TSE 1023: Generating Business Referrals...Without Asking

When you bring value to customers and care for your clients, you’ve taken an important first step toward generating business referrals… without asking. Stacey Brown Randall considers herself a contrarian in the sales world, because she believes that if you’re asking for referrals, you’re doing it wrong. She helps small business owners and solopreneurs generate referrals and she dispels myths about referrals. She didn’t set out to focus on referrals, but after her first business failed, she discovered that business owners have to figure out how to touch business development every day. You also have to figure out the ways in which you’re willing to do it. TONS OF OPTIONS Sellers have countless options for bringing in clients and prospects to their pipelines, but they have to be options that the sellers are willing to do day-in, day-out. When her own business failed, she asked herself what went wrong. Although there was more than one mistake along the way, she realized that she never figured out how to fill her pipeline consistently. She never found an activity she was willing to do on a regular basis. She researched and found that referrals offer an amazing way to bring in clients, and they’re often quicker to close. They also trust you before they ever meet you, and they are less price sensitive. Everything about referrals is just better. REFERRAL PIECE Stacey was determined to figure out the referral piece when she launched her second business, but all the information she could find said you had to ask for referrals. To her, asking for a referral felt like a second-cousin to a cold call. She didn’t want to do it. In order to help her second business be successful, she decided to figure out how to generate referrals without asking. Once she did that, she moved into teaching other people how to succeed in the same way. REFERRAL MISTAKES Referrals are not about you. If you ask for them, or make them part of your marketing plan and develop promotions around them, you’re making the referrals about you. Stacey discovered that the sales process has three buckets: prospecting activities, marketing activities, and referral activities. What we do to generate referrals looks different than what we do compared to prospecting and marketing. When I’m in prospecting mode, I’m looking for someone who will say yes within 30 days. With marketing, it’s a little more long-term but there is always an ultimate mindset. Referrals, however, require different activities and a different mindset. The biggest mistake people make is treating their referral process like part of the prospecting effort. Or, they think about it like marketing and make it promotional and gimmicky. GREAT WORK If you’re going to hand off the client at some point, you have to make sure it’s a great process and great client experience. Nobody refers to crappy work and no one refers a choppy customer experience. That’s a foundational piece, and none of these suggestions will work if you aren’t referrable. You must do the things that make people want to refer you. The most important person in a referral process isn’t you and it isn’t your prospect; it’s your referral source. You must understand who is referring you. ACTION STEPS Begin by pulling out your list of clients, at least from the last two years, and figure out how those clients learned about you. (Pull data from as many years as you’re willing to do the work for.) You may have this information in your CRM, or you may have to do some digging. Determine who those people are that already...