🎙️ 🤝 Getting referrals in a tough market.

Speaker A: Welcome to today's show. If you want to grow your revenue, close more sales, grow your business, run a better sales team, or be a better sales professional, then you, my friend, are in the right place. Mark McInnis share tactics and insights that can help you sell more. This is the Boss Podcast, the best of, uh, sales and service.

Speaker B: Welcome to today's show. Today, I'm talking about referrals, how to get them, and what you're probably doing wrong. So, you know, it's a pretty tough market out there at the moment, so anything that can help you get some new business conversations going is going to be a good thing. And referrals is a really great way for you to be starting new conversations, regardless of whether you're an sdr, whether you're an AA sales manager, running your own business, or whatever. So, look, we all know the numbers around referrals. We've heard it before. A very small percentage of sellers are asking for referrals. Um, yet a very large percentage of buyers say they're prepared to give them. So there's a massive gap here. Right? So, um, why don't we get more of referrals or why don't we ask more? And that's what I'm hoping to solve. So my goal today is to walk away from here with a new mindset around asking for referrals. But most importantly, you'll have some tools and techniques that you can easily apply into something in some of the things that you're already doing. So it's not going to be very complex at all. So that question, why don't we get more or why don't we ask more? So to me, there's two real reasons, right? So it's timing. So we're asking at the wrong time or we're not asking at all. Um, and if we're not asking at all, then we probably don't know how. And if we are asking, then we're probably doing it incorrectly. So let's see if we can uncover some keys to help you with that. So, first of all, where am I getting this experience from? And as a bit of a recap, as you know, I've been sales trainer for nearly a dozen years, uh, and trained some pretty large organizations such as Coca Cola, Bluescope Steel, Nespresso, that sort of thing. Um, and these strategies work really well for that more relationship, you know, more complex type of sale. Um, you know, so again, in a financial services, Bluescope Steel, you know, hospitality for football teams, that sort of stuff, they're not going to be so effective for the transactional plays, like the sort of, um, activity that we see in my current, um, outsourced sales agency, where it's a lot more transactional. So let's get into the first thing, which is really the timing. So when should we be asking?

Speaker A: Okay, it's time to pay some bills. Could you use an extra 6 to 22 qualified new business meetings drop straight into your diary every single month. Then message mark directly on LinkedIn or visit sales-dev.com the best thing, apart from an initial setup fee, you only pay for the meetings you take.

Speaker B: Most of us want to wait until we've delivered everything in the project scope. We hope then that once we've delivered everything, the buyer will be completely amazed and they'll fall over themselves to write us not only a testimonial, but they'll also give us a, uh, list of referrals. Um, and so look, that's a great place to pause it. You know, one of these. This is a great way to also ask for testimonials. So the way that we're going to set you up here to ask for referrals, you can also use it to ask for testimonials. So we're waiting for the project scope to be completed, but it doesn't work that way. And why is that? And the answer is human psychology. First of all, when we're delivering something, we always think and believe that our products and services are awesome, our solutions are awesome, but the delivery and the implementation and the adoption always takes a little bit longer than what we want. And, and it never goes 100% perfect. So as that time goes on and that, uh, imperfectness increases, we feel less confident about asking for a referral. Right? So we need to flip that and leverage the psychology that we know of and think about the first time you, or if anyone's bought a brand new car, or even if you've just bought a car that's new to you or something that you really look forward to. When are you most excited? When is the highest level of anticipation about taking delivery of that vehicle? Right. It's literally the day you pick it up or maybe even the day before. Right? You're at your happiest at that point, you know, so let's think about it. What happens? You pick up your car, you go for a drive. The first hour and a half, you're driving around, you're like, this car is awesome. It's got so much speed, it's so comfy. I love all the gadgets, you know, and then you might go, the suspension's a bit harsh, it's a bit bumpy over the, you know, corrugations and what I thought. So almost immediately some of that excitement and that anticipation settles in of just becoming, not disappointment, just not so excited, um, as the reality of living with this new product or this new solution takes hold. Um, and so if I look at our experience in sales development as a service, so we try to ask, as soon as we start to book meetings and people start to sit them, so if you think about that as an example, they've come to us because they have no meetings at all, we book meetings for them. Any meeting is an improvement of what they've got. So typically what we see is, you know, the first four, five, six, ten meetings, people are super excited. We get lots of praise and thank you. And that's when we ask for a testimonial and a referral. If we waited longer and they've had 25 to 50 meetings, what happens? Some of those meetings genuinely would be just being a no show. That's just part of life. Some of those meetings would not have converted to opportunities yet because they take a little while to nurture. And so some of the shine, for want of a better word, has come off. You know, um, the service that we're providing, it's completely natural. So by our, ah, you know, naturally I'm less inclined to ask at that point when people are saying, oh, look, you know, we've had three people that haven't shown up. And of course I'm saying, well, that's completely natural. But at the same time, if someone's making those comments, you feel less inclined to say, hey, can I have a referral? We should have already done that. And we do do that at the point when they've had those four, five, six, seven, eight meetings, those first meetings. So your solution is exactly the same. When people start saying, this is awesome, we really love it, you go, great. Look, I know we haven't rolled it out completely yet. I get that you're excited and loving it. Um, can I, um, set up an opportunity to come and ask for some, uh, referrals and a testimonial and they're going to say, yeah, sure, great, no problem. In a nutshell, what should you do in relation to timing? Move the timing. You're asking for referrals and testimonials much closer to the early part of the delivery process when people are much more excited and that anticipation is really high around your products and solutions. So it's going to be a little bit different for everybody, depending on how and when your delivery looks like. Um, but that's the best way to take it from a timing perspective, move it forward. And the second part of this, of course, is how do I do that? So I've got two really easy ones. Well, actually, all three are easy. So the easiest one by far is just put something in your email signature that says, you know, the nicest compliment you can give us is a referral. Or, you know, you've probably seen this one. If you like what we do, please tell a friend. If you don't like what we do, please tell us. It lets people know that you're open and looking for referrals. So that's the minimum that you can do. Um, another one that's really clever. Um, and this is one that I think I've adopted from Dean Mannix or a version of Dean Mannix's, um, from Better Sales Coach. And that is every time you meet somebody in a business setting. So let's say you're meeting somebody for coffee or you're meeting somebody for, uh, in their referral, they might be a business partner or a supplier or something like that. As soon as you walk into somebody, they say, how are you? And typically right now you're probably saying something like, I'm good, or, yeah, I'm busy. What I want you to do is think about using that as an opportunity to frame up a conversation, either then or in the not too far distant future about asking for a referral. Hey, how are you, Mark? Yeah, I'm good. Actually, we've been pretty busy implementing a, uh, referral strategy from some of our business partners. We've been able to help a bunch of new clients. Actually, you know, that was actually something I wanted to chat to you about, now that you mention it. So if you use that as a bit of a talking, um, script. When someone says, you know, how are you? How you been? You say, look, yeah, we've been busy. We're getting lots of referrals. We're asking for lots of referrals. Actually, I wanted to ask you for referrals as well. That's your in, right? Um, so instead of saying busy or good, you can just talk about that. Now, you may or may not want to dive into the referral conversation then, but you can certainly say, well, let's get some time in the diary. Can I give you a call tomorrow afternoon? Yep. Great. All right, thanks very much. Um, and the third one, which is also great, is, um, another version of the meeting variety, but it's a bit more organized. So if you're the type of salesperson or business owner, business leader that likes to send agendas in their email meetings, um, put it as an agenda writing, referral, discussion. So when you go through your agenda, you get to the last. Well, the second last one, and you go, okay, so referrals, look, I'd like to ask you for a referral. And then away you go. People aren't coming in blindsided because it's already there in the agenda. I don't see too many people running agendas, um, m in our business. But if you are, that's a great play. And if you're not, one of the things that you can do is search through their LinkedIn profile and look for your ideal client that they're connected to. So what you're looking for is people that are just like your perfect buyer, that the person you're meeting with, uh, connected to. Now, you may need to ask them to open up their LinkedIn connections. Some people have their LinkedIn connections closed and others don't. But you can do a very simple search on LinkedIn. And then when you go to the meeting, you can take 10 profiles with you. So you can either do that on your phone or however you want to do that, um, and then say, hey, Tom, look, here's 10 people that you're connected to that I'd really like to have a chat with. Out of these 10, how many do you think you'd be comfortable with? If I was able to reach out and say, um, hey, you know, I was talking to Tom last week and he said I should have a chat to you about, um, outsourced sales as a service. And he's brought us. He's not going to say 10, because, you know, it's LinkedIn. So we don't know all the people we're connected to, um, really well, but you might end up with one or two, and that's really what you're after. And the key point here is make sure you own it. And it's not the person that you're asking for the referral. So make sure you own the action item. Don't give the action item to the other person. So instead of saying, can you introduce me to those two people? What you want to do is say, okay, I'm going to reach out to them. And you can reach out to them via direct message, you can reach out to them via LinkedIn or email, or you can reach out to them via phone. And all you want to do is say, hey, hey, Mark, you know, I was having lunch with Tom Smith the other day or coffee with Tom Smith the other day and he said I should give you a call. Do you have a moment? You know, in an email you might want to put Tom Smith in the headline, uh, in the subject line, for example. It's as simple as that. But if you ask them to give you a referral, they're going to go back to the office and they're going to say, uh, well, or how do I do this? Or they're going to simply forget because it's about you. It's not about them. The big mistake people make is they say something like, who do you know that you could refer me to? And you're putting all the pressure on the person you're asking the referral from, when in actual fact we should be taking charge of that ourselves. So there you go. There's some great referral strategies that you can use in today's market. Um, there's lots of coffee catch ups going on right now as diaries are less full than they used to be. Um, so there's an opportunity for you to get out and apply some of these strategies. The key takeaways, make sure you move your ask forward from existing the new clients. If you're asking for testimonials and referrals, and if you're, um, asking for referrals from people that you're already doing business with or that are in your network in one way or another, make, um, the ownership yours. Don't put the ownership onto them to provide something for you. So there you go, that's uh, today's episode. I hope you can put that into play and as always, look forward to hearing from you if you can.

Speaker A: If you like the episode, why not share it with your friends, like rate and subscribe so you don't miss an episode. Thanks for listening to the Boss podcast.