Mark 0:00

You've built great relationships with clients, collaborators, and others across your industry, they likely have great relationships with their clients and collaborators, many of whom you don't know, but you'll never know because you never, ask for an introduction or as we'll discuss today a referral.

John Tyreman 0:43

Welcome business developers, doer sellers, firm owners, marketers, sales professionals, to another episode of Breaking Biz Dev. I'm John. He's Mark. And today we are going to talk about one of our favorite topics, referrals.

Mark 0:58

it's a good topic. This is a reprise and I think it's important that, we revisit some of the topics that we've discussed in the past.'cause a lot of times, we'll, we lay out a clear plan or a process or a how to and some people run into speed bumps, And they have trouble with it. So we're gonna put that process, we're gonna put what we've seen sort of under the microscope and we're gonna talk about it.

John Tyreman 1:26

Yeah, I like, to think of this as more of like a reflection, like a diagnostic is like, kind of like looking inward and thinking to yourself, okay, is our referral process broken? I just wanna give a shout out to Matt who took our listener survey, which is linked in the show notes. Matt gave us some feedback and he said his favorite episode so far has been the Building Trust at Scale episode, and he liked the inclusion at the beginning of the David Mayer's trustworthiness equation, which gave him a useful principle to follow without having to read the book himself. So some people like listening to podcasts, other peoples like reading. And uh, for Matt, he, uh, he liked what we had to say.

Mark 2:06

Yeah, I, I, I laugh with that because, you know, it's actually a good book and there's, you know, a bunch of other content in that book. So much so that Charlie Green, and I think Charlie Green's Company is called the Charlie Green Associates, has kind of based a practice on, you know, a lot of the concepts that are built in there. But I think the trust equation is good. It's a simple one, and honestly it makes a lot of sense for those sort of left brain, sort of technical people out there where, they're trying to, do the math and it's not working. so it's helpful, but yeah. That's a good comment, but it's a funny one. Sure.

John Tyreman 2:36

thank you Matt, for the comment and if you want to send us your feedback, check out that listener survey in the show notes, or leave a review on Apple or Spotify or give us a comment on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts. So Mark. So if listeners want to kind of understand the process that you typically recommend to your clients, they can go back and listen to an early episode of Breaking Biz Dev called a referral process, which we'll link in the show notes too. but Mark, let's start here. You're in this every day coaching your clients, helping them, do better at business development sales. What have you seen when it comes to. Your clients asking for referrals?

Mark 3:18

the referral process that we've laid out in a previous episode and discussed in others is based on a lot of content that I've pulled from many different people. So, you know, attributions sort of all over the place. when you think it through, it's a really logical way to walk through asking someone for a professional introduction to someone else that they might be able to help. a referral and the whole process makes a ton of sense. but I've seen sort of uneven success with it, you know, I run people through a simple process. I coach and guide them, both as groups and individually about how to ask for professional introductions. I think one of the things I see initially is there's some initial confusion between sort of references, between referrals or at least the referrals on how I refer to them and sort of the serendipitous. Referrals, the ones that just sort of, land in our inbox. we get a random connection from someone. those are different from actually kind of going and getting them right that we lay out in that process. So there's some initial confusion there. And finally, I think people get their heads kind of wrapped around that. I think there's some initial interest because a lot of individuals, and frankly firms. See this as an untapped opportunity. So I think there's some initial enthusiasm and some interest in referrals because by and large, a lot of the firms that I work with do not have an intentional, process, do not have sort of referrals as part of their lead generation sort. Most firms out there in the professional services world that I work with, a lot of them are in the architecture and engineering world. don't really discuss. Lead generation, you know, or lead generation, is we're gonna go to a conference, we're going to, go meet some people at a networking session or, we're going to wait till our marketing department goes and finds some solicitation, some RFPs that are out there in the world. And they're gonna send those to us and we're gonna. go'em. Right? that's sort of their world of lead generation, right? They don't get web leads, they don't get referrals. They don't, you know, there's a bunch of stuff they don't do. So there's some initial interest in this. I like that, That's interesting. But then other things that, you know, after that interest, I see, you know, some people, you know, they kind of chicken out, right? They never ask. They kind of make excuses. Then maybe when they do finally get the gumption to go and ask for an introduction to someone from one of their professional contacts, they only go halfway.

John Tyreman 6:02

What do you mean?

Mark 6:03

hey, if you know anyone, an introduction would be great. Right. You know, Hey, if you know anybody that could use our help, you know, great. that's halfway right. So it's not, it's not the follow through. So

John Tyreman 6:15

all right. Here's the, here's the Control F moment, right? Grab your highlighter and if you're gonna send out an email asking for a referral highlight if you know anyone, right? Search for that in the draft that you put together before you send it out.

Mark 6:30

yeah, yeah, yeah. if you know anyone and there's a bunch of problems wrapped up in that, Like, so that's in practice, right? That's me actually out there working with, you know, hundreds of people. Walking them through a process on referrals, and not seeing a ton of success. And it's kind of a point of sort of personal frustration for me, because I, believe in the process. I regularly use this process. I use it as an important part of my pie chart of lead generation and I have used it successfully, as in I have had a referral conversation with a close professional, and kind of slash personal contact with mine in the past.

John Tyreman 7:12

Yeah.

Mark 7:12

And I've gotten good introductions to people, some of which have ended up being clients. So I have seen it work and for. Left-brained, process oriented individuals. This is actually a handy tool, but it hasn't really played out a lot. So what we're gonna talk about next is sort of the diagnostics, right? And we're gonna like, what's going on?

John Tyreman 7:42

what's going on? and how can you take a, a look inward and, and really figure out do you have a referral problem?

Mark 7:48

Yeah.

John Tyreman 7:48

And I echo that mark. Like when I look at how leads come to my business, a big chunk of that is referrals at every single agency stop that I've been at, referrals has been a big slice of that pie as well. So referrals are a thing that is a viable lead generation channel. So let's talk about. what are some of the signs of a broken referral process? Let's start there. Like, I think like, let's, let's split this out into what are the symptoms and then what are the core, root causes. And we've got a list here and we can kind of go through'em. So Mark, you wanna kick us off with this first one?

Mark 8:26

Yeah. So, you know, we're the doctors here, we're, we're, we're looking at the patient coming in. That is Ill, we're like, oh, what are the signs? What are the symptoms that we're seeing here? So, one of the easy ones is, You haven't asked for a referral in the last, you know, two or three months. It just, just hasn't happened. I'll ask people, it's like, did you ask them? No. Oh, okay. So that's a symptom of a deeper issue here for sure. And in order to make this an effective process, it's something that needs to be practiced regularly and you need to get better at it over time. And if you want to get better at something over time, you have to do it. every few months, every month, every two months, every three months, whatever else it is, you have to be practicing and improving for sure. So that's an easy one.

John Tyreman 9:12

Have you asked for any referrals in the last 90 days? All right, so this, second bullet we've got here is you're not getting any referrals either solicited or unsolicited. Whether or not you're asking for referrals, those serendipitous ones that you mentioned earlier, those do happen right from time to time. But, are you even getting those in your inbox? When was the last time that you got a referral inbound?

Mark 9:36

Right, right. and the mind, again, we're just diagnosing here. We're not like, that's your mind races to the reasons that that might be happening. So yeah, that's a good one. Are you getting them? Yeah. right. So the other one is, there's just a general lack of urgency. Around referrals, you know, and good urgency, right? Good urgency is focused intentional effort, right? So there's just a lack of that. It's, you know, people kind of roll their eyes and they go, well, you know, and that so, They don't see it potentially as a viable sort of thing. So, yeah. There's another one that says, oh, okay. There's a red flag.

John Tyreman 10:12

So another sign of a broken referral process. I don't know if it was you or I or who came up with this one, but if you look at your contacts on LinkedIn, let's say you've got 10,000 LinkedIn followers, right? So you should be able to tap that network. But if you've got a tough time going through those contact lists and those relationships and picking out. Who might be a good referral source, that might be a sign of a broken referral process.

Mark 10:38

Yeah. and, so that might not be, you know, totally obvious to some people because you think, wow, you know, if you have a great network, you know, we used LinkedIn, right? the old guys use, you know, your Rolodex or your, Outlook contacts, list however you capture your personal. Contacts and connections. You know, if it's a sizable group yet, you're not leaning on that group for introductions and referrals. and conversely, they're not leaning on you for introductions and referrals. there's no exchange, happening there. Then that might be symptomatic of a. Bigger problem.

John Tyreman 11:24

So we've, gone through some of the symptoms of why your referral process could be broken.

Mark 11:30

The patient is sick.

John Tyreman 11:32

So let's figure out why. All right, mark, what are some possible root causes

Mark 11:37

maybe the process just never, never. You know, took hold, right? maybe the process doesn't exist. if it's someone that I work with, is obviously the, process that we laid out didn't stick, right? So there, that doesn't exist a process individually and organizationally, it didn't settle in. they didn't believe it would work and, you know, they tried it and failed or whatever else. So it's just the process just doesn't. exist in the organization. and that can tie to a bunch of stuff. There's, you know, the organization hasn't recognized it as a viable, you know, lead generation tool. So there's no sort of framework, there's no structure, there's no goals built around it. or for that matter, you know, around lead generation at, all. So, I mean, that's a big one for sure.

John Tyreman 12:19

another root cause of a broken referral process. And you, you mentioned this a little earlier when you talked about if you know anyone, right. So I think unclear messaging, like what is the ask, what are you asking for, making sure that that is clear and coming across, to the recipient. I think that is another root cause of a broken referral process.

Mark 12:40

a lot of people, I believe view marketing and selling as pretty ambiguous, you know, a, a lot of sort of just, yeah, I'm just gonna throw a bunch of darts at, A bunch of dartboards and see what sticks, right. I'm just gonna, go out and see, what I can do with no clear goals, with no clear structure and any of that kind of stuff. And this absolutely falls into that category for sure. So, unclear messaging is super, super smart. Plus, you know, when you're out there talking to someone and you're vague about what the end goal here is. You're not gonna get the results, that you want. For sure. So I've got another few here that are kind of tied together here, and I think it comes down to one word and that word is fear. Right.

John Tyreman 13:27

Good

Mark 13:28

Yeah. Yeah. So it's this, going kind of sticking your neck out and asking people for introductions to others can, get those butterflies rolling in your stomach. You know, even if we're emotionally intelligent adults, it can kind of, get us going so we don't, right. so there's a few fears, right? There's fear of refusal. If I actually get to the point where I talk to this person and I, ask them, about referrals and I walk'em through the process. And they kind of get to it and they're like, yeah, I don't know anybody, you know, then you kind of run into a brick wall and people are really scared about that. people are just like, what if I do it and I fail? And this applies to a bunch of different things, but. Referrals is one of'em. What if I do this and it doesn't work out? that's root cause. And we're not gonna smooth over the reality of people being, fearful of, of stuff. We're not gonna be able to slip you a pill and just say, here, this is your, fearless pill. There's another kind of thing associated with fear, which is you're fearful that you're asking too much from people, you know, your advocates, your good contacts, whatever else you're feeling, that you're asking too much, that maybe they'll feel a little bit uncomfortable in the situation that, who knows, right? Maybe it's, you just feel like this is a big ask and you're not willing to take the first step. Yeah, that's, those are so, so those are two that are really tied closely together, I think with sort of the fear thing.

John Tyreman 14:58

what comes to mind for me is, how important it is to have thick skin when you're doing any kind of sales activity. Because of that fear of, failure. And I'm reminded what my first job out of college was as a door-to-door salesman. I was selling paper. I felt like Jim from the office. Um, but, uh, we had this rule of 40, you gotta go to 40 businesses in a day because out of every 40 you're gonna get 39 no's, but you're gonna get one. Yes. And that's all it takes. If you get one yes every day that you do this, then you're gonna hit your quota. Right? So, that experience kind of helped me kind of get over that fear. But I think it just comes with reps, right? Like you need reps doing this and asking for referrals so that you can get over that fear. And then having a process helps too.

Mark 15:44

yeah, yeah. No doubt.

Mark Wainwright 15:46

You're listening to breaking biz dev

John Tyreman 15:48

the podcast that beats up, breaks down, and redefines business development for the professional services firms of tomorrow. Your hosts are John Tyerman, founder of Red Cedar Marketing, the podcast marketing company for experts and professional services firms,

Mark Wainwright 16:03

And Mark Wainwright, principal consultant and founder of Wainwright Insight, the fractional sales manager and sales consultant to professional services firms.

John Tyreman 16:12

If you find this podcast helpful, please help us by following the show and leaving a review on Apple podcasts

Mark Wainwright 16:18

and now back to the show.

Mark 16:22

You had another one here about timing.

John Tyreman 16:25

for timing, we talked a little bit about it earlier, hinted at it like, have you asked for referrals in the last 90 days? Right? Were the doctors in the office? But, I think like that isn't one example of not asking enough. maybe you're asking too many times you're asking your context way too much for referrals. Like maybe you don't care what they think and you're just, you keep asking them. or maybe you are not asking for referrals at the right point in the process. Let's say that you're in the middle of delivering on a critical project and you haven't quite crossed the finish line yet. So the client doesn't really know. I don't know if they're gonna be able to do what they say they able do because I haven't experienced it yet. So when you ask for that, referral is important.

Mark 17:09

Both of those are, kind of meaty. You know, they're both, they're both meaty topics. I mean, as far as timing is concerned, I have a bad response to that because a lot of people say, well, when, when is the perfect time to do it? And I was like, never. There's never the absolute perfect moment. Some might disagree with me. They're like, oh no. Right after the ribbon cutting, or the big milestone or the deliverable, hits the client's desk is like, that's the perfect time to ask and. Maybe, but the other half of me says that, look, when the big deliverable hits the client's desk, or when the ribbon cutting, happens, they have moved on to something else, right? They are now unfocused on that thing that was, and refocused on the next thing. And plus, just imagine like you're the engineer that's working on this project with someone at Europe, the Ruben cutting is. Quite literally the end of your relationship. It's, potentially that will not proceed beyond that, and they've kind of moved on. Sure. You've developed the relationship with the client or collaborators or whoever else it is. you've done all that work. But everybody's attention is now shifting elsewhere. And then all of a sudden, if you don't do it in the moment, then you think there's a month goes by, six months goes by, whatever else, and all of a sudden you start thinking, oh, I've lost track with those people now. So, from my perspective, the best time to do it is now, or yesterday, or

John Tyreman 18:31

it's an interesting topic and I can totally see your perspective, mark, and I think it probably largely depends on the relationship, the individuals involved and the nature of your work. to me, those are kind of like the big factors at play in the timing equation and when it makes sense.

Mark 18:46

and this actually ties in to another one that we kind of have on this list, you know, as a root cause, which is like, you know, you are fundamentally working towards a deliverable and not a referral. Now that might strike people kind of oddly and they think,, we have to work for towards deliverable'cause that's what we're here to do. Right. That's our, our job is to work towards the deliverable. Sure. So I'm not referring to the actual, quality of the product or whatever else the service done, or how well you're serving your clients, whatever else. If you wanna do this work, if you wanna do it great, you wanna have overjoyed clients, and you want to be able to leverage that relationship in the future, that means you need to produce someone who's gonna be, ready and frankly overjoyed to make some introductions. So it's just a different mindset, I think. it's just a different approach than just working towards a deliverable and then we're done, or it's, I'm working towards creating a long-term relationship where the client is overjoyed to introduce me to other people that I might be able to help.

John Tyreman 19:47

Both can be true. And I think that's the whole point, is these are, it's another dimension to the delivery of the work. And that's like the satisfaction, you know, net promoter score, what times does that, peak in valley and those kinds of things. You can get scientific with it. But, I think your point is really valid. Another root cause of a broken referral process that we've got here. I love this one is the attribution one. So you're getting referrals, but you don't know where they're coming from. Are they referrals? Oh wait, someone filled out a form on the website. That's when organic search, right? Maybe not. Maybe they were sent by, Bob, a past client from a couple years ago and you just don't know.

Mark 20:30

this is kind of one of the root causes that ties into one of those symptoms that said you just don't know, or, no one's keeping track, or there's no sort of formal process, because having a process is not just the front. Of how you prepare and actually do it. But it's also on the backend is that how are we staying organized? How are we capturing the results from this? How are we grading our overall performance? And that's, those are all definitely sort of root issues that contribute to, referrals. Just not working. For sure. You have to,

John Tyreman 21:06

it, doesn't contribute to just referrals. This is a critical issue because if you don't know where leads are coming from, then you're, you're flying blind in terms of where you're placing your marketing investments,

Mark 21:19

the last one that we had, here that I think we wanted to touch on is that, You believe that a referral or an introduction or a letter of reference, you know, those things are different things, but you believe all of these. All these things are going to just come from you doing a, fantastic job at the work, right? your product, your deliverable, your service, your campaign, your, whatever you do as an expert is going to be so good that it's just going to do all of this for you. It's going to create referrals, it's going to attract people to you, it's gonna do all the marketing for you. It's gonna do all the lead generation for you, right? That the work product is strong enough, and known enough and, just viewed by people out there in the world that, yeah, I mean, this is just gonna create a windfall of new business.

John Tyreman 22:15

there's a place for show don't tell and sales and business development, but it can't all be show and no tell

Mark 22:24

Yeah. there's a very small number of experts out there in the world who have people lined up at their front door because, you know, the work they have done has, you know, speaks for itself, right? A small number.

John Tyreman 22:39

Small number. Yeah, that's not the

Mark 22:40

chances are good, chances are good. And I'm gonna, I'm gonna stick my neck out here a little bit, John. Chances are good. The people listening to this are not in one of those firms, and I wanna say, I think it's okay because it's. A more realistic view of sort of how the world works is like, no, actually you need to market, you need to sell, you need to use all the tools that are out there to find and win new work for sure. So, all right, so those are all some symptomatic root causes. we went deep, we looked at sort of what's actually going on in people's heads with all this stuff. So. Yeah. There we sit, John.

John Tyreman 23:21

We are the referral doctors and we'll be taking appointments next week.

Mark 23:25

so here we go. There needs to be a kind of a jumping off point here as like, right, we found the bottom. Let's kind of climb out here as like, how should firms and people, individuals rethink. Referrals. one of the ways out of this is just to start taking all this more seriously, and what that means is that organizationally. Someone needs to kind of lead and ask for the plan. What are our goals? What's the structure? What's the framework? how are we going to build this into an our organization as a fundamental way? That we go and find new leads, rather than just waiting for them to show up in our inbox, and then entertaining them from that point on. So yeah, this is fundamental for me. It's, we need to flip the switch that says we need to be proactive, we need to go get them. and this is a. fantastic tool because, it's something that individuals can go out and execute on, right? you know, I mean, we're saying two things here. We're saying that organizationally you need to have some expectations and some goals, and there needs to be sort of, organization wide, As far as planning and execution is concerned around referrals. It's like one person can create their plan and go execute on it, and that's it. Right? You don't need the, marketing team support or, big large team meetings with people and all kinds of stuff. It's like, no, you can just go execute on this on your own. so there's a few sort of,

John Tyreman 24:49

The go and dos.

Mark 24:50

Yeah, go. I mean like as far as like how our brains need to shift a little bit, but yeah. But we have a couple go and dos here for sure.

John Tyreman 24:57

what you just said, individuals can take this on. So let's give folks out there something that they can go and do today. So if someone's listening right now, what's one thing that they should do to help them kind of move forward towards a more proactive referral process?

Mark 25:13

Yeah. there's a few, there's a self assessment, self-reflection sort of stuff that says, you know, have I done this in the past? Has anyone in my firm done this in the past? Have we embraced this organizationally? Is there a process, is there a structure out there that we can lean on, you know, sort of look in the mirror a little bit understand where you sit in the world because folks, this happens in. A lot of industries out there with a ton of success, right? There's a bunch of professional services professionals out there in the world who create these really powerful relationships with others, through referrals. So yeah, it happens. So you have to do, there's a little self-assessment. I think there's the other easy one for us, and this is just our plug that we'll throw in here again for a previous episode, right? We laid this out. In, a previous episode and people should just go and revisit that.'cause the process really hasn't deviated. And frankly, if people say, oh, those guys on Breaking Biz Dev are just full of it, I'm sure there's a better, easier, faster way to kind of do this whole thing. Go find one on your own. Right. There's a bunch of people out there who have, you know, really clear, simple, not easy, but simple processes laid out around referrals. so, you know, if you think there's something better out there, go find it. But, find a process that works for you. and the last, the last go and do, I would say is, you know, kind of the first step in that process. It's step one, right? And step one in the process is. Start making a list, right? bust open your spreadsheet or your whatever, and just start making a list of potential candidates, people who you might want to ask for an introduction, not. Making a list of the people that you need to get introduced to. Right. We're not, that's, those are different things. So important distinction. Right? I'm sure there's plenty of people out there in the world and it's like, oh wow, if I just knew that person, it would be great. No, If you find your way to that person, okay, great. But we're talking about a bunch of people who you are close to. Who are your advocates? Who know and trust you and who would be willing to take that step with you to make some introductions. So just start making a list. And if you're thinking you need a list of a hundred people to get started, you're wrong. you need a list of one. Maybe two to get going. Right. And this ties way back, John, to something we mentioned earlier, is that right? if you've got a LinkedIn connections of thousands of people. But you can't find any advocates in that group at all, or at least not someone that you would feel comfortable and just easy to go and sit down and have a referral conversation with. Then you need to rethink how you're approaching those contacts. Right. It's, this is not a numbers game at all. This is a hundred percent a quality game over a quantity game, for sure.

John Tyreman 28:11

it's the trust triangle, right? And we've talked about that in the past. Go listen to a, a referral process if you wanna hear a little bit more about that,

Mark 28:18

yeah, yeah, for sure. So good. All right, John. I think this has been, this has been good. It's been a little, frankly for me, it's been a little self-reflective, you know, looking at the, what we've discussed in the past and seeing how well it's worked or how, how, how not, you know, so it's been really helpful. until next time.

John Tyreman 28:36

Until next time.