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Roadmap to Referrals
Ep #376: The Referral Opportunity You’re Overlooking
00:22:27
Are you aware of the one referral opportunity you're likely missing? In this episode, I discuss a foundational strategy I like to call the Low-Hanging Fruit Strategy. Statistics indicate that your chances of selling to an existing client are 60-70%,...
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Foreign 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, Stacy Brown Randall. More than a decade ago, I developed a science backed framework and methodology to generate referrals without asking. As I've refined it, I have had the privilege to help thousands of business owners to take control of their referrals on their terms. Join me every week as I break it down for you. Welcome to the episode. Okay, do you want to know? I think you want to know. Do you want to know the one referral opportunity you're probably overlooking? Ready for it? It's generating referrals from people who have already referred you. Generating referrals from people who have referred you before. Longtime listeners of this podcast and if you're newly now watching me over on our YouTube channel, have heard me talk about this foundational strategy. And you've heard me talk about this so much because it's so very important. In fact, it's one of when I'm talking to my clients, right? It's the one that most of my clients start with. This how to get more referrals from the people who've already referred you. It's the strategy that most of my clients will start with and I call it affectionately the Low Hanging Fruit strategy. Have you heard the statistic about it being easier to sell to an existing client than to land a brand new client? Some stats that support this say it's like six times easier to sell to an existing client than a new one. Or I saw this another way when it said your likelihood is 6, 60 to 70% of selling to an existing client versus only like 5 to maybe 20% to getting a new prospect to say yes to working with you. The same goes for referral sources. It is easier to get an existing referral source to refer you again than it is to turn a contact or a COI or even a client into a referral source. Once someone's referred, everything gets easier. And that is what the entire strategy, that foundational strategy. If you're a longtime listener of the podcast, you've heard me refer to this as the Growth by Referrals strategy. It's one of my signature strategies. It's actually the first one I ever started teaching like more than a decade ago because it is such a good one to start with. Because once someone has referred you, like I said, everything gets easier. The outreach you're going to do is easier. The language you're going to use is Easier the cadence you'll follow. Guess what? Less is more, which is music to everyone's ears. To do less, not more. And the objective, right, of what you're doing and why you're doing the objective shifts to true care and gratitude and just a whole new way. Everything gets easier. And here's the catch, or here's the thing, or here's the rub. I guess I should say most business owners don't know by name who actually refers to them. Now they think they do because I've heard it. All, right? I'll have people say, oh, I can recall that list for you by memory. I know who it is. Just gimme a minute, I'll come up with it. Right? I can jot it down for you. I have heard it all. But this is when recency bias runs amok because they don't have data to know with certainty. Are you in the same boat? Are you sitting here listening to this or watching this video and you're thinking to yourself, oh, I think Stacy is talking to me. It's like she knows that I'm watching this and she specifically recorded this episode or this video just for me? Maybe I did. The reality of it is you're in a very full boat. There's lots of people in the same boat with you. Don't stress. As easy as it is to solve this problem, it's not a complicated strategy to learn and put into practice or put into place, you have to understand why it's so important. Because the first big step you've got to take is to know who refers you. And that means you got to do some data diving. So you've got to be motivated to really dive in and figure out who are your existing referral sources. But truly, truly, when I have clients work with me once they complete their pre work and it doesn't matter which way people are working with me, right? And the accelerator, the coaching program, or the VIP experience they all complete. Basically, the VIP experience is a little bit more robust, but they all complete one standard piece of pre work and that is to identify who's already referring them. Everybody does it because I know if I can see who's referring to you, I know how much faster we can move and I know how much easier this will be for you. Yes, there's lots of other strategies to learn about new people referring you and your client experience and getting referrals from that and quality conversations and closing conversations with prospects and how to plant referral seeds when you're networking. And there's tons of Other, like, smaller strategies you can learn. Like situational things you can learn. But this one is the biggie. And I have taught how to identify your existing referral sources. If you don't know who they are, that's the people who've referred you before. I have taught this many, many times, and I'm going to keep doing it because it is so stinking powerful. When you know who your referral sources are, it's like seeing their names in black and white on a list, written down or typed up, it's like, boom, it hits you across the face. And most of the time when people go through this process, there is a level of surprise. They think they know who's on the list and then they see the list and they're like, wait, some people aren't on it. That I thought would be right. They're like, oh, my goodness, some people are on it. And I had no idea they would be right. So the first thing you look is, you're like, wait, there's people missing. But not based on the data, just based on what you think. And that's not what we're looking for here. So in some cases it's like, wait, there aren't people on here I thought would be. And there are people on here that I've been neglecting because I didn't realize they were referring to me. Now, if someone refers to you every month, you're probably not going to forget who that person is. I know with perfect clarity who my number one referral source is in my business, and that is because of the volume of referrals that I receive from from him. Not like clockwork. Every Monday I get a Referral. On the 1st of every month, I get a referral. But I know on a monthly basis I'm probably getting a referral. And if I don't get one in one month, I'm probably getting two, maybe the next month, and sometimes upwards of five, right? It depends on the rhythm of his business. But I know that with a fact, and you probably do too, if you have somebody who refers you consistently and to the point where you're noticing, wow, we're getting a lot of referrals from this person. And it's been going on for a while. It's not like this one, one hit wonder where I get a bunch of referrals and then nothing ever again for years. But it's more than knowing that one person who refers a lot to you. It's about knowing all the other people who may refer only one or two times. To you, because those people are just as valuable if those people refer to you once or twice a year. Imagine what it looks like if you could get, I don't know, instead of one referral a year from them, what if you got two or three or four referrals a year from them? Like that is the power of knowing who refers you and then knowing what to do to cultivate and nurture them. And like I said, everything gets easier when you're doing this for people who've already referred you because they've already done it, they've shown a propensity to actually refer you. So everything gets easier within the strategy, within the plan that you're going to build to take care of them. So here's my question for you. Are you 100% confident you know who your referral sources are? That's okay, I'll wait. Think about it for a minute. Are you 100% confident that you know who your referral sources are by name can be written down and you can tell me exactly who they refer to you, whether it was a client or prospect, someone who ended up not becoming a client. And can you do that for at least the last year or two, maybe longer. And okay, if you can't, if you're like, is she looking at me? Because I'm trying not to make eye contact with her. Yeah, I see you, I see you. Right, But I get it. Some of you are like, oh, I don't know. I don't. I can't say with a hundred percent confidence that I know who my referral sources are. Well, I'm going to walk you through a really quick overview of how you identify your referral sources and then we'll talk about what you do. Number one, three steps. We're going to run them two times. First time, though, we're going to run this through with our clients. Step number one, pull a list of your clients from the last 12 months. At least the past 12 months. If you want a gold star. I'd really love it if you would go back more than two years, maybe to the three or four year range. You'll be surprised what you learn about your business now. If you're in your second year, then we just work with what we have. Right? But you're going to pull a list of your clients from the past 12 months to possibly, maybe you're going to go all the way back to three or four years. It's easier to do this in Excel. Just pull the Google Doc, just pull the spreadsheet out, put in one column, the list of your clients. The other thing I recommend is you actually put the date that they became a client. Or if it's going back a couple of years, maybe it's the year, not necessarily the fact that it was like, you know, August 12th of 2022. Maybe you're just going to put in 2022. So you're going to put your client, you're going to put the year that they became a client. So that's two columns. The date column, the client name column. The third column you're going to add in is where each of these clients heard about you. This is called the source. Now, there's lots of different types of sources. There's tons of different examples. Like they could have come through an ad that you ran. They could, you could have met them at a networking event. They could be someone who worked with you at a previous company. And now that you're out on your own, they decided to hire you. Right. They could be a part of a board of directors or an, on a nonprofit board that you're with. Right. They could have seen your billboard if you're doing billboards. Right. They could have seen an ad that you run in a print magazine. They could have responded to a cold email like you. If you get that right. Maybe you made a cold call. I'm thinking not many people who listen to this podcast are making cold calls, so probably not. But if you did, great. And then of course it can be referred to you. And a referral is a human, so you got to have a name there. So when you look at this list, you're going to have the year or the date they became a client, the client's name, and then you're going to have where that client heard about you. And if it's a referred client, they'll have a name in that third column for the referral source. It'll have the referral source's name. First and last column, name, please. So that is how you do this step. Now, I said you're going to run it two times. The second way to run this or the round two to run this is with your prospects. So the first time we ran this with our clients, right? Because I start there, because you should have this data. These people have paid you money, so it should be easy to pull this data. Maybe if you don't have a CRM, a client relationship management tool, right. Or some type of online database or cloud based database, maybe you at least have this information in QuickBooks or whatever accounting software you use because these people have paid invoices or make credit card charges, right? So you should be able to pull who your clients are. The second, that was a little bit more harder because you may have not kept great records. And that's okay, you can change that going forward. But that is to do this three steps again with your prospects. So you're going to pull a list your prospects, the people that maybe showed an interest in working with you, maybe you had a call with them, right? But for whatever reason, they didn't say yes. They either said no or not now. So you're going to pull a list of your prospects. Most people can only go back 12 months with this. After that, if they don't have great records, it's really hard to kind of like recreate this stuff from memory or find it. But if you can go back further than 12 months or six months, that's great. But pull list your prospects, follow the same process, the date or the year that they were a prospect in your business. The prospect's name and then the third column is the source, right? So you're actually going to put down where you heard from the prospects, same way you just did it for your clients. And if that prospect was referred to you, you got it. You're going to capture the referral source's name as well. Okay. Once you have all that information and you get your clients, you got your prospects, right? You can merge those together and then you can sort the list and then only pay attention to those where there is a name in the source column, where it's a name for the referral source. And then you're going to look to who are those people? That, my friend, is your list of gold. That, my friend, are the humans, the people that make up your low hanging fruit. And you can now start to take care of them in a meaningful and memorable way, a science backed way, where your focus is on gratitude and thankfulness and also giving you the opportunity to plant see specific language that I happen to call referral seeds. And that's to keep them thinking about you, feeling confident with you, right? Not being able to forget about you. And then of course getting them thinking about you from a referral perspective as well, without ever having to ask. If you don't know how to build out a plan that is memorable and meaningful, that is based on the science of referrals, where your focus is on gratitude and thankfulness, but you also know how to plant the right language, the referral seed language, then I want you to listen really closely to this because this opportunity is not going to come around again. For the first time in years, like many, many years, I'm going to teach the foundational strategy of how to generate more referrals from your existing referral sources. Again, like I said earlier, if you've been around a long time, you know your existing referral sources and the how we take care of them is the signature strategy of mine that I've been referring to over the years as the growth by referrals strategy. It is a standalone strategy. It fits within your ecosystem. It is usually the starting point and the launch pad if you have referral sources where we can quickly get some referrals going for you. Right. That is always the game plan. I can't guarantee it, but that's the game plan of where we start and that's where my clients start having most of their success. And so it's really important for you to understand this is that since 2021, this strategy, the specific strategy, the growth by referral strategy, where you can get more referrals from your existing referral sources, this strategy has not been available as a standalone strategy that you could purchase and learn from from me. Right? Because in 2021 I moved all of my individual strategies into my coaching program or my VIP experience and of course the referral accelerator. So I took all 20 strategies that I teach and I bucketed in those three programs. So I don't provide standalone one off a la carte strategies and I haven't since 2021. But here's what I know. I know that my programs, whether it's the BRB coaching program, the VIP experience or my two day accelerator, they're not for everybody. And you might be thinking that you just need one, just the one of my signature foundational referral strategies to get you started. Well, if you have people referring you, then this strategy, the growth by referral strategy, is where you start. So I am bringing this growth by referrals, the GBR training out of the vault and I will be teaching it live live. So no videos, you don't have to watch any videos in my online portal. I am going to personally teach it live over the course of three class sessions. I am very excited. I haven't done this in so very long. I don't actually remember the last time I taught this live, let alone since 2021 had this strategy available. Right. So I'm very excited. Of course I teach it live in some of the programs, if you're in one of my programs. But I mean, I haven't taught it as like an a la carte live as just a signature strategy, standalone by itself. So just think in less than a couple of hours, right, Because I just need you for three or four one hour class sessions. In just a couple of hours you'll start taking action to generate more referrals from those who have referred you before. And with this one strategy, this is really the best part. I mean obviously the referrals it produces is probably the best part. But the next best part is that this is a strategy that you should rinse and repeat it for years to come. What we are going to build is how you take care of your existing referral sources. That five to seven touch point plan based on my four part science fact framework. And those touch points you should do not only this year, right, and the next 12 months, but the year after and the year after and year after. There's a rinse and repeat process to this so that you will have this in place for years to come and you will keep generating referrals each and every year. So if you felt like you're leaving potential referrals on the table by not having a system that is built on science for how you cultivate your existing referral sources, and then all it takes is a few hours to build momentum and start receiving more clients by referrals, then this is your opportunity again. This is a virtual masterclass. It's held over three sessions. And I haven't taught this strategy live like this in years. And I'm going to be honest, I don't plan to do it again. I don't plan to have this strategy available like this where I teach it live every year. This is a very specific opportunity. And the reason for that is, is that I know there are some people where business looks different this year. It just does. So business looks different this year. So you're evaluating and assessing opportunities differently. And so maybe now is just not the right time to join my referral accelerator, my two day referral accelerator or to invest in my BRB building a referable business coaching program, or come along inside my VIP experience and work one on one with me and let me build it for you. It's not the right time for everyone. But that doesn't mean most people aren't needing something to get started. So maybe you've invested in my your next five referrals program. But you know, those are like some the, the standard operating procedures of things you have in place. It doesn't tackle one of my strategies. And if I were to teach a strategy to anybody, it would be this one. Because I know it's how you can get started quickly. But you have to have people referring you. If you don't have anyone referring you or your concern is you need new people referring you. This is not the masterclass for you. This is not. We may consider doing that training at another time. Maybe like in 2026. It's definitely not happening this year. That's not the training. This training is. You have people referring to you and you can check out all the details on like, is this the right fit for me? Just go to stacybrownrandall.com for forward/more referrals. There's no hyphen. It's just more referrals. So Stacy Brown randall.com more referrals. And of course, Stacy has an E. You can learn more about the masterclass. You can find out the dates and the times. Of course there's going to be recordings. You may not be able to make every one of these three classes. There is also a bonus Q and A session that we will do as a fourth class. So you will learn and you will build and you will get feedback. And then when we're done with those three classes, not only will you be asking questions to those sessions, you'll also get to come to another fourth session where it's just Q and A with me live. And I'm going to answer all your questions and review what you've built and put together. So if this sounds like the thing you've been waiting on, this is your sign that today is the day you want to get in and you want to secure your seat inside the More Referrals Masterclass. If you have any questions, of course, you can always reach out to me. So again, the masterclass registration link and the transcript of this episode can also be found on the Show Notes page at Stacy Brown randall.com forward/376 don't forget Stacy has an E. I cannot wait to see some of you in our masterclass that we have coming up in just a couple of weeks. We're kicking off soon, so make sure you get in and secure your seat while you can. Like, think about kicking off, like, maybe, I think at the point of this episode releasing, it's probably we're kicking off in two weeks, so get your spot. All right. I can't wait to see some of you on the masterclass and for others of you, if you're like, I don't know if I have people referring me. That's what this whole episode was about. I just taught you how to determine if you have people referring you. Now, we are going to do that again with a different level of refinement as part of class one within the masterclass. But if you're trying to figure out if this masterclass is right for you and do you have people referring you? I just taught you the three steps. Do round one, then round two, Right? And then you'll know. Oh yeah, I've got more than five or six people referring me. The masterclass is the perfect next step for me. Then you should join while you can. All right, thanks for making it to the end of this episode. Until next week, take control of your referrals and build a referable business. Bye for now. It.