Ep #390: Don’t End the Year Without Doing This!

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 teach a science-backed methodology and framework that generates referrals without asking. This podcast and working with me is all about taking control of your referrals on your terms. Join me every week as we break it down.

Okay, so last episode, we talked about the gratitude effect, but specifically how I look at gratitude within my referrals without asking methodology, how it’s kind of like rooted through what we do, but specifically in how I asked you to answer a question.

Now, the question I asked you to answer with last week’s episode was, do I believe that it is the right thing to do to take care of the people, the referral sources, your referral sources, who take care of my business by sending me referrals.

Let me just say it again, just in case anyone missed last week’s episode. Do I believe it is the right thing to do to take care of the people, your referral sources, who take care of my business by sending me referrals?

This question really puts a foundation in place of not only your belief of, yes, I believe that I should take care of the people who take care of my business, but it also drives us to take action.

It’s not just about being grateful for these folks that refer business to us, who refer clients to us, and it doesn’t allow us to sit in our intentions, our best of intentions. It really drives us to take action.

I’m guessing if you’re back this week for this week’s episode, then there’s probably a part of you where your answer was yes, or maybe you’re just super curious what comes next, right?

Because at the end of that episode, I said there’s a few things that I need you to tackle before the end of the year.

So if you’re listening to this episode, episode 390, if you’re listening to this on the podcast, or you may be watching this on YouTube. But if you’re listening to this episode on the day that it drops, you still have multiple weeks in December left to get a few things done.

Now, in fairness, I recognize I may be adding these things to your to-do list, which is probably already full of things to do, but trust me, they’re very, very important.

Alright, so if your answer is yes, and you’ve got really five weeks, if you think about it, December has five weeks in it. And if you’re trying to like, wrap it all up by December 19th, I know, me, I am, right? Then you’ve got three weeks, okay?

But somewhere between three, four, and five weeks to get this stuff done. I have full confidence in you, full, full confidence in your ability to do this.

But what I’m gonna talk to you about today is the action I need you to take before the end of the year if you answered last week’s episode question with a resounding yes.

So the answer is yes, I do believe that it is the right thing to do to take care of the people, my referral sources, who take care of my business because they refer to me. Then we need to tackle just a couple of things before the end of the year.

Because end of the year is no time, no time, my friends, to ignore your business’s most valuable asset, your referral sources, the people who refer you.

So I’m actually just gonna encourage you to do two, dos, two pretty simple things before the end of the year.

No massive list of the 12 things you should do or could do or really, really need to do, just two. All you need is to do these two things before the end of the year.

Now, let me give my disclaimer. I’m not guaranteeing you that you do these two things and you will unleash a river of referrals before the end of the year or maybe when the new year kicks off. That’s not my guarantee, that’s not my promise, right?

But I do know doing these two things will put you in a position to really end the year referral strong and do right by your referral sources. So what are these two things? Let’s get to it.

Number one, acknowledge them. First you acknowledge your referral sources by knowing who they are. And quite frankly, by keeping a list of their names. That’s really what I want you to do when you think about acknowledging.

You can’t think differently, take care of differently, do anything differently for the people who refer clients to you if you don’t know who they are. You have to know who they are.

Now, I know in your mind you may have a list of people that you wish were referring to you. That’s a different list, right?

Right now, we’re just focused on the list of the people who are referring to you, who we call, internally with my clients, we refer to those as our existing referral sources, right?

If someone’s never referred you, we call those potential referral sources, or sometimes I call them the soon to be referral sources.

But we’re talking about the people who have referred business to you. And it may not even just be this year. Maybe they referred business to you this year, right? But maybe there’s also other people who referred business to you the year prior, right?

It’s okay to look at this more than just in the last six months or the last year. I encourage you to look back over the last couple of years, at least two. Maybe even more, right?

But you can’t acknowledge and think different and feel different and act different towards these people if you don’t know who they are. And that means you got to write their names down.

Now, in some cases, I will tell my clients like, hey, it’s not such a bad idea to have a list of your referral sources printed out and placed somewhere around you, whether it’s on a wall or on your table or on your desk, right?

And maybe you have it on your screensaver of your phone. That would be really cool to do, right? I don’t know how my daughter would feel about that if she came off my screensaver. It feels like the place of prominence when she’s there above her brothers.

But the idea here is, is that you need to keep these folks front and center. So I want you to have their names written down.

Of course, I keep this stuff in my online, like my cloud-based database, right? And then I also have them in a spreadsheet. We kind of do a little bit of double duty here because they serve different purposes in my business.

But it’s also a good idea to maybe have those names written down in front of you, visually, where you see them, up on a corkboard, right? Maybe that’s the right place for you to put them.

Maybe when you turn on your computer, it’s the screensaver on your computer. Hey, here, these are your referral sources. These are the people who refer business to you. All great steps.

You don’t need to do all of these things, but you need to at least know who they are and have their names written down and be keeping a list of their names at all times because your ability to acknowledge them first comes with knowing who they are.

So take a little bit of time. Look back where all of your clients and then all of your prospects who did not become clients, figure out where they came from.

And if any of them were referred to you, capture the name of the person who did the referring. Write that down. That is a referral source. You need to know who they are.

Because you need to start acknowledging them yourself internally. Before you actually do anything to acknowledge them externally, you really need to focus on acknowledging them internally first.

And that’s what this step one is all about. This is not a complicated step. I’m not asking you to do anything other than know who your referral sources are so that you can start acknowledging them differently to yourself internally.

You just, when you know somebody who sent you a bunch of business, you just will think of them differently, once you are, like you know for a fact, these are who these people are.

Once you see their names written down or typed up, you’ll be like, oh wow, I just feel different, think different. You’re seeing things different, right?

So that acknowledgement, even though the number one tip I’m giving you right now is to acknowledge them, I’m really asking you to start by acknowledging them internally for yourself before you do anything externally.

Okay, so like I said, there’s just two. So what’s the second one? What’s the second thing I want you to do that I don’t want the year to end without you doing this?

Well, you probably can guess where this is going. Thank them.

Now, if you’re a client of mine, or if you’re an alumni client of mine, you know this time of year, we are sending a specific touchpoint with specific language to cap off our year of showing thanks and gratitude, right? There’s something very specific that I teach my clients to do.

But even if you’re not a client of mine, this is all rooted in you understanding and knowing the importance of thanking them for the referrals they have sent to you.

Thanking them for putting their reputation on the line and sending business to you, right? So your ability to thank them is really important.

Now, here’s the thing. I know what some of you are thinking. How do I have to thank them, Stacey? Well, if you’re a longtime listener of this podcast, you already know the answer to that. A handwritten thank you note.

Because a handwritten thank you note says something that no other form of communication can say. And a handwritten thank you note says, I’m worth your time because it takes time to write them and nobody does them.

I have actually been saying that nobody sends thank you notes for more than a decade in this business. And then of course recognize it long before that, right? With anything else that I’ve been doing.

So people don’t write enough thank you notes as it is. But you need to thank them. And a handwritten thank you note is a great way to do that, right?

No, you don’t have to spend, send an expensive gift at the end of the year for Christmas time or Hanukkah or end of the year, right? You can, that’s cool too, but you don’t have to.

It doesn’t fit in everyone’s budget and maybe you do other things. And so it doesn’t make sense to send a holiday gift at the end of the year, but you do need to thank them.

And I believe the number one best way to do that, of course, is in a handwritten thank you note. But what if where your referral sources live, it’s really hard to get mail to them?

Okay, well, the next best thing after a handwritten thank you note is to send a personalized video. Which doesn’t mean film one video very generically and then send the same video to all of your referral sources, whether that’s six or it’s 16, or it’s 36.

No, that means record individual videos to each of your referral sources, very important, thanking them. Personalizing it by saying their name so they know it’s actually for them and not a blanket video.

So it always matters. It always matters when you personalize things. The handwritten thank you note, I just think is very special.

And I know some people think, well, people get a lot of Christmas cards, they get a lot of stuff this time of year, right?

The gifts are coming. The Amazon packages are arriving. I know mine have already started. Yes. And it’s still nice to get a card that’s different this time of year as well, that thanks them.

So thank you card, yes, or if you’re like, ah, I can’t mail to all my referral sources, then send a video.

Outside of that though, those are really the only two things I want you to consider doing, right? So card, video, all right?

So again, if you’re a client of mine or alumni client of mine, you already know exactly what this touch point is going to look like and exactly what you’re going to say.

But at the heart of it, we’re just making sure that our referral sources know at the end of the year we are thanking them for what they have done.

So the first thing I ask you to do, acknowledge them. The second thing I’m asking you to do, thank them. All right? These two things are simple enough. They truly are.

And you are more than capable of doing it, and you are more than capable of getting it done in the next five weeks.

And I say that as somebody who always feels the crushing sense of to-dos this time of year, like probably all of you listening or watching this, right? I’m not immune to that. I know you’re not immune to that.

But taking the time to thank and acknowledge your business’s biggest asset should be something we are always making time for. They are that important.

The question that remains now is, now you know what to do. Will you do it? Will you do two of these things? I know you can.

Now I’m hoping you’ll tell me that you did. I would love to hear from you as soon as you’ve done these two things. Please reach out to me via email, or of course, you can always slide into my DMs on LinkedIn or Instagram.

And before I let you go, can I ask a favor? If you’ve purchased and read my new book, The Referable Client Experience, would you mind going to leave a written review and preferably, my preference of course, it’s with a five-star rating as well.

Of course, I want it to be honest for you. Our goal is to hit 50 reviews in the next three weeks.

So we’re trying to hit 50 reviews on Amazon before December 19^th, which is what I feel like most people will start shutting everything down and kind of try to enjoy the last two weeks of the year. That’s definitely my plan with my company.

So can you help me out? Would you be able to go leave a written review, a five-star rating and written review over on Amazon to help me get to 50 reviews before December 19th? That would be amazing.

Okay, so as we wrap up this episode, you can access the transcripts of this episode, plus of course the book links and anything else you need to know in the show notes page at StaceyBrownRandall.com/390.

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