the video.

Alright, thanks for making it to the end of this episode. Until next week, take control of your referrals and build a referable business. Bye for now.