← You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Why Referrals Are Gold, But Not Enough – Warming Up Your Leads Like a Pro
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Hello and welcome back to the UCAN podcast.
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I'm your host, Sarah Jolly Jarvis and welcome to episode 34. So what we're going to do this week is we're going to be talking around why referrals are that best kind of lead, why you want referrals in your business, but why you shouldn't rely on them.
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I know I don't tell you if.
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Something'S great and then I go and tell you that not to rely on them totally.
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But we're going to be talking about.
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How to create a warm lead experience for non referral leads. So how are we going to warm up those leads to help people to get to the point where they feel confident to buy from you? And that's what this thing is all about. This is what this process is all about, is helping people to get to a point. What you want to do really is have somebody so warmed up, so confident that when you get onto a call with them or when they head onto your landing page, whatever way it is that they buy from you, that person is as convinced as a referral, that is the optimum, that's what you're really wanting to achieve. Okay? And referrals are the very best type of a lead that you're going to get. And the reason for that is, is that they tend to come from people who, you know, who you like, who you get on with, well, who you might have worked with before. And so they are normally of a similar type of personality, a similar approach, or at least they get on with that individual. And so they are not just, just some random, they are more likely to be somebody who you're going to work well with. They're also going to be way more informed and way more confident because they have been told by somebody they trust, they know like and trust that you are a good option. And that is why these people come to you already so pre sold, so confident, so interested because they have got that connection with you and that person that they rate and whose opinion they care about has told them that you are good. So that is why, you know, they are those sorts of leads that you'd really like to just, just make multiple. I've just cloned them all. But you can't, okay, so what you need to do is you can't be sat there waiting for past clients, people you know from networking, people you know from online contacts that you have within business, you know, your Auntie Joe. You can't be just waiting for them to find somebody to know, somebody to send in. Your direction. You need to be a little bit more proactive than that. I speak to people regularly who have relied purely on referrals. And the challenges is right, and I totally get it is when you've got loads of referrals and people are coming to you and it's all so easy, it's great and it keeps you busy. And when you're busy, you're not thinking, you know what, where's my next lead going to come from? Because you're busy serving and supporting and delivering for the leads that you've already got. The problem comes is if that resource dries up, somebody retires, somebody moves on, somebody forgets about you, somebody uses somebody else as a referral partner or they start offering that service themselves because they see how many people they send your way. And there is a little bit of a trick on that. But I will, I will talk to you about in a minute. But, you know, at the end of the day, it's the power of trust. They already trust that person, and so therefore they already trust you and that that person's vouched for you. It's an easier conversion. It makes you feel amazing at sales. I spoke to a salesperson about a year and a half ago now, and they were. I was. I was seeing if they would be a suitable candidate to, to work with me and to support me within my. It was at the time when I had a sales team. I was working with a sales team and they were saying to me, yeah, you know, it's great. Cause this individual that leads come and they come through her Facebook group and they're already really switched on. And I'm like, well, actually then you're not much of a salesperson. I didn't actually say this. This person. Obviously I was very polite and I nodded lots. But that individual isn't actually having to sell very much. They're not having to sell very hard or use their sales skills very much because they're almost like an order taker. And that's the thing is, is the more convinced they are, then the less convincing they need. And therefore the sale is faster, it's easier, is less reliant on your sales skills. So for those individuals that I've worked with and they said to me, sarah, I'm terrible at sales. Most of the people actually, they can really switch it around. You can change your mindset on it, you can upskill yourself, and you can actually become a much better salesperson. But what can make you feel even more confident, what can make your sales experience better? For both you and that individual is that they already come to you pretty convinced that you are the right option. As I said before, the downside of this is it's passive. You can't control it. It's unpredictable. You don't know how many you'll get and when. And if you only rely on those referrals, then you' growth, your business growth is out of your hands. You are not in control. And if you're anything like me and you like to be in control. You like to feel like you know what's going on, you like to be in control within your own business, then that is a not a nice feeling to position to be in, not a nice feeling to have. So how do you warm a lead up like a referral? Well, the goal here is to make cold leads feel like a referral for you and, and for the sales process. Okay, so you nurture them with touch points. Okay? One interaction just is not enough. You know what, I sent them an email. They saw my post, they liked it. Why aren't they buying from me? If you think about your own buying habits, if you look at even the bigger organizations, when they retarget you through your Facebook feed after you've been on their website, they understand. People understand that it takes more than one interaction with you as a business to decide that, you know, it's a good idea to work with you. So they're going to need lots of touch points. Now there is some evidence out there that they need in excess now of 18 plus touch points in order to be in a position where they think, you know what, this seems to be the right thing for me. And that's the thing is it's not just, it's not just potentially seeing your brand, it's actually seeing the information. It's you reiterating stuff. That is an awful lot of touch points. Particularly if you're, for example, relying purely on social media. You haven't got an email list, you're not emailing individuals who've come into your world. You're only sending posts. Now. If you look at your reach, it is very easy to see why it takes so many months for some people to get in a position and sometimes years to be in a position that they want to buy from you and kind of moving on from that. Not all touch points are equal. For example, like an in person meeting is the strongest. I went out today and saw a potential client and sitting down with somebody, understanding their workspace, understanding their business, it has so much more power. You know what you are saying, you are saying to their face directly, not through a screen, not for anything else, but actually to that individual. You know, that real builds real rapport. It's human to human contact. That's what is, you know, we're used to, that's what's been the traditional way of doing business and having and conversing with people. But that isn't always possible. So you know, it's kind of stepping down from that. You've got the fact that, well actually in a zoom meeting where that person sees your face, they build up more rapport and therefore you build up more trust and you can rely on that person a little bit more. I've got a client who they, their clients, their potential clients keep ghosting on them. So they'll have a call, but it's a, it's a phone call. And so that person isn't building up that rapport. You're not getting that face to face. They're not showing their face, they're faceless. And so you know, if you think about how people behave on the Internet when they haven't got a face, when they've got a picture of a squirrel for example, not that I've been trolled at all by somebody who had a picture of a squirrel as their profile picture but you know, they hide behind that because they haven't, you haven't seen, seen their face, they haven't shown up as their full selves. It's been a conversation over a phone, they're less identifiable between juggling client meetings, managing your website, keeping up to date.
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It means less. You mean less to them and so they feel able to do it. Messenger conversations. They build up relationships. It's one on one conversation. You're actually chatting to that individual. You're giving them air time, you're talking to them, you're better understanding them, you're asking questions. So then stepping down from that. It's like social media posts. They help with awareness. They might think, oh, you know what, what this person's saying here really resonates with me. You can obviously get it out in front of way more people, but it's not as valuable to that individual as a conversation, which I'm sure you can appreciate. Those emails, they nurture trust and they nurture trust over time, but they're there around about there. With a social media post, possibly a little bit more depending on what you put in it. It could feel a little bit more personalized, but doesn't have social proof. But it's again, it can be lost in the noise of an inbox. How often are you getting emails from people like this? There's a person that I've been on their email list now for a couple of years and I've really rated them. But I've noticed recently I've been like where are their emails? And they're just getting lost in my inbox. And so you know, you are easily lost in the noise of an inbox. You're easily lost on a platform like social media. And equally with something like social Media, yes, you can absolutely be warming people up, but if you aren't consistent with who you are, if you're not showing up as your genuine, authentic self, then you can mess up. You can say something that is incongruent with the person that you are trying to be online and then that can damage their trust in you, their belief in you. And so that is worth bearing in mind that's a whole new episode and a whole additional episode on its own. But, you know, that is worth bearing in mind. What you want to have really is a mix of approaches. You can't be just relying on social media because that can. Somebody, somebody's platforms can just, they can go down, they can, the algorithm can be messed around with, they can set up new rules. Okay, so it's not enough to just be posting with your content. You want to have those referrals as well. Okay, but you want that mixture. I was saying to somebody today, you actually want referrals. You want social media being proactive. You also want to be actually actively outreaching and engaging these people with DM conversations, um, networking, emails, et cetera, so that you've got a, an entire mix. Um, you know, I'm, I think if the Internet went down, we'd have bigger problems than, you know, oh, wait a minute, I can't find my leads right now. Um, and you know, everyone will be changing the way that they behave in the same way that when we were all made to stay at home during lockdown in the uk, you know, people found new ways to communicate and the use of Zoom was like crazy. And I've never had to explain to somebody ever since then how to get onto Zoom. And so, you know, things change, behaviors can change. You don't want to be doing this as like, oh, well, you know, something happened to the Internet, something happened to the Internet, then you know, that'd be quite catastrophic in itself and the impact would be far reaching. Um, but it is the fact that you aren't just playing on somebody's platform. Um, if you only relied on a particular, for example, networking group to go and get your leads from, you're reliant on that networking group, continuing to keep going to, continuing to add value to people, so those people keep showing up. And it's the same with the platforms. Things come and go. Some things have longer life cycles than others, but you know, the popularity does, does peak and trough. So, you know, it is worth bearing in mind that when you are using social media platforms, you are playing to somebody else's rules and you should always be working to build your own resources, to build your own email list, not only as a touch point, but also as a way of finding, firming up your business so that if something was to happen and you weren't able to get onto that platform anymore or that platform changed, you still have a way of contacting those individuals. Okay, again, I could talk in depth around this and some of the scenarios that people have found themselves in, but hedging your bets is the way forwards. And that is what we're looking at doing by balancing referrals with that online presence, with that online, with the outreach, whether that outreach is online or in person. Okay, you want that strong online presence, the content, the social proof, the authority. You want Google my business if you can, so that you can show where your, your, your, your feedback and your testimonials and everything else that, that your reviews are there. You can set up an outreach process with personalized messages, building connections, following them up, whether that's through a platform or via email or via the phone. Okay, the out. You know, outreach is still a very, very effective tool and one that's overlooked by most people because it's not something that they enjoy or they're struggling to understand how to navigate it. If that is you, then please do get in touch and I can talk you through it in a little bit more detail and see if it's the right thing for your business. You also want to look at in person networking. Now, not all networking events are worth your time. They're not all made equal. But the right ones can create valuable opportunities and contacts. And that's the thing is if you find yourself sat at home, if you find yourself not creating a community online where you get to know other business owners, if you find yourself more isolated, you want to get out there, you want to meet people locally, you know, that's something that I've taken on board and done recently and thoroughly enjoyed. And it is that opportunity to just touch, touch base and be in the same room as other people who are running their own business. So that is well worth thinking around. I tend to have a rule that I only will entertain breakfast meetings. If people are doing lunches and whole afternoons, you've got to wonder how busy that business is. And so I tend to go for the breakfast ones where people, they get up, they get on it, they do the breakfast and then they go off and they do their day's work. So that is just my take on it. But that has, for me, that has, as a rule of thumb, has Worked really, really well. So just to kind of recap on all this, referrals, they are amazing, but you can't just rely on them alone. If you want to be growing your business or you want to know that you have a consistent pipeline of leads coming through, you want to warm up leads through strategic touch points so that they're getting those touch points at the right time with the right information, so that you can take control by building that online presence and a process which means that you can turn it on. You know what? I can do a bit more outreach. I can get some more clients. I can step off the outreach. I can just look after my referral partners. I can just do the social media presence. And then when I need more clients again, I can put in that outreach. And that, to me is what I tend to do with a lot of clients, is use it as a bit of a boost. And so that's worth taking, you know, thinking about implementing into your business. So if you're not doing any of these things right now, then pick one proactive. So something that is actively getting you out there more, getting in front of more people, and you try that strategy this week, use that strategy this week and see how it goes. Some of these strategies do take time to come to fruition, so it is worth bearing in mind that, you know, you're not going to just. I know I've been posting for a week and I haven't got any clients yet. It does take time, but it will happen. So that's it for me this week. I hope you have enjoyed this episode, guys. If you have, then please share it with somebody who needs to hear it right now. If you can, then subscribe and please review this podcast to help me reach more women in business. So that's it for me this week, guys. I hope you have a great rest of your week and I look forward to speaking to you again next week. Bye for now.