BRX Pro Tip: Your Referral System
Stone Payton: Welcome back to Business RadioX Pro Tips. Lee Kantor and Stone Payton here with you. Lee, I know Business RadioX and Business RadioX clients are a little bit spoiled in this regard, but what’s your counsel on setting up, executing, and staying on top of a referral system?
Lee Kantor: Yeah, if you’re in professional services and you’re one of those people who say, “I rely on word of mouth,” well, if you don’t have a system that is going to refer you those word-of-mouth referrals, then you really should be thinking about a way to kind of create that system.
Lee Kantor: And professional service providers know referrals are the best source of businesses. A lot of them just treat it like luck. If it happens, it happens. And then, when they look backwards, they can go, “Oh, that person came from this other person I know,” and it makes perfect sense, but they’re not doing anything actively to create referrals. And they don’t have a system that’s going to generate referrals. So, they’re just hoping that clients are going to refer them. And that’s not a system that’s helping, and that’s not a great strategy in any area.
Lee Kantor: So instead, I would recommend building a referral system where asking for referrals is automatic and natural. You’re training your team to ask at the end of every engagement, “Who should we be talking to?” You build it into your client onboarding process. That’s one of the expectations. You should give people an easy way for them to refer you, whether it’s a link, a form, whatever makes it frictionless.
Lee Kantor: Some businesses incentivize referrals, some don’t. The more specific you are about who you want to be referred to, the better. Don’t say anyone refers anybody who might need my services. That’s too general. People connect better when they’re looking for someone specific, and it makes sense.
Lee Kantor: Like at Business RadioX, one of the things we say is, “Hey, if you know anybody doing interesting work, we would love to interview them.” So that helps us kind of create our next guest in our system, and that’s an easy referral for people to make because they’re like, “Oh, my buddy Bob is doing great work.” And we’re like, “Send them our way. We’d love to interview him.” And then he gets into our pipeline, and we see if he’s the right fit to be interviewed.
Lee Kantor: The clearer you are about who that right fit person is, the easier it gets to make the referrals, and the better referrals will come from that. So this week, ask three of your best clients who they think you should be talking to. Be specific on what that person looks like. That conversation alone might service your next opportunity.
