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BANNER IMAGE - Referral Secrets Podcast - Being Referable - Generating Business Referrals Without Asking with Stacey Brown Randall

In this episode with Stacey Brown Randall, you are going to learn how to get more referrals without asking!  That’s right, without asking for referrals. She’s got an amazing process that helps you become a Referral Ninja. So here we go with Stacey Brown Randall.

 

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So now Stacey, please share with us who you are. We’re going to get into what you do and how you help people attract a lot more referrals, but first share a little bit about your background and who you are.

Yeah, so, I don’t know if it’s as sexy and exciting to start with the personal stuff, but obviously it is the part that makes me who I am and what drives me for what I do. I am married. We have three children. I live in Charlotte, North Carolina, and we have a 12 year old son, a 10 year old daughter. and we have custody of our 13 year old nephew. We’ve actually had custody of him since he was seven. So overnight, back in the summer of 2015, we went from a party of four to a party of five. My husband and I were very focused on making sure that we as parents were around. So that was a big driver for me to start my own business.

I’m also a member of the business failure club, which is why I’m here today having a conversation with you about referrals, because of the lessons learned when my first business failed.

Being an entrepreneur was something I always wanted to do. I come from a family of entrepreneurs.  I call them the crazy kind of entrepreneur, because they all owned restaurants or they’re in the hospitality field. But for me, being an entrepreneur means control of my time and freedom and flexibility to be a hands-on mom, while having a successful business. So that’s a little bit about me.

 

That’s awesome. Well, it was a great hook that you just had, and I would love for you to go back and share that failure if you don’t mind.

Oh, of course. I mean, everybody’s got to have that good story, right?  The background that’s like, Oh, look at that;  that’s my lesson learned from the School of Hard Knocks.

I always knew I wanted to own a business. It was more about, what am I going to do? What was that going to look like?  I was pretty clear early on, that I didn’t want a brick and mortar type business, and I didn’t want to do anything that my family was doing.  I did not want to own a restaurant or cafe or anything like that. So  I went through my early years after graduating from college and going through corporate America, trying to figure out what expertise I have;  what I could actually make money on to share and impact people.

My very first company I started was an HR consulting firm. I focused on employee engagement and generational diversity.  I had some big name clients, like KPMG and BDO. I eventually brought on Coca-Cola bottling and Allied Bank.  I was published in some well-respected publications like “Accounting Today”.  But the truth is, behind the scenes, that business had a secret, that would ultimately lead to my downfall.  I didn’t have a consistent way of filling the prospect pipeline. I didn’t have a consistent way of bringing prospects into my business. I would land a client like BDO, and it may be a year or two year engagement, but then I’d look up and the work would be over, and I’’d be like, “Oh my gosh, I need another client”.

So the hustling and the networking and the connecting with people would start all over again. I believe the first or second year of a new business is crazy, but I was still on that rollercoaster four years later.  That was why I wouldn’t make it to the five-year mark. I realized it just wasn’t working. I had to hang it up. At some point, you need to start scaling, and I was like, Hmm, I  can’t really scale when I’m drowning. That led to me hanging it up, and declaring that the business had failed. So why did I not succeed?

I’m able to have success. So why did I not succeed? Why are others succeeding?  I started looking back to my big, big problem, which was consistently filling the pipeline.  I realized that was my big issue. So I started looking back;  where did my clients come from?  I realized that my first business never received a single referral, which is crazy, right?  Wait a minute… not a single referral!  The only referral I’d received was two years after I’d shut down the business. I was back in corporate America, so this is kind of a problem.

I needed to figure out the mechanisms to grow a business.  I knew when my business failed and I went back to corporate America, that I would somehow get out again.  I was already planning the exit strategy to start another business. It was a matter of what I could do, because it wasn’t going to be HR consulting again. I had to figure out what held me back the first time around.

So while in corporate, I got certified as a productivity coach. I was going to start a productivity and business coaching practice. That was my second business. But I realized that I had to bring in clients a different way.  I never got a referral with the first business.

I had to get referrals in a different way. I had to get those referrals, in addition to the networking and the 7 million cups of coffee, and all the other ways, right?  So like most people, I went to the all-knowing Google. I’m like, tell me, how do I get referrals? And 99.9% of the advice was advice that may work for some, but didn’t fit who I was. I knew it wasn’t going to work for me, and I knew if I didn’t find a different way I would be stuck without any referrals.

All I was reading was old school advice, that you’ve got to ask for referrals.  And if you’re not asking, then you’re probably paying a commission, and if you’re not paying a commission, then you’re probably being overly promotional and gimmicky or you’re networking and you know a ton of people. So they’ll just happen.

But what I found when I looked at the brain science and the psychology behind referrals, was like, Hmm, I probably can reverse engineer this into a way to make it work for me where I don’t have to do any of those things that make me uncomfortable and feel awkward and still have success. It was just a theory. I didn’t know if it would work, but I had had a business failure and I didn’t  want to go back to corporate. So I’ll figure this out.  So I “guinea pig” on my own business, my business and productivity coaching practice. In my first year I got 112 referrals that I didn’t ask for, and I’ve done that consistently since!

 

I know you specialize in helping your clients not necessarily ask for the referral. Can you share a couple of things that you did to be able to earn 112 referrals?

Yeah. You know, it’s interesting. I always tell folks that being referable is like the foundational piece. It’s your ability to have a sticky client experience that makes your clients willing to come back and work with you again.

We’re all looking for brand-buzz out in the marketplace to help you stand out against the competition and to also earn those referrals. So that sticky client experience and the things you do to be referable are very, very important. That’s the foundational piece, right? You’ve got to be referable, because I believe that people deserve referrals if they do great work. You deserve referrals, but you’re not owed them.

All the other advice comes from the place that you owe it to me, which is why I’m going to ask or offer you compensation so I can get you to give me those referrals. I come at it from a different perspective of understanding and really respecting the relationship with the person who’s going to refer you.

So think about it as a stepping stone, like building a pyramid.  I’m setting that foundation, that’s the ability to be really referable, to have that client experience that makes people comfortable putting their reputation on the line and recommending and referring you. So some of the things that I did as I was building out my client experience, and I didn’t do it intentionally, was try this stuff and let’s see what happens.  Let’s see what works. Then, let’s reverse engineer it.

Use what actually worked and then create a system and a process behind it. But you know, a lot of times it was just doing things a little bit different as part of that client experience. Like when someone would say yes to coming onboard as a coaching client of mine, I knew the process we were about to go through was going to be uncomfortable. It was going to make them have to challenge themselves and it was going to stretch them. And they were going to have to be willing to do things differently. I mean, that’s what it looks like. Typically when you work with a coach and we talk about business decisions and your productivity, people hold tight. So I would send what I call the welcome card or journey card when we first start working together, that just says, Hey, I know what we’re about to do is going to stretch and challenge you. You’re not on this journey alone. I’m your co-pilot right. You’re in great hands. This is what I do. This is my zone of genius.

It was just little things like that that would help me connect. Now, is there an entire process and system for that client experience? Of course, but it was usually the things that I did that were relationship-based, not so much work-based that would start planting and get them to a place where they felt comfortable referring me.

But here’s the thing, a great client experience isn’t going to get you referrals. There is actually another strategy on top of that that will help you receive those referrals from your referral sources. So the foundational piece is, yes, you’ve got to be referable, you’ve got to have that sticky client experience, You also have to have a strategy on top of that to be able to generate referrals to.

 

Yes; a great client experiences and expectations. So just meeting an expectation doesn’t necessarily make referrals come to you. That is really, really good stuff. So you send a journey card and in that journey card, you’re connecting with them. Are you setting any type of expectations or planting a couple of those seeds? That way when the uncomfortable moments come up, you’ve already addressed them.

Yeah.  If you think about the totality of your client experience, all the pieces work together. Right? So I really believe, and it’s so funny that we are talking about the client experience, because I’m actually working on my second book right now, which is about the client experience. I think how a small business deploying a client experience looks different from all the advice you can find online about how larger companies, like the fortune 500 companies, deploy a client experience. So I do think there are facets to that. I  teach it from stages that your clients go through. Lots of people teach client experience from a stage, or level perspective. My stages are, the new stage, the active stage, and the alumni stage, and unless you’re a CPA or a financial advisor and they continue to stay with you year after year;  your active stage doesn’t end.

You don’t ever move into the alumni stage. It’s things that you do that define the base of how your client experience grows. I call them work touchpoints and those relationship-based touchpoints as well, that allow you to connect to them. So yes, there are a series of things. That was just one example of the journey card and that’s really that piece to overcome buyer’s remorse, right? Because when people make the decision to change, they typically question their decision right after they make changes or invest in something. I’m talking about services that are not hundreds of dollars, but thousands and thousands of dollars. So that journey card helps overcome that buyer’s remorse, and lets them know that they’re in good hands.  But then yes, there are other things that we could do throughout the client experience.

Many people don’t think about it from that perspective. Look at it from the perspective of a client, what is it like to actually work with you? What is it like to be on the receiving end of working with you and following that process? So if you need to overcome buyer’s remorse and make sure the client is comfortable with you, expectation mapping is really big.  Have a communication plan, and go from new to active to alumni. Throughout that, of course, is your ability to have that client experience be referable. I teach pieces where we’re not going to leave it to chance. Some clients will refer you without you having to do much, other than just delighting them.

Others will need a little bit of a nudge and a little help in that perspective. So first we want to nail our client experience. Then we want to worry about referrals on top of that. I think your client experience is something that needs to be considered. Frequently, clients come to me and they’re like, Hey, I need referrals. I always say, I’m going to assume you’re referable.  If you’re not, we need to get that solved and get that fixed. What I usually do when someone comes to me and says, Hey, I need referrals, is I look to, well, who’s referred you in the past. Then we start building a strategy and a plan from that perspective. So the client experience is a piece of it. It’s not typically where I start, because of the assumptions that I make when someone’s received referrals before. Now we need a strategy for those folks.

 

That’s awesome. I just wrote down a couple of notes cause I love that stuff.  You know, a lot of people have that entitlement attitude, just because they’re my customer.  I work with many real estate agents, and there’s a real estate agent around every block.  They need to stand out from the noise, and just having a good customer experience is not enough.  It’s that going above and beyond and doing extra  little things. 

So when you ask, are you referable?, there are a lot of things I can think of, why I would never send a referral to some people.  I wouldn’t necessarily want to open up that door. You know, every person has that invisible door behind them. Right?  Only they can open it up to people.  Besides knowing you, liking you, and trusting you, what are some things that people can do to level up the referability, if that’s even a word,

It absolutely is a word. I use it all the time. My editor does too.  She doesn’t love it, but I don’t care.  You can make anything a word if you just hyphenate it. Right?  I mean, just throw that hyphen in there and call it a word. So when you’re thinking about that ability to be referable, and to really have that ability for people to trust referring to you, it’s not usually the things that people think. I mean, you’re right. A lot of people come at it from an expectation and that’s where the asking advice comes from.  Hey, if I deliver great quality service, I would love for you to introduce me to some folks like you, right?

Those words make the skin on the back of my neck crawl, and I actually hate them more when they’re said to me, because you’re right. That ability for me to deliver a great service is all that is owed, right? The client doesn’t owe you anything. You owe them that great client experience and great work.

I have a lot of real estate agents in my program. They feel like it’s the continuation of the postcards and the drop-by’s and the pop-ins that ultimately get them referrals. I’m like, no, keeping in touch is important. But what makes me refer you is how I connected with you during the process and how much I trusted you during the process, which means communication is key to setting my expectation.

I would send my friend, my neighbor, my coworker to go work with agent Joe or Sally, right? I would refer that person because I know there’s nothing about a real estate transaction (using this as our example), that goes according to plan, because you don’t control all the parts and  pieces. So an agent is really upfront about that and navigates those situations well, calms the client’s nerves, and continues to build trust. These are the agents that are actually going to be able to generate those referrals. All the other things that you can do are nice, right? They’re definitely something to consider.  Showing your gratitude to them for being a client throughout the process is important. But it also, funnily, comes down to the type of work you do.

Once you do that really well, then we can layer some of the other stuff on top of it that really makes it work.  I find that people have this expectation that if I get you to the goal line and hand you the keys to your new house or take the keys from your old house that we just sold, that that earns me referrals. But at the end of the day, it is how I feel about that process with you that makes me say yes, I would put my mother through this with you, right?  Or yes, I would put my neighbor through this with you.

Between my husband and me,  we’ve probably sold four or five homes. Thinking about the different agents that we’ve used through that process, there are some that just do it differently and get you to that place where you’re like, okay, I actually really trust you. I really would say that you’re the person that I would trust to help my friend or my neighbor. I think it does start there.

So that’s not the easy silver bullet answer, like use this language or do this, which are some of the things that I teach, but it does come down to that foundational point of really making sure that your clients trust you through the process. Here’s the thing, nine times out of 10, that is actually how you’re going to handle something that doesn’t go according to plan and get ahead of it in your communication. Remind them, remember when we talked in the beginning, what this process was going to look like?  Remember when I told you we’d get to this stage and then things would probably go a little haywire?  Assure them that you already knew this was coming.

Those are the things that are really, really valuable with getting to the place where someone is comfortable referring you.  Now, once they refer you, then we can build on top of those things. I teach a process to turn clients and contacts into referral sources, but I think the easiest place for any business owner to start, particularly if they want to see faster success, is to look at the people who’ve already referred you, and  make sure you have a strategy for them.

 

Yeah. Okay. Awesome. Now, do you teach that if you’re going to ask for referrals, to teach at a certain time and  place in that journey, or do you teach a completely non-existent “don’t ever ask for a referral”?

What people don’t recognize about asking for a referral is that it actually starts to commoditize our relationship.  A referral is actually never about you. You’re the beneficiary who gets a new client. Yay. We love it. Right? But at the end of the day, they’re just not about us. But we like to think that they are. So when you ask for a referral or you offer someone compensation, which is just like asking for a referral, you start to commoditize the relationship and you’re artificially creating something that doesn’t naturally exist.  If you really think about the human dynamic and psychology behind why a referral happens in the first place, the reason why it happens, is because I’m helping someone else who needs to solve a problem, and I’m going to be the hero, right? I get to help them, and whether we see it as being the hero or not, it is what we are when we help somebody connect to you.

You have to flip the dynamic in your head:  Hey, these referrals aren’t about me. They’re really about the referral source. The referral source knows the person who has a problem, and I need to maintain my relationship and trust with the referral source so that they will refer those prospects.  It  makes it about the work you want somebody else to do for you, which isn’t why referrals happen. The hardest thing about it is that it shortchanges or starts to hamper the referrals you’ll actually receive in the future. Asking for a referral is the only time you get close to receiving any.  That means your trigger now has become the constant ask. And if the constant ask is the trigger, guess what? You’re constantly asking!  You’re looked at as the person who’s always asking.  “Oh wait, you’re going to Stacy? Avoid her! It’s gonna seem like it’s all about you, and then all of a sudden, you’re going to get the ask for a referral or be asked for connections. Those are the reasons  I tell folks not to ask, but that doesn’t mean we leave anything to chance, right?  We have to look at the relationship differently and take a different approach and a different tactic to have success.

 

That is very, very powerful. Thank you for sharing that. Now once the referrals are coming in, you’re now working. Okay. You show up in their life. You’re referrable obviously because you are starting to attract referrals now.  What’s that next step? Do you teach people to be sure that you appreciate those referrals, because behavior rewarded is behavior repeated. What types of things are you sharing with your clients to be able to show your appreciation and go above and beyond?

Yeah. The very first thing I  tell folks is I want you to separate in your mind, your referral sources from everybody else in your database. One of the very first steps I teach is to go through the process of identifying who your referral sources are, the existing referral sources, those are the folks that have referred you in the past. Now, when I teach this, I tell folks, you’re going to go back three or four years to get a good amount of data;  who were the clients that have been referred to you over the last three or four years? Who did the referring of those clients? You can also do this with prospects because not everybody says yes when they are referred to you or when they come into your prospect pipeline.

So look at who was referred to you, who didn’t say yes, and make sure you’re collecting those referral source names as well. What you do is actually less important than who you do it for, because, let’s just use a real estate agent as an example.  When I’m working with a real estate agent and I’m getting them to look at their database, and let’s just say, it’s got 300 people in it. Many real estate agents will call all 300 people in their database, clients, even if they’re just a neighbor or someone they used to work with.

So you gotta go in and you’ve got to separate out your categories. You’ve got to make sure that you’re categorizing those that have referred you as a referral source. They could be a client. They could be family and friends that have referred you. But once they’ve referred you, they get a different label. They keep their client label or their center of influence label or their friends or family label. But they also get the referral source label. Once people look at that list, let’s say 20 of them have referred them at least once over the last four years.

So then we’re looking at these 20 people. These are 20 individuals that have a relationship and a perspective of you and a thought process about you. Right? So it’s not about doing what’s easy, right? Let me slap my logo on some things and send it to make sure I’m staying in touch. You should never put logos on things that are for your referral sources, because that makes it about you, not about them.  It’s great for clients, but not for referral sources.  I find when people go through this process, looking at that list of 20 names who referred them over the last four years, they automatically start associating with them and start looking for commonalities, looking for differences, looking for maybe why someone referred them.

Maybe they moved away. Maybe the referral didn’t go well, right? Maybe this person referred me to one person every year for the last four years. and I haven’t talked to her in 12 months. There are all these emotions and things that come up when you look at that list, once you look at those 20 names and remind yourself, those are 20 individuals who care enough about helping someone else and trust you to be the person to help them.  These are relationships to maintain. It’s going to be somewhere between four and eight touch points in a year. With folks in their first two years, we’ll do between six and eight touch points.

I have some folks in my program who are on their seventh year, and they can usually get away with less than six to eight, but they’ve been doing this and nurturing these referral sources now for six plus years. We’re looking at how we’re going to take care of them, and that is really dictated by who these people are. Right?  If I look at my list of referral sources and realize, Oh my gosh, they’re all parents! Well, then a great touch point would be to consider recognizing Mother’s Day and Father’s Day. Those are the kinds of decisions that drive the touchpoints that I teach in my Growth by Referrals Program.

So I have an attorney in the program who is obsessed with her black dog.  She loves dogs, loves animals in general, but loves dogs. Well, turns out one of the things she learned going through the program with me was that there’s actually a National Black Dog Day. Right? So it would make sense that we use this little bit about who she is and infuse that into her touch point plan of six to eight touch points over a year. We’re not going to do National Black Dog Day for all eight touch points. That would be weird, right? It’s just allowing her to infuse her personality with who her folks are. Then she’s looking at the lists going, Oh my gosh. Most of my people who refer me are dog owners too.

Those are the commonalities that we start to see. It’s funny because when I start talking about this, most people are like, okay, tell me what to do. And I’ll say,  Nope, because you need to know who you’re doing it for first, then what is secondary, because  you’ll start to pay attention to how you can take care of the people on your list. What if your referral source is not local?  Well then, you should have coffee with them at least once. I would say more, but let’s just say for sake of argument one time, even if you have to do it virtually. You have to start paying attention to who is local and who is long distance. We have business owners in 10 different countries, all around the world, in my programs. Some of my referral sources are also my clients whom I’ve never even met, but we know each other well and I have to look for other ways to stay connected to them through my referral plan.

 

That’s amazing. It made me think about a mortgage broker I met years ago. He hired a coach and was paying this coach $5,000 a month. I asked him what this coach was going to do. Was he going to send you realtors? I wanted to share this with you because I think this is the kind of what you do with your clients.  More on an intimate level.  

I want you to label your different realtors in your database because 90% of his business came from new purchases. So he said, I have my top 20 realtors that I work with.  I had to make sure my antennae were up, but I wasn’t strategically going to their Facebook and Instagram and scrolling through and finding all of their likes and interests.  This one realtor loved the New England Patriots. So he went on eBay and found a number one finger for the Patriots, like those big foam fingers, for five bucks.

He packaged it up with a nice handwritten card and he sent it to this guy for his birthday. He ordered a bunch of different gifts and kept them in his office for birthdays, different acknowledgements and stuff. He said, Curtis, I can’t tell you how many referrals that I got just because they posted it on Facebook and Instagram. They put it out there and posted, Oh my gosh, I have the best lender. People are tagging people and sharing it. I was like, that is incredible. Just one gift they sent paid for his coaching for the year. I’ve just never forgotten that. 

We’re spinning so many plates. How do you as a coach, get somebody to slow down enough to actually do it? Cause one of the hardest things to do is quantify relationships. Some people say, okay, if I do a Google pay per click ad, or if I do a Facebook ad, I’m going to get back. But it’s harder when you’re talking about relationships and earning referrals and building that connection over time when we’re in such a slow economy. 

So what are some of the things that you do to help your clients slow down enough to realize the big picture of what you coach?

You know that saying “when the student is ready, the master will appear or the teacher will appear”?   I think that is a big part of what helps my clients have success when they work with me because they’re more than likely ready for it. They have got themselves to a place where they want to have referrals as a part of how they grow their business.  I want them to want referrals to be the biggest piece of the pie of how they grow their business. I recognize there will always be other ways to grow a business, in addition to referrals. I just want it to be the biggest piece.

There’s a different way to connect with people that typically, for the right person, is exactly what they’ve been looking for. But the metrics are very important, because at the end of the day, to work with me, there’s an investment, a price tag that goes along with it. So the ROI matters as much as well. So one of the very first things I have my clients do when they come in is we  set a goal. There’s a formula we use to project out how many referrals we think you should be able to refer. The referrals you should be able to receive within your first year following the plan. That is based, of course, on historical data and obviously how many referral sources you have. We look at it and project out.  So we already have a goal.

So for example, I’ll use Melissa, who is a real estate agent. She just started the program back in January of 2021. She set her goal of 27 referrals for the year. Now she averages 16 referrals a year. When we looked over year over year data, she’s averaging about 16, but we want to get her to say, okay, 16 is the baseline. We want to get you more. So she chose her reasonable goal based on all her data and her expectations for her business. She set her goal at 27, and in her first quarter, she had already brought in eight referrals.

I said, if you stay on that pace, obviously you are going to hit your goal. But I would anticipate if you’re staying on this pace and with such a strong start, you’ll probably blow past that goal. it has a lot to do with referral sources whether I would let someone set a goal from 16 on average to 27, right? But let’s make sure we set something that’s realistic;  but that’s not the only metric that matters.

So most people are going to look at this and say to themselves, okay, if I’m going to put time and energy and effort into developing a referral plan and executing  it and doing some things differently, I want to have that first year result. And I always tell folks, great;  you’re going to judge the success of your referral plan. You’re going to judge the success of it on how you look in that first year. But what I’m most interested in is when we have a conversation three years or five years, or seven years from now, and you’ve shown me how much growth your referrals have actually hit. So Catherine, who’s in the program, went from  three or four referrals a year to 20 in her first year, then 40 in her second year.

Now we go in for the third year, right? So it’s looking at that growth trajectory. These 3 people are all in three different industries. We’re talking a real estate agent, an attorney and a financial advisor. So their growth trajectories look different based on their industry as well. What it looks like in that first year is really important, in addition to what it looks like year over year.  But that’s not the only metric that we track, right? We track first year metrics. We track your growth over time, right? We help you set new goals, and keep reaching it year after year, after year.

The other metrics I’m telling folks to track are their close ratio.  How many of these prospects that come by referral to you are you closing? Then we’re looking at your closing ratio by referral source. It really helps us get down to the granular level of understanding what’s working and what’s not working.  That’s the piece that people miss, and what’s fascinating is, you told the story about the New England Patriots and the foam finger. Most people hear that and they’re like, yeah, I could totally do that. I could totally Google stalk and Facebook stalk my people and find out all their likes and hobbies.

The problem I find with something like that is it’s individualized, and that makes it time-intensive Remember, I said six to eight touch points in a year, that’s six to eight times trying to come up with something special like that. I always tell folks that if you can do something like that, as a one-off, that’s an excellent touch point, but you need to release yourself from the expectation. It’s supposed to be six to eight of them like that. Sometimes the touch points we can do, we can do for everybody on our list. Yet it still feels very personalized when we receive it. So we look for things that we can do that are almost for them all, right? Like, Hey, I can do this for everybody, but it’ll feel personalized when they receive it. Of course. I always tell my folks, at any point, do a one off, do the foam finger. Do the one-off from that perspective when you know who these people are, because as you said, another very important piece of the puzzle is knowing who these people are so that you can help.

 

I’m sure you also share that not all referrals sources are created equal. There was a general manager of a hotel who told me that he breaks everybody down into A,B and C categories. He calculates all the revenue that every guest brings into that building:  number of rooms, money spent at the bar and restaurant, etc. Then he categorizes the number of touch points, and the gift allowance for the different levels. It was very strategic, personalized, and individualized.

Type of touch points. So I think the easiest ones that we’ve talked about are the gift ones, because we can all visualize in our mind’s eye what it looks like to get the foam finger or to get some type of gift. There are actually other categories of touchpoints that you can do.  When I teach the framework to build the referral plan, there are actually a lot of pieces that come into that. How do we think about the six to eight touch points that we’re going to do and what are we trying to accomplish with them? And it’s not all gifts. I think some people hear that and say, I don’t have the budget for that. This isn’t about how much money you can spend. There are many people I work with who are on shoestring budgets.

So we work within their budget. You’ve got to do gifts, but there are things you can do that are free. Let’s be honest, COVID has made it easier for us because people are more willing to do that virtual coffee now.  I always teach that virtual coffee actually matters more than anything else. But the reality of it is, you don’t have to spend a lot of money to generate referrals because at the end of the day, this is about you maintaining connection with your referral sources.

What I want people to understand is, with our referral plan and these touch points that we’re going to do six to eight times throughout the year, we first identify referral sources and build our touchpoint referral plan. Ultimately, I want to impact how you feel about me. That means I want you to know that I’m grateful for you, that I don’t take you for granted and I am thankful.  I am full of gratitude that you make it easier for me to grow my business and  help more people. So you have to come from the right mindset and heart place, right? You have to come from the right place in terms of, Hey, I want to impact how you think about me.  Know that I care about you and that you’re cared for, so I can impact how you think about me.

If I can impact how you feel about me, then I can impact how you think about me. So if I can impact how you feel then with the language that I use, I can direct your thoughts in terms of how to think about me. That is ultimately what my system teaches. Let’s take care of our referral sources, but there’s this other piece, right? That is the actual language that we use. We call it referral seeds, but there’s a language that we use with the six to eight touch points, right? Create a place of gratitude and thankfulness and come from the right place. Then use some specific language that allows all these pieces to come together so that I can impact how you feel and then direct how you think.

 

And those were all parts of your roadmap to becoming a Referral Ninja, correct? So in wrapping this up, I want everybody to know where they can go to connect with you, because we can’t possibly do this all in 45 minutes. We want to know more about the Referral Ninja program. That’s amazing.

So we have a nine question quiz called the Referral Ninja quiz. You will land in one of three Referral Ninja levels. It will show you a roadmap of exactly what gaps you need to close to move up to the top level, which is the Referral Ninja Master. Of course, we also teach that whole framework, what it looks like, and walk you through it.

I always tell folks, Hey, let’s just start with you knowing what Ninja level you’re at, right? Then you can read my book or start listening to my podcasts or come into our free Facebook group, “Referrals Without Asking”. Start recognizing, okay, I’m a beginner Ninja. Let me just start soaking in the information of what it would look like to move past the middle level and get up to that master level. Once you understand what it would look like and how you would feel, we can have the conversation about joining my paid program. The best place to start is, where are you starting from? What gaps do you need to close? Having that information is so powerful and empowering for you to know what next steps to take. So that quiz is a great place to start.

 

That’s on StaceyBrownRandall.com?

Yes.  If you go to StaceyBrownRandall.com, you’ll see the icon to take the quiz, or you can go to referralquiz.com, and it’ll redirect you to the quiz as well.

 

And from time to time, you also have a seven day challenge, correct?

Yes. We typically have it going when we are not doing a live challenge. So it depends when it’s available, but all of that is on StaceyBrownRandall.com. I think the live challenges are way more fun than the seven day ones, because they are more automated for folks to just start whenever. But the live challenges are some of the best, and we do those in four and five days.

 

Oh, that is amazing. Well, thank you so much. Anything that you would like to share, any other wisdom that you’d like to share in wrapping this up?

You know, if someone’s listening to this episode right now and thinking, okay, what Stacey has talked about and this whole idea of referrals without asking really resonates with me. It makes sense to me, and fits who I am as a person. The number one thing I would ask you to do is go through and look at who your referral sources are and allow that knowledge to direct you. If you want to take the next steps, if you want to figure out how to really take care of them in the right way so that you never have to ask for a referral, I can teach you. So just knowing who those people are, whether it’s three people or 33 people is irrelevant;  just knowing who your existing referral sources are is a great place to start. You’ll probably look at that list and be like, okay, I need more, and there is a way to grow potential referral sources into actual referral sources, but just start by knowing who’s referred in the past. I think that is such an empowering moment for a business owner to take. Now what do I want to do with this knowledge?

 

That is absolutely brilliant. Well, thank you so much for sharing.  I can’t wait for our audience to hear this. This is so in alignment with what we do to bring people together. Thank you so much for your time today.

Thanks for having me. It was a pleasure. Thank you.


 

Important Links:

Website: https://www.staceybrownrandall.com/

Take The Quiz: http://referralquiz.com/

Stacey’s Book: https://www.amazon.com/Generating-Business-Referrals-Without-Asking/dp/1683509269

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/staceybrandall/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/StaceyBrownRandall/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/staceybrownrandall/


 

About Stacey Brown Randall:

Stacey Brown Randall - Referrals Without AskingHailing from Charlotte North Carolina, Stacey Brown Randall is an award winning author, speaker, and podcast host. She teaches small business owners, solopreneurs and sales professionals how to generate referrals without asking, without manipulation or feeling inauthentic.

Stacey has been seen in/on Entrepreneur, Forbes, FOX Business, Investors Business Daily, Cheddar, and more.

Are you interested in more Referrals Without Asking? Learn more about Stacey, and take quiz at https://www.staceybrownrandall.com/quiz