Ep #432: What We Never Compromise with Referrals

Stacey Brown Randall: Hey there. Do you love referrals but hate asking for them? Well, then you’ve come to the right place. This is the Roadmap to Referrals podcast, and I’m your host, Stacey Brown Randall.

Well, our series continues with what people get wrong about referrals, what I call the referral fundamentals.

If you want to generate referrals based on the methodology of how I teach, which means generating them without asking, without incentivizing, without turning them into a marketing gimmick, or without feeling like you’re manipulating people, well, it starts with you seeing referrals differently, what you think about referrals, how you see them in your business.

So first, we’re going to shift your mindset, and that’s what this series is all about. I want you to see referrals differently. So let’s get with it with referral fundamental number three.

Okay, so when we think about where all of the advice comes from that I teach, where the advice, where the frameworks, where the methodology, where the 13 years that I have been pulling all this information together, and working on it with clients, and seeing their success, and tweaking what needs to be tweaked, and building this body of work that is now a proven process and a roadmap that people use to grow their business with referrals, it all starts with one foundational philosophy.

And the foundational philosophy is one sentence, one easy sentence, which means this is going to be a super short episode, because I don’t need to unpack one sentence for, you know, minutes and minutes and minutes, but I will give a little context.

So the fundamental, or I guess I would say the foundational philosophy of how I teach referrals comes from this one statement, which is, I believe that you should not have to compromise who you are or your relationships to grow your business by referrals.

That’s it. But it is fundamental, it is foundational, and it is breathed into everything that I teach my clients.

I just don’t believe you should be compromising yourself or compromising others and taking advantage of others and manipulating others to be able to get referrals.

And I believe when you ask people for referrals, when you offer a kickback under the table to pay somebody to refer you, when you are constantly turning referrals into some marketing gimmick, like in your email signature, or in a 12 drip campaign email reminding people that you’re there for referrals, I feel like you start to compromise, that you start to manipulate or compromise the people who have the greatest opportunity to refer to you.

Now, there are some people who will completely disagree with me. They’ll be like, no, this is going after what you want, asking for what you want, going after the business. That’s their opinion, and they get to believe that way.

That’s not mine. And when you decide to let an expert like myself or anyone into your earbuds, if you’re listening to this on your podcast or if you’re watching me onto your computer screen as you watch me talk about this on YouTube, when you allow any expert into your business, into your brain, which is effectively then allowing them into your business because it could shift and change how you do things in your business, you need to be really clear with the foundational principles of what they stand for and what they believe.

Now, I don’t think anybody gets out of bed and says, who can I manipulate today? I mean, okay, maybe there are some people, those that are dead inside, those that only care about themselves.

I do think some people fall into behaviors and patterns that they don’t actually intend to fall into, and they stopped ever thinking about how they showed up to other people when they fell into that pattern, like how they were received by other people.

I see that a lot, right? This is definitely some of that personality-driven stuff that I will see from time to time.

But I believe that most people don’t wake up thinking, who can I manipulate today? And that’s actually not what they’re ultimately after either.

But for some reason, along the way with referrals, that became the leading voice of advice. And lots of experts will teach you that it’s okay to ask.

Usually, those experts are okay teaching you to ask because they have no problem asking.

And I believe that people who are comfortable asking for referrals are a rare, rare unicorn breed. They just are. They’re just comfortable asking.

And that works for them and for the other small number of unicorns, I think, that are out there in the world.

For the majority of us, that’s not what is comfortable. That’s not what makes us so excited when it comes to referrals, right? The idea of asking for them, we’re like, ew, no, thank you.

We love the idea of getting them and what they say about us. But we’re like, ooh, asking for them? No, I got to pay a kickback and tell no one about it to get that referral.

No. What if the client finds out, right? It’s just a fundamental positioning that you have that is a part of who you are.

And I’m not saying somebody’s right and somebody’s wrong, though. I actually think as I’m talking through this, I am saying someone’s right and someone’s wrong. And I like the way I do it.

But what I am saying is that for me, I want to feel comfortable and confident. I want both of those things to be true when I’m generating referrals.

And what I have found as I generate referrals for my own business and I show my clients how to generate referrals for their business is that being comfortable and confident are not mutually exclusive.

And both of them are together where you can also protect the relationship. You can protect the people you know, and you can protect your own relationship with yourself. You can protect yourself as well.

And those things don’t have to be mutually exclusive. Those two things can be true at the same time. You can generate referrals in a way that works and a way that works for you.

Someone who is a unicorn, who’s totally comfortable asking or paying for referrals, and they lead with that, I’m not for them. We’re all aware of that. I’ve never tried to be for those folks.

And they usually come and find me and then excuse themselves, which is great. But for the majority of us, the rest of us left behind that are like, hey, I don’t want to ask. I don’t want to incentivize.

I don’t want to manipulate. I don’t want to feel like I show up at a networking event, and all I’m trying to do is put 50 cards out in people’s hands and hope they’ll remember me.

For those who don’t want to show up like that, that’s what I teach. That’s what my referrals without asking methodology, framework, strategies, tactics, language is all about.

And it comes from this simple philosophy that you do not have to compromise yourself or your relationships to grow your business and to grow your business by referrals. That’s it.

That’s the fundamental shift for today. I thought this would be shorter. I know this is a short episode.

I still thought it’d be shorter. And look at me. I had to get out a little bit of a soapbox, didn’t I? I’m very passionate about this stuff.

Okay, so you can check out all of the episodes that are a part of the Referral Fundamentals series covering what people get wrong and what they just mistake when it comes to referrals.

You can do that in the links below the video or, of course, on the show notes page for this episode, which is StaceyBrownRandall.com/432.

Remember to like this video, leave us a five-star rating for the episode and, of course, subscribe to the show, whether that’s on YouTube or on your favorite podcast listening app.

And I also love feedback. So don’t be shy. Drop me a comment below.

All right. Bye for now.