Roofing Sales Referral Program? Why Gifts and NOT Cash? Referral Psychology [Lunchtime LIVE]

Foreign. Welcome back to Lunchtime Live. I'm Adam the roof strategist. I'm so pumped you're here. We have a great one today thanks to Ryan. Talking about referrals. If you're offering cash referrals, you got to stop. I'm going to explain the psychology behind it and explain the most effective referral system that I've used to date and explain to you why you're going to use gifts instead of cash when you start paying a whole lot less for referrals than nearly everybody in the industry. Now, before we jump in, want to cover a couple housekeeping items? One, I will be doing these lunchtime lives on Tuesdays and Thursdays at this time. So 11:30am Mountain Time, 12:30 Central, 1:30 Eastern Time. And if you want to submit your video ideas, you can drop a comment. The best way to do it is to join the insiders. There's a link in the video description below. It's free. You'll get a copy of my ebook and if you reply to the emails this will be available soon. This is the master video list. I have a system in place to get these this updated on the regular so you can click any area you want like roofing, sales basics, canvassing, cold calling, objection, handling, pitching referrals and reviews, the insurance agent stuff. You'll click that, it'll automatically bring you to the right section and then you can go ahead and watch the video. So it just basically provides like a linear progression of all my training and it's up to this is the oldest version, I think it's 11 pages easy to navigate, so you can opt in and grab that. And I will be updating that like I said on the regular. Last thing, if you haven't subscribed to the channel, click subscribe. You get notifications every time I go live. The best way for you to get your questions answered on the fly is to show up here live. I will be covering the emails first and then we'll move to live. If there's any questions in the chat box, which you are welcome to blow up. So again, my name is Adam the Rooster Redus and we're going to be talking about referrals right now. So specifically the psychology of referrals. So I want to read Ryan's email and I just highlighted the part that's most relevant for what I'm going to cover. So Ryan emailed and he Sundays, I have two questions if you don't mind. I'm going to focus on the first one. He says in Your referral program, is there any particular reason why you choose to give the person gift cards rather than cash? So, Ryan, great question. Shout out to you. Thanks again for this. And if we have time, I have a couple other. There's two more emails I thought would be really relevant for today. We'll see if we can't get to those today. We'll do them another time. So I'm very curious if anyone wants to pop in the chat, how they're handling referrals, because I want to show you the reason for using gifts instead of cash. First and foremost. Let's take a look at what I've done in the past. So I've done other videos on referrals. You're welcome to watch those. If you search the channel and just type the word referral, you'll see the incentive structure I teach. Okay, which is. Which is pretty simple. I'm going to go over it again today. So this is what most people are doing. Okay. Most people are saying they'll pay 500 to $1,000. Okay. For a referral. Right? And this, by the way, is don't do this. This is don't do this. So 500. I'm going to switch colors. That one looks a little hard to read. So 500 to 1,000 bucks. And that is if you get the deal and once it's paid in full. Okay, so what happens then? Let's say you pay a customer $500,000 and we say, hey, this is how our referral program works. And if we get the deal, if we work with your customer, and once they paid in full, we'll pay you. And then when will they get paid this, which will probably be what, roughly eight weeks by the time it's all said and done, eight weeks later. Let me ask you two things. This is so important in the psychology component before we talk about the right incentive structure and why to use gifts instead cash. If you're willing to pay a customer 500 to $1,000, they're going to have two questions that come up. What are they? Number one, how much money are you making off me? If you're willing to pay $500,000 for a referral, and why can't I get that money back? They think you're filthy rich and you're greedy. Question two, when am I going to get paid? What do you think is going to be running through their mind through this? 8 weeks and sometimes it's longer. Am I ever going to get paid? You're making too much. How can you afford that? And when am I going to get paid? Okay, we see a massive, massive problem in this. Plus, it is unbelievable. Most people, for the average person, 500 to $1,000 is a relatively significant amount of money. Do you think they're going to believe that they can do this? Will they send you five, seven, eight referrals? No. I have with the system. I'm going to show you and I'm going to explain the psychology behind it. I had a salesman send me a picture. He got eight jobs from one customer, all referral using this approach. Because it doesn't do this. Okay, so this is. Don't. Now when we study psychology, the psychology of referrals, which by the way, the same thing goes for. For commissions as a salesperson or if you're an owner looking how to grow a sales team. So psychology. If I spell anything wrong, because I'm going to fly, you just need to like correct me and call me a dummy and then I'll fix it. So like psychology of referrals. There follows three principles. What you guys think of this? Easy pic. Positive, immediate, and certain. Okay, I want to use this example. Positive, immediate, and certain. I used this example on a coaching call the other day with a company. If your dog, you're training a dog and you, you want the dog to sit and you do the little command to sit, you're gonna. It's a positive reinforcement. So you're gonna give the dog a treat. It's immediate. You're gonna give the dog the treat immediately when it sits. And it's certain, meaning every time you do this until it becomes habit, the dog is gonna sit and it's certain that they're gonna get a treat right away. Okay. So the referral program needs to be following the same principle, meaning the homeowner is gonna get the reward. It's gonna happen right away, and it's gonna happen no matter what. Because what happens on that old system, they're gonna send you a referral. What happens if. Are they going to send you another one? No. So you want to make it really easy because ultimately, what's the main goal for you? What is the goal of referrals? It's leads. Leads and appointments. I'm just going to write appt. Okay. This is the main goal of getting those referrals. So how do we make it easy for people to send you these? All right. Sean says trying to put a referral program together now. Thanks, man. I give cards out, but nothing written down. This is going to help you out. By the way, everything I'M going over is included in the marketing battle pack. There's a link in the description below. You'll get a cheat sheet to leave behind on what I'm going to show you. And you'll get a script to call those referrals. By the way, I have this printout. I leave it with the customer. You're going to want to ask it key times. Okay, so here's how it goes. You want leads right? Now you'll see there are other philosophies of this similar type approach. This is not new to roofing guys. This is a referrals have been studied to death. The psychology of these in many, many different markets. In fact, Dropbox, the file storage system, developed their entire business. They blew up and went viral because of referrals. By following these psychological principles. So what do we want? We want leads. Okay, so again, if you're going to pay 500,000 bucks if you don't, what you want is a lead. It's up to you to close it. I'd rather have 10 leads and close two than just some customer. Gimme one. And I don't close it. Like we just want leads. Easy. Okay, so we want leads and we want to pay only a little bit. So what do we do? We do this. We incentivize. Because what we want is leads. We incentivize leads. So I'm going to show you this incentivize. There we go. Maybe it's spelled wrong, maybe it's not. I'm on the fly. So we want incentivize leads. So we sit down with a customer. We say, listen, hey, Peggy, have you been happy with the level of service I've provided you so far? We want to get to yes, right? So she says, yeah, say great. You know, I've really built my business on word of mouth and I'd love opportunity to help maybe your friends, some family members, co workers, or even neighbors. You see how I did that? I listed all those people because I want to prime their mind. Maybe your friends, family members, co workers, or even neighbors. I list all those out in the same way I helped you. Now, who do you know that I might be able to help? And the body language stuff I teach, right? So you blade your stance. I want them to see that pad of paper. And I'm ready to take the name and number. And then I say, listen, thank you so much. Now I have a really great way to reward people who help me grow my business. And the way that I do that is I offer a gift card which you can do in any increment. I would recommend $30 max. 25 has been the sweet spot for me. And the way I say thank you is if I just set an appointment just for the opportunity to chat with them. I'd like to just give you a $25 gift card as a thank you. Okay? So again, we're not paying them. It's as a thank you. Now, you'll see some people teach this a little differently. I wait for the appointment, okay? So I pay the incentive when I set the appointment. So I want to get this person's name and phone number, and then I call up to set the appointment. Then I go back to the person who gave me the referral and say, hey, Peggy, thanks so much for referring me to your neighbor Caroline. I was able to sit down and chat with her. I just wanted to give you this gift card as a thank you. And if you know anybody else, there's no limit to participation. So you'll see this. It's a $25 gift card. And I'll explain kind of the different ways to approach how to use them, where to get them and all that. And owners pay close attention because there's some nuances there. So when you do this approach, you're incentivizing the appointment. Okay. Period. That's it. It's a way of saying thank you. So why a gift instead of cash? And how can you do this for $25 instead of 500? So here's what we do. When you give someone a gift, okay? Even though there's monetary value, they're going to think of you when they do that. And if you're doing for me, like a local restaurant, which, by the way, owners, what I've done in the past when I was running a large sales team, is I went in. What I would do is some of our best customers, that I'd have all the sales guys at the meeting and say, ask the customers what their favorite local restaurant is, and I'd find one or two restaurants. Then I would go to the restaurant and I would say, listen, I'm working in the area here helping homeowners after this big storm, and I've had about 15 customers say that your restaurant was your favorite one. Now we have a referral incentive program. So what I'd love to do is send business your way. Would you be able to give me $25 gift cards at a discount if I bought them in bulk? And they said yes? So I walked in with a thousand bucks and bought gift cards at $15 with a $25 face value. So it helped the restaurants be crossbowed. It's about building synergy and supporting the community. Right? So now when that homeowner now goes out with 25 bucks, they're starting to treat the family to dinner on you. And again, if it's two referrals, it's 50 bucks. So local businesses are great. You can also negotiate cheaper gift cards if you buy them advance. Gas station gift cards work really well. Even like Walmart or grocery store franchises, anything like that. Because in that customer's mind, you are treating them to an experience, whereas if you gave them A$25 cash, this feels sleazy to people. It feels like you're being bought off. Right. I'll give you 25 bucks if you told me the name of your friend. Like that doesn't get taken so well by all people. Now will some people say yes? Of course they will. Right? It's people. But to me, that's just not like what I want to put out in the world. I don't want people to feel like I'm buying my way inside their Rolodex, so to speak. So I want to incentivize the appointment and then give a gift versus just cash. Okay? So that's why we do this versus cash. And again, $25 for the opportunity to speak to someone that's still decent amount. It's not crazy. They're not going to start thinking to themselves, hey, you paid me too much money. How much money are you making? Am I going to get paid? So hypothetically, I get one referral from someone, I set the appointment with the neighbor, I walk by hand, deliver a $25 gift card, say, hey, take the family out, take your husband out, your wife, whatever it is, on me. Thank you so much. I really appreciate it. By the way, I truly, I have no limit to participation. Like if there's, if you have any other friends, family members, neighbors or coworkers that you think it might be able to help, there's no obligation. I'll call them up, I let them know that, that we work together and I simply offer my services. And if they'd like to chat, great. And if they do, I just say thank you to you for helping me set up that opportunity to chat with them. And I'm happy to give you another $25 gift card to X Place. Okay, so again, 25 bucks, we're incentivizing it. We position this as a thank you. All right, so we're not trying to buy anything from them. And it's after we set the appointment make sense. So again, no cash. We pay them instantly, as quick as possible. All we want is leads. What we're doing is, is essentially helping our customers help us set more appointments. It's up to us to close those deals. And again, I had a sales guy literally send me a picture. He had eight, eight deals. I suck at math, so let me do some math. So remember, most people are paying 500 to 1,000 bucks. So what he did is he got eight deals at 25 bucks a piece of. So he spent $200. $200. He landed eight deals. Eight. If an average commission is around 2,000. I know everyone's on a different scale, but anywhere between 1,000 to 2,000, that's 8,000 to $16,000 for 200. Okay. That's still less than the original plan of paying 500,000 bucks, which is what a lot of people do. Alright, so very, very simple. So again, the psychology. We want to avoid cash because it makes people feel like they're being bought. It feels sleazy. And ultimately think about it like if I paid you cash, it's going to go into your bank account or in your pocket and it's going to be kind of jumbled in with all of the other income and spent on whatever and you don't even think about it. But when I give you a gift, that gift has meaning. Like I got a gift from a vendor I talked to and he sent me something in the mail. I didn't even end up working with him, but it sits on my desk. And every time I think of that experience, that experience is worth more than the little thing that he sent me, by the way. It was a water bottle and then like one of those moleskin notebooks. It's pretty neat. I use it all the time, but I remember it. And that's a lot nicer than him sending me $15. Right. So that's why we use the gift. So again, last thing, I just want to recap this. We want to reward people immediately. We want to incentivize appointments and we want to use a gift. By the way, gift card is just an example. If you have something that you want to do as a different type of gift, you can what we did with our customers for a client appreciation after the job was done, we found a local baker that was doing beautiful, beautiful cookies and we'd send a thank you box with those cookies. So if you don't want to do this is again, I'm going to write Gift card. That's an option or an actual gift. Okay, so these are. I have heard of a company sending pizza on the day of install. They would literally send pizza to make the install easy. I've also heard of people sending flowers on the day of an install. So again, any little gesture, what we really want this to come across is a kind gesture, a kind thankful gesture. Okay? So if we can do that, we're going to win and we're going to win big. So, Sean, I hope that answers your question. So the system is this. Use this at all key points in the process when you engage with your clients and your customers. When you get the job approved, ask when you on the day of install, assuming there's not anything crazy that goes wrong, asks. All right. When you pick up final check, ask afterwards, Ask. That's four times. This system, by asking for these rewards is up to you. I would encourage you not to go more than this because it does come across and not the best way. You don't want people to think, man, he's making a bunch of money off me. You don't want people to feel like they're bought. This is about giving a gift. And again, it's about setting the appointment name and number. You can even have your homeowners walk you to the neighbors and help you set that appointment. Say, I'm just looking for an opportunity to chat with people to see if I might be able to help them. And if I can, I'm happy to give you a gift as a way of saying thank you again. So instead of making it, you don't want anyone to feel like they're being bought. All right, let's turn our attention here. Oh, last thing in the battle pack, which I mentioned, I have this system, by the way, I'm teaching you what's in there. The battle pack is to help you make all of this, all the things I teach, come to life in the easiest way possible. You literally print them out at your home computer. This is a sample. But anyway, anything that's in yellow, you just put in your info. So the referral program, you have a printout, a leave behind. So you can put that with your contingency, any of the paperwork, the customer sees it each time. It's a great reference. Sometimes they might even fill it out and hand it to you before you show back up. Okay, that's first thing. Second thing, the emails that are in the battle pack that I send to customers. So you'll see in there, there's customer project update emails. It's a welcome email when they first become a customer, when the job is scheduled, when the job is complete, all that has this style of referral request in the email. So when you send these alongside the referral program that you're using in person, they're getting asked three times in the emails. You're three or four times in person and then the emails that I've included for after the job being complete. Because just because we're done with the job doesn't mean we're done winning the business. So in a battle pack. And again, if you want to write these on your own, do it. I'm telling you this, the system. I'm just giving you the easiest in the way that I've tested and failed and gone through all the learning curves on my own. But when the job's done, I send an email at 30 days, another one 60 days later, another one at 90 days later. Think of it kind of like a blog. Like it's informational and helpful and educates them what's going on, but also ask for referrals. So if you use this whole system together, you're getting the four in person requests that you do, you're getting the referral cheat sheet leave behind. You are going to deliver the value in the emails about what's happening in the process along with asking a referral three times. And you're going to get another three times on the emails afterwards that are all value driven. All right? So you can check it out. Otherwise just run with it. So I want to, I want to turn my attention here to the. There's a link in the description. Last thing, guys. I take care of my people. Everything's backed by money back guarantee. I have affordable stuff and I want to make sure everybody's happy. It's that simple. All right, that is all. Let's turn our attention to the chat here. So we see roof repair. I have a plan to generate unlimited free leads for 10 companies. Please contact me, Adam, as I would love to share how. Pretty cool. We'll see if we can chat. Very lucrative plan but need some advice on how you might suggest moving forward on this. Cool. Yeah, we can, we can chat. Shoot me an email. Michael says I wish more companies cared about an actual connection versus hard selling and trying to build a quality team versus quantity teams. Michael, I could not agree more, man. I am not a huge fan of massive onboarding group interviews. I know that's not super popular in the industry, but I've found through my experience finding the right people on the right team and finding quality people who take more of a, what I call like a consultative or educational approach is huge. And I also know there's a really big difference when you engage with customers in a way that is about service and gratitude, taking care of them versus like, I'm in there and just really trying to hammer my way through to making more sales people pick up on it. And consumers are getting smarter than ever. And again, you'll see there's a lot of different ways to run referrals. If you find something better like post. I'm all for being challenged on this. I can tell you one thing. I ran a sales team of about 30. I tested the old school way of 500 1000. We barely got any. We've tested the $25 thing, which worked really well. And I've played with a lot of other various things using postcards. We would give postcards to the customers. There was postage paid to come back. We tried a lot of things. Nothing, nothing, nothing worked as good as this. And after I left that side of my life and I came into the roof, Stratus was helping other companies. I've had an opportunity to test this with the companies that I've worked with one on one all over the US and including. Is it one or two in Canada? Yeah, two in Canada. Two in Canada. And seeing the actual proof in the results is what's really cool, because it's not just my idea. It's like this was used effectively in this market. In this market. In this market. And then when you realize it is just grounded in human psychology, it's kind of like it's hard to. Hard to argue. And it's in the. It just aligns and it works well. So anyway, I hope that addresses what you said, Michael. And then Mildred says, do you have a training. That's a great question. So couple things. Do I have training? The. The answer is yes. And the better answer is it's all free. And you're watching it if you join the insiders or if you email me. AdamStrategist. This training library is put together in order of category. I don't know if you can see any of that. So you'll see like direct mail. Boom. You'll click. You can get to all my videos on direct mail. Handling objections, pitching. What's this one say? I'm trying to read and mirrored referral and reviews. You can see all of the categories and it will bring you to that section with all the videos. So the basics, canvassing, scripts, pitching, all that. So you do all have all that and I am working on something new guys. I'm really working very hard at providing is the highest value content that is a no brainer investment to help you grow. So I do have some cool things coming. I know I've been teasing at this. I was actually working on right before this live and I'll spill the beans as soon as I can. But in a nutshell it's going to help you take all this stuff and put it into kind of a step by step plan. There's no login Perry to the website. Everything from me comes to you instantly as a download. So if you, if you purchase the battle pack you'll literally get instant access. If you have any questions, reply to the email. I'll respond personally. I'll make sure you get it. So there's no login. It's stupid simple man. Stupid simple. Because I know that some people if you're out in the field and you're having a hard time on your phone, I just want you to be able to have access to everything all the way. The easiest way. All you need is a computer to open it up the things and then print them out. Michael says if user strategies and landed more sales versus how the company does things and everyone asks man, how do you do it? I just say your name and the young guys looked you up. That's awesome Michael. Thanks for saying that man. I appreciate it. You know it took me a long time to kind of start cracking the code to this and the more that I realized that general sales principles apply and that blending in the human side of relating to people because when you are doing, when you're doing sales in someone's home, their home is their castle. There's nothing more precious, more sensitive and more personal to an individual than their home. That's their safe place. That's the one place that everyone can just be them without having to worry about anything. And how you behave in their home environment will make or break things. And it will make or break whether they trust you or like you. There's a few videos I've done on kind of how to build rapport. Even something as simple as if someone offers you something to eat or drink, say yes. Because there's principles at play called reciprocity, right? So they did something nice for you, you accepted it, they felt good. They're more likely to continue that behavior trend. And you're like a friend. If it was hot out, someone's like can I get you a glass of water? The polite thing is like no I'm okay, thanks. I brought them all. Say yes. These are subtle things that I realize make such a substantial difference. Very different than a home security guy. I had come out to my old house, I answered the door, my wife was at work. And he literally turns and he goes, they sent me on a one Legger. And I was like, get the. I'm live. I didn't actually curse at him, but I wanted to. I was like, dude, seriously? You just told me he had no idea I ran a sales team, but he called it a one Legger. Cool. Cool. Awesome. Casey says, I just finished an episode on your podcast and boom, I modified your life. I love it. Awesome. Last thing. So Mildred asked for my email. I'm going to type it out, Adam. It's just I'm typing it in the chat right now. So my email is in there. I've been getting a little bit higher than normal volume of emails, which is great. I always respond. It might take me a day to max to get back to you. Yes, Casey, you can find me on a podcast now. Anywhere you find podcasts, all these episodes are on there. And the reason I did that is I was a fan of the channel and I wish I had the name printed out with me. He sent me a screenshot of his phone and he said, dude, I'm listening to your YouTube videos while I drive and it's really good refresher. If I need an example, I know I did a video on staying motivated that people have watched and I really wanted to make it simple for people in their truck, for sales guys and gals in their truck to get a refresher. And why burn data if you could just download an episode offline and watch listen anytime you want. So, Casey, super glad to. Super glad you found it and that it was helpful. So that's all for today. What I am going to do is I'm going to respond. I printed out these two other emails. One. So Ryan emailed, I have one from Thomas that was talking about some insurance company stuff. He actually learned a lot. So quick side story. So Thomas shot me this email. This was in a follow up to when Garrett from One Click Code came on the channel, which by the way, I'm chatting with Garrett about trying to find some other really cool ways that we can help you guys out as well. And I ended up putting Thomas in touch with Garrett personally. So this is the beauty of reaching out, you know, helping people grow and make cool things happen. And the next one was from Terry. Terry had a really great suggestion on kind of the do's and don'ts of dealing with adjusters and how to really build good relationships with them. So those will be coming soon. And then if you have any other suggestions, my email's in there. Adamuthstrategist.com so the word the is not in there. That won't make it to me. Adamouthstrategist.com Best way I follow up personally with everyone that joins the Insider. So if you join there you'll get an email from me and I invite you to submit ideas and respond. So that's all for today's video. If you guys liked it, give it a thumbs up. Lets me know that we're on track. And what I'm trying to do on these videos is that the suggestions that come in no matter what I'm replying personally often in a quick video reply put together and those that are applicable for everybody on the channel to benefit I'm doing these lives about. So no matter what, you're going to get something back from me. And thank you all for being here. I super value your time. I hope that that you leave each one of these sessions with more value and more insights that you can apply starting right now. That's the goal of every time that we interact is that you leave with an insight and say I learned this from Adam the root strategist. I either podcast or live. I'm going to go out in the field. I can put it to you so it's going to make me money. That's the end goal. So thanks for being here guys. Give a thumbs up if you liked the video, subscribe if you haven't already and I will see you on Thursday for the next Lunchtime Live. Be well and talk to you soon.