Ep #433: What Must Exist for 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.

Our series continues with what people get wrong about referrals, what I like to call the referral fundamentals.

These are the things I need you to understand about referrals, specifically if you want to be able to generate them without asking for them, without incentivizing or paying kickbacks for them, without turning them into a marketing gimmick or feeling like you are networking like your life depends on it.

We don’t want to do anything with manipulation, and we want to stay focused on our relationships. So for that to happen and for referrals to come from that, we have to understand these fundamentals.

So over the last couple of episodes, I have been breaking down these fundamentals one by one.

So you can of course find in the show notes page of this episode, the previous episodes where we talked about the fundamentals, which the show notes page for this episode is StaceyBrownRandall.com/433.

Now just to give you a quick overview so you know what those missing fundamentals are, though I do want you to go back and watch the videos on YouTube or catch them on your favorite podcast listening app for the podcast.

Definitely catch the earlier episodes, but we have our first referral fundamental, which is how you define referrals. You’d be shocked how many people get that wrong, though they think they have it right.

And then of course referral fundamental shift number two is where referrals fit in your sales strategy, in your business development strategy, not where most people try to shove it. So that’s another one you’re going to want to pay attention to.

And then of course we had our referral fundamental shift number three, which is really the foundational philosophy of what you have to understand about how I teach referrals and the referrals without asking methodology, like what is the heartbeat of the entire strategy, right?

The heartbeat of the entire methodology. Okay, now this brings us to referral fundamental number four.

All right, this is a fun one for me to talk about because it’s the thing that people never think about when they think about referrals, but it’s a huge part of why they actually exist and why they exist in your business.

Whether that is sporadically or that is happening pretty regularly or it’s not happening at all. And that is understanding what must exist for a referral to actually happen.

Have you ever thought about it that way? Have you ever thought about what actually has to happen, right?

Like out there in the universe, that’s not actually how I mean it, but what actually has to happen for a referral to show up in your business?

What are the domino effect, the steps that actually have to happen earlier for that referral to show up in an email in your business or in a text message for you within your business?

Think back to actually what is actually transpiring step-by-step and where it starts long before that email or text message that says, hey, I got a referral for you, right? Long before that actually ever happens, there are two things that are happening first.

And these are the two things that must exist. Now, they are desire and opportunity. Those are the two things that have to exist with your referral source for them to refer to you.

Now, most people hear that desire and opportunity, and they start thinking to themselves, okay, let’s talk about control, right? Like which ones do I control? And I always say, I always like to kind of like, usually I do this in presentations.

So if you’re listening to this episode or watching this on YouTube, and then you see me in the future in a live presentation or maybe a virtual presentation, you’ll already know the answer, but don’t spoil it for everybody else.

But what people don’t understand is that you actually only control one of them, right? So if desire and opportunity have to exist, and we want to have some measure of control over referrals, it’s not something you can control step-by-step-by-step, people want to believe that you can.

And so the idea here is that if there’s desire and opportunity and you only control one of them, do you know which one you control?

Now, usually when I ask this question inside a live presentation, whether that’s in-person or virtual, most people, particularly if it’s virtual, they’re going to be hopping into the chat and all I’m going to see, not all, but the majority of what I’ll see will be opportunity as the guess.

It’s the same thing when I ask folks in the audience to raise their hand. Who thinks that you control desire? Who thinks you control opportunity?

And everyone’s like, opportunity. But the truth is you actually only control desire.

Now, in fairness, let me explain what I mean about desire and opportunity. Desire is the desire your referral source feels to refer to you, to pick you to refer to.

Let’s be honest. I am going to put a gander out there that a hundred percent of the people either listening to this podcast, watching this video now, and in the future, are not the only person that does what they do. Most of us have competition.

It’s just the nature of how business works. And hopefully you operate from a mindset of abundance and not a mindset of scarcity with that competition.

But the idea is, is you’re probably not the only attorney in your area. You may not even be the only attorney in your firm. And you know you’re not the only attorney in your city or area or state or within the area that you operate.

You know you’re not the only interior designer. You know you’re probably not the only leadership consultant.

And so when you think about what you do, the majority of the time, you know you have competition. Sometimes your competition is localized. You may not be the only realtor or interior designer or architect in your area.

And for others of you, that level of competition is not just localized or regionalized. It is national or international because you can do your work anywhere, but that doesn’t mean you’re the only one who does it.

So why does a referral source pick you? Well, that is how you develop the desire within that referral source to pick you.

And that is the one you can control because that is the one that comes from the relationship that you have with your referral source.

So desire is definitely one you want to make sure that you’re actually being intentional about, making sure that your referral sources want to refer to you.

That is a big one. And it’s definitely something for you to know and understand and pay attention to.

So desire, that’s all based on the relationship you have with the referral source and their desire to pick you over anybody else that’s a competitor of yours that they could refer someone to.

The second piece, though, that also has to occur for a referral to exist is opportunity, meaning your referral source actually has to see or know of an opportunity or stumble across one or stumble into one.

The opportunity has to exist, which means the referral source has to have a conversation with someone who has a problem that you can solve. And that person has to be interested in solving that problem.

Like lots of us have problems we don’t want to solve. But if somebody wants to be referred to you, that means that they’re interested enough in solving the problem that they’re willing to be referred to you and have a conversation with you.

Opportunity, though, you don’t control. You don’t know when your referral sources are going to come across opportunity to refer you.

So which is why on some level we want to be strategic about who we’re cultivating our relationships with and who we’re cultivating referrals from. And then also make sure we understand who’s best to refer to us.

That doesn’t mean you won’t get referrals from people you don’t see it coming from. That’s awesome and amazing when it happens.

But if we’re going to build a strategy and we’re going to put resources behind that strategy, and we are going to put time and energy behind that strategy, we want to make sure we’re also knowing who is actually more likely to have opportunity to refer potential clients to us.

So you need both. You need the desire that they will pick you and that they come across the opportunity to know people who actually need what you do. Desire and opportunity.

I know we want to control both. Lots of people will teach you that you can control opportunity and you bet you can guess if you’ve been around for a long time or maybe even a short time, you can guess the tactics that people will teach you that allows you to try to control opportunity.

You’re right. It’s all the tactics we hate which are telling you that if you want to control opportunity, you’ve got to ask people to refer you or you’ve got to offer to pay them a kickback to refer you or you’ve got to turn your referrals into a marketing gimmick so you can get their attention so that they will then refer you, right?

The tactics that we loathe, and we do not like, the tactics are there and they’ve existed forever because what those tactics were, the whole point of those tactics was to do was to try to see if we can ferret out opportunity.

See if we can find some opportunity. But that’s the piece you don’t control. You can try to control it if you want to ask and compensate and manipulate and turn your referrals into a marketing gimmick.

But the people I work with, that’s not what we want to do. It doesn’t feel right. It feels awkward and desperate.

We also know that it’s damaging our relationships and it certainly doesn’t position us as the expert in the marketplace, right?

We would rather generate those referrals in a way that feels better for all involved and that’s the referrals without asking methodology. So keep that in mind.

What must exist is desire and opportunity and where desire and opportunity come from and understanding more about them, it is also based on understanding the science behind referrals.

Now the whole point of this referral fundamental series is to keep these episodes short and sweet. I know fourth quarter’s coming. It’s like barreling down at us on the calendar, isn’t it?

So I’m trying to keep these episodes short and sweet so that you can get what you need, shift your thinking about referrals and start taking some different actions based on what you’re learning.

So I’m not going to dive into all the science behind referrals, but it is something if you don’t know the science behind referrals, you need, you need, you have to, you’ve got to take some time and understand the science behind why referrals happen.

So two resources for you, both free where you can go check this out, is you can look at episode 311 where I break down the science behind referrals or you can actually check out our free on-demand video that you can go watch.

It’s like seven minutes or maybe just under seven minutes where I break down the big pieces you need to understand about science and the science behind referrals.

And the link for that is StaceyBrownRandall.com/science. And of course, we’ll put that link on the show notes page for this episode as well.

So that is our fourth referral fundamental that you need to know and you need to understand is what must exist for referrals to happen, desire, and opportunity.

And that is all based on the fact that there is science as to why referrals happen and there’s referral science and you need to know it. You need to understand it. It’s very, very important.

Now this isn’t our last referral fundamental. We’ve got a couple more coming up that we’ll dive into over the next couple weeks.

You can check out all the episodes that are a part of this referral fundamental series covering what people get wrong about referrals or what you just think you know, but actually it’s false information.

And you can find that in the links below the videos to the rest of the series or of course on the show notes page for this episode which is StaceyBrownRandall.com/433.

Now remember, please take a minute to like this video, leave me a five-star rating for the episode, and of course subscribe to this show, The Roadmap to Referrals, whether that means you’re on YouTube watching this or you’re listening to me on your favorite podcast listening app.

I also love feedback so don’t be shy. Drop me a comment. Let me know what you think about desire and opportunity must exist for referrals to exist. Bye for now.