Ep #357: An Attorney’s Referral Hot Seat

Summary

Roadmap to Referrals: Ep #357 - An Attorney’s Referral Hot Seat

Release Date: April 15, 2025
Host: Stacey Brown Randall

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Introduction to the Episode

In Episode #357 of the Roadmap to Referrals podcast, host Stacey Brown Randall delves into a practical, real-world application of her referral strategies through a live hot seat session featuring Christine, a family law and estate planning attorney from Tampa, Florida. This episode exemplifies Stacey’s mission to empower professionals to generate referrals naturally without resorting to manipulation or direct solicitation.

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Christine’s Background and Referral Landscape

[04:14] Stacey Brown Randall:
Stacey introduces Christine, who has been in private practice for five years. Christine shared that she receives an average of 35 referrals per year from a network of 51 referral sources. However, a significant issue surfaced: many of these referrals do not align with Christine’s ideal client profile.

Notable Quote:
"Christine is a family law and estate planning attorney in Tampa, Florida, and she has been in private practice for five years." — Stacey Brown Randall [04:14]

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Identifying Referral Challenges

Christine articulated several key frustrations regarding her referral process:

1. Quality of Referrals:
   Despite having a considerable number of referral sources, the majority do not provide her with ideal clients, particularly in her niche of divorce law.

2. Tracking Deficiencies:
   Christine admitted to struggles with tracking referrals, a common challenge among professionals aiming to optimize their referral systems.

3. Limited Engagement with Potential Referrers:
   She recognizes therapists as valuable referral sources but feels uncomfortable approaching them through cold calling.

Notable Quote:
"She has a little bit of head trash into what's possible and who should be referring her." — Stacey Brown Randall [06:45]

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Stacey’s Strategic Recommendations

Stacey outlines a comprehensive, step-by-step strategy tailored to address Christine’s specific referral challenges. The approach is structured around her proprietary "1920 strategies" framework, represented through a flowchart with color-coded boxes (green, blue, and gold) indicating different strategic layers.

1. Identify Existing Referral Sources:
   Foundation Strategy (Green Box)
   Stacey emphasizes the importance of understanding and leveraging her current network of 51 referral sources to maximize their potential.

2. Enhance Tracking and Intake Processes:
   Operational Strategy (Blue Box)
   Implementing effective tracking systems ensures that Christine can monitor referral sources and manage incoming referrals efficiently.

3. Address Quality of Referrals:
   Quality Improvement (Gold Box)
   Christine needs to learn and utilize a quality conversation script to engage with referrers who are not sending ideal clients, thereby improving referral quality.

4. Overcome Psychological Barriers (Head Trash):
   Personal Development
   Stacey identifies Christine’s internal conflict—feeling pressured to follow traditional referral methods that feel uncomfortable. Addressing this "head trash" is crucial for Christine to adopt more authentic and effective referral strategies.

5. Expand Referral Networks:
   Growth Strategy (Green Box)
   Focusing on building relationships with therapists without relying on cold calling, fostering organic connections that lead to quality referrals.

6. Re-engage Inactive Referral Sources:
   Re-engagement Strategy
   Christine currently has 10 active referral sources. Stacey advises re-engaging with the remaining 40 inactive sources to reactivate and diversify her referral network.

Notable Quote:
"The number of people she has referring her is 51. But it's really key. Not many of them are sending her ideal clients." — Stacey Brown Randall [04:14]

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Christine’s Feedback and Interaction

During the session, Christine shared a revision of her initial metrics, updating her active referral sources from 51 to 10 active per year. This adjustment led Stacey to introduce an additional strategy focused on re-engaging inactive sources:

Notable Quote:
"I loved it. It makes a lot of sense to me. I will say that I think when I put this together, I was going on the referral sources I've had since I've been. So I have had. So I would say it's more like 10 referral sources per year instead of 51 this in one year." — Christine [09:21]

Stacey welcomed this refinement and highlighted it as "low-hanging fruit," emphasizing the efficiency and impact of reactivating dormant referral relationships.

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Dealing with Head Trash: Overcoming Internal Barriers

A significant portion of the episode focuses on the concept of "head trash"—the internalized doubts and conflicting beliefs that hinder professionals from executing effective referral strategies. Stacey elaborates on how many clients, including Christine, grapple with the tension between what they feel they "should" do and what feels authentic to them.

Key Points:

• Push and Pull Dynamics:
  Professionals often feel compelled to adopt referral tactics that clash with their personal comfort zones, creating a push-pull scenario that stifles action.

• Authenticity in Referrals:
  Stacey advocates for strategies that align with one’s personal values and comfort, ensuring that referral generation feels natural and sustainable.

• Unlimited Milestone Calls:
  In her coaching program, Stacey offers milestone calls to continuously address and dismantle these internal barriers, ensuring clients remain aligned with effective and authentic referral practices.

Notable Quote:
"I have to unpack that for them and have them see it differently and in some cases be like, you're right, that's terrible. Don't do that. I wouldn't want you to do that to me. Let's find a better way." — Stacey Brown Randall [11:40]

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Conclusion and Forward Look

Stacey wraps up the episode by reiterating the importance of addressing both strategic and psychological aspects of referral generation. She previews an upcoming second hot seat session from the March workshop, promising further insights tailored to listeners' needs.

Notable Quote:
"Take control of your referrals and build a referable business." — Stacey Brown Randall [12:50]

Listeners are encouraged to explore the resources mentioned in the episode, available in the description and on the podcast’s show notes page, and to stay tuned for future episodes filled with actionable referral strategies.

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Key Takeaways

• Strategic Identification and Activation:
  Understanding and activating existing referral sources is foundational to building a robust referral network.

• Quality Over Quantity:
  Prioritizing the quality of referrals ensures that the clients received align with the professional’s expertise and business goals.

• Overcoming Internal Barriers:
  Addressing psychological hindrances is as crucial as implementing strategic actions for sustainable referral growth.

• Continuous Engagement:
  Re-engaging inactive referral sources can exponentially enhance referral opportunities with minimal effort.

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By dissecting Christine’s unique challenges and applying tailored strategies, Stacey Brown Randall demonstrates the effectiveness of her Referrals Without Asking methodology. This episode serves as a valuable blueprint for professionals intent on cultivating authentic and efficient referral systems.

Transcript

[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'm a card carrying member of the Business Failure Club. I have taught my Referrals Without Asking methodology and strategies to clients in more than 14 countries around the world. And my mission is to help you unleash a referral explosion by leveraging the science of referrals and respecting your relationships. All right, real quick. Before we dive in for this episode, I just want to let you know that coming up on April 28th, I have a short three part training that will help you tackle referrals as we move into summer and of course the back half of 2025. So each day I'll go live for about 30 minutes just teaching you what you need to know. Really teaching you what you need to think, how you need to think and what you need to know, and how you need to act to become a referral master. You can sign up and join me. It's totally free. Just sign up at Stacey Brown randall.com spring training. I hope to see you there. All right, we are diving into hot seats.

[Christine]

Now.

[Stacey Brown Randall]

You may be like, wait, what is she talking about?

[Christine]

I've never known her to do hot.

[Stacey Brown Randall]

Seats on the podcast.

[Christine]

Well, way, way, way back in the.

[Stacey Brown Randall]

Very beginning I did. And actually, I'm not quite sure how many I did, probably would have been a good thing to look at before I started recording this episode, but I used to invite people onto the podcast where I would interview them questions and then based on their answers to the questions, I would help them see what they need to do to improve their referrals. And then for some reason I just got away from it. But I did a live training back in March and during that live workshop, that live workshop that I did in March, I actually did something I hadn't done in a really long time, which was to offer two hot seats. So I picked two people for the hot seats and I walked them through what they should do first to generate referrals based on how they answered some questions that I had provided. So for every attendee that signed up to be on the workshop, they received an email from me that said, hey, if you want to be on the hot seat, here's five questions for you to answer. Then everybody who submitted those questions, I went through and I reviewed them and I picked a couple that I would be able to highlight and spotlight on the workshop in March. I thought it'd be really cool for this episode and the one coming up next week for me to share those hot seats. So you're going to hear, or if you're watching this on video, see the actual interaction that happened as I was working through this hot seat. So you're going to hear me review. And the first hot seat is Christine. She is an attorney. You're going to hear me review her answers to the questions that I had asked. And then you'll listen as I map out what I recommended she do and in what order. And then of course, she'll come off mute and she'll talk about how. What she thought about it and what it meant to her and how she would, like, understand that it worked for her. So you'll get to hear her feedback as well, which I think is really cool. So a quick note, for those of you who are watching this on YouTube and you're seeing the video version of this, when I come off screen, share from that zoom room, when I come off screen share for those hot seats, you're going to see a seat sea of people on your screen from my zoom meeting room. It's going to be very busy, but don't worry. We made a note of this. The next time that I do a hot seat on a training, we're going to spotlight the speaker. So next time, if I ever pull these from a training or from a workshop and put them on the podcast, put them in a video that you will actually just be staring at the person that I'm talking to versus having to look at the sea of humans that were on this training. So next time around, lesson learned. All right, so let's dive in to our very first hot seat with Christine.

[Christine]

So here are the questions that Christine submitted to me, the answers that she submitted. First, I said, what do you do? What's your business? Right. Because I want to understand what industry you're in because that always will. Tell me some things about your business and then I want to know how long you've been in business. So Christine is a family law and estate planning attorney in Tampa, Florida, and she has been in private practice for five years. Years. Okay. So the questions I asked were, how many referrals do you receive on average? What you guys just answered, and how many referral sources do you have? Right. And so based on her numbers, and then I asked a question that's a little open ended, and that question is specifically, what's your biggest frustration with referrals? Because that tells me where your pain points are and the gaps you want to Solve. All right. So when I looked at the average number of referrals that Christine gets, she gets 35. The number of people she has referring her is 51. But it's really key. Not many of them are sending her ideal clients, Right? So, like, I'm hearing things already. I'm like, okay, we can solve some of these issues. And some of her biggest frustrations with referrals, some of it is that she works in divorce, right? And so there is this perception that maybe people are hesitant to share who referred them. So I'm going to talk through that. She's also not great at tracking. So that's an admitted. Which I think everybody I work with at some point was like, I'm not great at tracking. It kind of just happens. And so she has a little bit of head trash into what's possible and who should be referring her. But she has identified that therapists would be great referral sources for her, but she doesn't know how to reach them except for cold calling. And she doesn't want to do it. And Christine, I'm with you. I wouldn't want to do it either. But she does know when she meets with them, they connect and that she can build relationships, which is key. What I want to hear. So based on that flowchart, and I'll go back to that flowchart in a minute, that shows all the colored, green, blue, and gold boxes that I showed you guys, that is the flowchart of the 1920 strategies that I teach. This is exactly how I would stack for Christine. Now, if Christine and I had a conversation, I asked a few more questions, I may change this up. But doing this in, like, back of the napkin, right? Just kind of getting through this. So we have time for a couple. Number one, the number one thing I'm going to want to know is, is it true that she averages 35 referrals in a year and that she has 51 people referring her? Now, those are specific numbers. So I'm going to go with. Christine probably knows her numbers, right? She's probably like, yep, 35 and 51. Those aren't ranges. When people are like ranges, I'm always like, you don't know.

[Stacey Brown Randall]

Which is fine.

[Christine]

We can figure it out, right? So the very first thing I would have her do is actually identify her existing referral sources. That's one of those foundational green box strategies. We're going to identify your existing referral sources. What is our data show? Right. And then we would build out a plan to get more referrals From hopefully those 51 people. Then we're going to make sure we shore up the tracking and the intake process. That would be the second thing that we would do. We'd work on tracking and intake. It's actually technically two separate strategies, but I always do them together. The third thing I'm going to have her do is we're going to address the quality issues. She knows she's not getting referrals that are quality. There is a right way and a very wrong way to handle a conversation with a referral source who is not sending you quality referrals. You have to know how to have that conversation correctly.

[Stacey Brown Randall]

So the next thing I would have.

[Christine]

Her do is address her quality issues by learning the quality conversation script and having that, that conversation with people who have shown a repeated pattern of not sending ideal clients. Then after she's making some progress, we're going to deal with her head trash. We're going to dive in, we're going to deal with her head trash. Now, there's not a strategy in the flowchart that's like deal with your head tr. This would be in a one on one that Christine and I would have because in all of the things that I offer and all the ways that you work with me, there is a one on one option. And Christine and I would just dig in there and dig into the trash. And then the next thing that we would look at, right, this would be the fifth thing I would have for her in her strategy stack is she needs more people referring her more potential referral sources. So then we would dive in at that point and she would learn the strategy. Another green box foundational strategy of how do I get those therapists, how do I connect with them and then get them to actually start referring me and other people as well. This is how we take where you are to where you want to go. And there are five things I just mapped out. This would be my goal for her to accomplish, right? If she was in the coaching program within the first 90 days, if she could do it faster, great. But we're all running businesses too, so we like to do things on a measured approach, right? So it's looking at, here's our numbers and I instantly say this is the order we're going in, right? We're going to identify existing referral sources, build a plan to take care of them. Then we're going to do your intake and your tracking. Then we're going to address our quality issues and deal with that. We're going to deal with your Head trash. We're going to teach you how to generate new people referring you and how to nurture those relationships. So that is what it looks like for Christine. I believe Christine is here. So if you want to unmute yourself just I just down and dirty this really quickly. But how, like what was your response to that?

[Unknown]

Oh, I loved it. It makes a lot of sense to me. I will say that I think when I put this together, I was going on the referral sources I've had since I've been. Since I hung my shingle. And so I have had. So I would say it's more like 10 referral sources per year instead of 51 this in one year.

[Christine]

So perfect. I would add a six thing to our strategy stack which would be any of those folks who they haven't referred you and more than. It's been more than two years since they've referred you actually call them inactive referral sources. And we have a re engagement strategy that I teach of like how do you get them back in conversation to see if you should be re engaging them as a referral source to make the inactives active. So we would definitely not be. That's your low hanging fruit right there, Christine. If you have 10 people referring you right now that are active, but we're leaving 40 other who have done it in the past, I would actually be like, we're going to go there first and then we are going to do everything else because that is your low hanging fruit. So thank you, Christine. Thank you for taking the time to submit the information and being willing to like unmute yourself and chat with me.

[Stacey Brown Randall]

Okay. I hope you enjoyed that hot seat. One thing I don't think people realize about the work that I do with my clients is helping them deal with head trash. A lot of people who come to me, they come with what they think they should be doing to generate referrals or some bad advice that they've been told they needed to do. And most of it they don't want to do. It doesn't sound right. And they build up this head trash about why they can't do it and why it won't work. And a lot of times they're right because what they've been told is the wrong stuff. But other times what I found is that they take pieces of good referral strategies and pieces of bad referral strategies and they just kind of mix them all together and then they determine that to be what they're supposed to do. And whatever that is, it makes them really uncomfortable. And so they don't do it. So they have this, like, angst. And I saw it in Christine's answer. She had, like, this angst between what she thinks she should be doing, but what she's just quite uncomfortable doing. So it's this ying and a yang that says push and a pull. Right? Like, you feel like I'm supposed to be doing these things, but this thing feels really, really awkward. And there's got to be a better way.

[Christine]

Of course there's a better way.

[Stacey Brown Randall]

Thank goodness, right? But a lot of times what I will spend time doing with my clients, in addition to them learning the strategies and putting things in place.

[Christine]

Right.

[Stacey Brown Randall]

And understanding how we do all the different strategies I teach is we're going to spend some time talking about what's going on between their two ears, what's going on in their head, dealing with their head trash. It's one of the reasons why, in particular, when you're inside my coaching program, building a referable business, you have this thing called unlimited milestone calls, usually for folks. I find that when we get on a milestone call, when they schedule one, maybe they schedule one every couple of months, whatever, whatever they need, that usually we're going to end up talking about something they think they're supposed to do or something they're stuck on not doing or something they're stuck on doing, but it's actually they're thinking about it wrong. And I have to unpack that for them and have them see it differently and in some cases be like, you're right, that's terrible. Don't do that. I wouldn't want you to do that to me. Let's find a better way. And so we do that a lot within the programs and how I work with folks. But that head trash one was a big one for Christine because I'm like, oh, you were holding yourself back because you think it's supposed to be one way and it doesn't. And you can have results and it still feel good, which is super, super important.

[Christine]

So I don't like it when, when.

[Stacey Brown Randall]

People, when my clients, they get stuck in this vortex of thinking and doing nothing because they're uncomfortable doing what they've been told to do. So I always try to fix that as soon as we can. And that was definitely the case that we would do something with Christine. All right, so I hope that you enjoyed this hot seat. Guess what? We got more coming up. Of course, the resources mentioned in this episode can be found in the description below, the video, and of course, on the podcast show notes page. @staceybrownrandall.com 357 we're back with another great episode next week. We've got one more hot seat from that March workshop coming your way, and it's created with you and your needs in mind. Until then, you know what to do, my friend. Take control of your referrals and build a referable business. Bye for now.