BRX Pro Tip: Generating Referrals Without Making It Weird
Stone Payton: And we’re back with Business RadioX Pro Tips. Lee Kantor, Stone Payton, here with you. Lee, I want to chat a little bit about generating referrals, and maybe it’s just me, but I doubt it. I always feel a little bit sheepish, a little bit weird, I don’t know. Sometimes I’m a little reluctant to jump in and try to get referrals. Any ideas on that?
Lee Kantor: Yeah. I think it’s so important. Especially in professional services and with all the business coaches we work with, it’s important to have some sort of referral strategy that you can execute without making it weird. So many coaches and professional service advisors rely on word of mouth and referrals to grow their business. So you have to get this right.
Lee Kantor: Here are some tactics for authentic referral requests without sounding desperate. Number one, deliver value before the ask. Before you even think about asking for a referral, make sure you’ve genuinely helped your client or contact achieve some sort of real result or solved an actual pain point for them. So show up. Add value. Prove your worth. Then a referral just feels like a natural next step.
Lee Kantor: Number two, be specific. Don’t ask, “Hey, do you know anyone who could use my help?” That’s too vague, and that puts pressure on the other person to think about it. And you don’t want them to be doing too much work.
Lee Kantor: At Business RadioX, we asked for business coaches. That’s our avatar right now. And we make it simple for them to say, “Oh, I do know someone like that.” So make sure you make it easy for them.
Lee Kantor: So in order to make it easy, I would recommend drafting some sort of an intro email that they can just copy and paste. Offer to connect directly, or even record an audio or video that they can forward. You want to make it as easy as possible, as seamless as possible. So the less work they have to do, the more likely they’ll actually refer you, and you’ll be keeping it all feeling effortless and not awkward.
Lee Kantor: This is something that I highly recommend anybody in professional services or a business coach to try. You want to have kind of a machine in place that makes this type of referral generation easy without making it weird.
