#043: How to Get More and Better Referrals

Welcome to the High Income Business Writing Podcast, helping you propel your writing business to a whole new level. And now, here's your host, Ed Gandia.

Hey everyone. Thank you for joining me for episode 43 of the High Income Business Writing Podcast. My name is Ed Gandia and this is the podcast for business writers and copywriters who who want to take their writing businesses to the six figure level or the part time equivalent. As a quick reminder, you can find detailed show notes of this episode by going to b2b launcher.com episode 43 so today we are talking about a very, very popular topic. It's something that I get asked about quite frequently and it's a very important topic which is how to get more and better quality referrals. So I'm going to take a deep dive into this issue. And you know what? Frankly, this is a big enough topic that we really can't do justice in just a one short episode. So we'll keep coming back to this occasionally and adding more detail, more ideas. I'm going to bring some good guests into the show to talk about this, but today I just wanted to give you my thoughts and ideas on referrals and how to get more of them, how to get better quality referrals, and how to do this in a way that feels right to you. Let's start by recognizing and accepting some very basic principles of human behavior. Because I think, you know, I approach all these things first from a really high level in kind of a philosophical angle. Because I think if you don't start there, you're just talking about duct tape and band aids and, you know, without really fully understanding the issue at hand, without fully understanding the dynamics at play. So let's start there. First off, referrals don't always happen on their own. In fact, I found that it's rare to have most of your referrals come unsolicited. At least not today and at least not in this business. You know, for freelance writing, freelance commercial writing, it's just not going to happen. So I think the first thing you should recognize is if you're not getting most of your business from referrals or if referrals aren't just kind of coming in on their own, most of them, um, don't feel bad about that. It doesn't mean that you're not good enough or anything like that. It's just, it's. They're just not going to come on their own. The other thing that you should keep in mind is that there's no one single way to make them happen. There's. There's no silver bullet. There's not something I can give you or tell you or show you that's just going to solve this whole problem. I wish there was such a thing, but there isn't. The other point here, and we're going to get into this whole human behavior thing here in a minute. But these are things we got to get out of the way first because they're so important. You have to do great work. I mean, that's assumed. But I need to make that very, very clear from the beginning. You have to do great work. You have to turn in your work on time every time, and you have to be a real joy to work with. And I've talked about this in many different episodes, but man, it bears repeating. It just. You have to be the. A true professional. You have to do amazing work every time and you have to be a joy to work with. I mean, that's the minimum price of admission in today's business environment. That's not a competitive advantage. I think it can be to a certain degree, but it can be if you kind of exceed expectations. But at a minimum, you have to do great work. You have to turn your stuff on time, and you have to be at least good to work with. I think a joy to work with can be a competitive advantage. But anyway, okay, so. So those are the assumptions. Let's talk about human behavior and what's going on here. You have to understand that people give professional service referrals. When I'm talking about professional service, I'm talking about freelance writing services. In really any freelance profession where you're in a business to business setting, so you're doing this for another business versus a consumer. So people give professional service referrals for intrinsic reasons rather than extrinsic reasons. So what does that mean? Intrinsic means they do it because they want to, not because you're forcing them to do it or trying to make them feel guilty or you're using fear or anything like that. Not that you would, but they're doing it just because they feel compelled to do so. Okay. It comes from within. This is a very important point. They don't do it for extrinsic reasons. For instance, monetary gain. If you give me this referral, I will give you this discount or I will give you this gift card or, you know, whatever. I'll cut you a check or I'll give you a finder's fee. And in fact, that leads me to the next point. I've found that discounts on future work, finders fees, gift cards, you know, these promises of reward in exchange for a referral don't work in this business. And in fact, there's science behind this. One of the most recent examples I found was. Is in Dan Pink's book, which is fantastic. The book is called Drive. All his books are amazing. But the book Drive talks about this specifically the difference between extrinsic motivation and intrinsic motivation. And he cites several studies where they. The. The people conducting the study found that extrinsic rewards, so meaning monetary compensation will actually discourage this type of behavior. Meaning the behavior that typically comes intrinsically. Right. So giving someone or offering someone a discount or some sort of finder's fee for giving you a referral can actually discourage that behavior instead of promote it. And I'm not going to get into all the details, but it's some very interesting, interesting psychology there. Basically, if it's something that I would do anyway, because I just want to. So if you're asking me for a referral or if I want to help you out, you haven't asked me, but I want to do it. It's something that I want to do intrinsically, and now you're offering to pay me for it. My thinking now is, well, gosh, maybe I don't want to do this then. And I urge you to pick up the book and check it out because it's quite fascinating. And he states many different studies and examples where this has been shown to be consistently true. I have found the same thing, and until I read Drive, I couldn't figure out why, but. But now it makes perfect sense. I have found that when you offer people and when I'm on the other side, I find the same thing. If you're now telling me, oh, well, you know, I got this referral program and if you refer me one client, then I give you $250. If you refer me two, I give. You know, that kind of formal extrinsic reward just doesn't work. And in fact, it scares me, so I don't do it. So keep that in mind. And then finally, in terms of human behavior, there are two main reasons why people don't give referrals. Number one, the reputation is on the line. They understand that, you know, if they're going to give you a referral, they understand that they're putting their reputation online. And today reputation means so much. It always has, but I think today especially is super important. And number two, they don't know how you're going to handle that referral. You haven't told them. Even if they love your work or they love you, they're not sure. I'm not saying they won't give it to you, but these are the things that are going on in your client's mind. So you have to keep that in mind. Okay? So with that, I'm going to share three steps to getting more and better quality referrals. And under each of them, especially step number two, I'm going to give you a lot of different ideas. Okay? Most of these have come from my own experience. Some have come from. From some of you guys. I put out an announcement on Facebook, wanted to see if anyone had any experiences here. A couple of you responded, and others have come from books and articles that I've read in from partners, other fellow freelance professionals that I've seen implement different ideas successfully. So the first step is very simple. In order to get more and better quality referrals, you have to ask. You have to ask for them. It's really that simple, at least initially. Again, I wish referrals all happened on their own. I wish that clients would make a conscious effort to send work your way all the time. But that's not the reality. And when it doesn't happen again, you shouldn't take it as a sign that you're a loser, that you're not good. That's not the case. Don't take it personally. The other thing you should keep in mind is you're not going to lose clients by asking them for referrals. There's a great deal of fear out there that you'll turn them off and that they'll never call you again if you ask them for a referral. And whether you think this consciously or not, I think it's a very common fear. Oh, my gosh. I don't want to ask them because I might turn them off, and then I will lose that business. I will lose that client where they won't give me as much business because they were turned off. That. That's. That has never been proven to be true. Okay? If you lose the business, it's for another reason, not because you asked them for a referral. So bottom line is you have to ask. Okay? But you have to ask the right way, which is what step two is all about. And this is where I'm going to spend most of my time today. So step number two, ask the right way. Let's talk about that. The first idea is to get into the habit of asking for referrals when you're praised. And I would say that this is probably the most underused opportunity, referral opportunity out there. So when a client sees your first draft, when you wrap up the project, whatever the occasion might be, and they say, oh, my goodness, Ed, this is fantastic. Really, I'm just so pleased with this work. You know, you exceeded our expectations or whatever. I mean, just any kind of praise. It doesn't have to be that high appraise, like I just showed you. It's like, Ed, this is. This is excellent work. Thank you very much. That's the moment to ask. And there are a couple of reasons for it. And this is something kind of a habit that I've developed over time, and I've used it effectively for years. What happens is this is probably the highest point your client will be in emotionally, in terms of how they feel about you. Okay? So the chances are highest when they're riding that high, when they're at that peak, the chances of them responding favorably, not just favorably, but actually taking action on this and giving you a referral, they are the highest at that point. So this is the point where you should really be asking. I'm not saying it's the only opportunity, but it's the one where I see most writers don't take advantage of. It's the one they don't take advantage of the most. So get into the habit of when you're praised, ask. Really, that's it. Okay. So that's very important. That alone will make a huge difference. The second idea is to ask frequently. One of my listeners, Pam Hillard Owens of detroitinkpublishing.com wrote to tell me how she does this, and I think this is brilliant. So she has. She's adamant about asking frequently, and she will ask for referrals in her monthly newsletter at the end of her blog post. She also does it in newsletter articles, blog posts, and other channels by publishing success stories of how she's helped clients in specific situations. And that's a great idea because it adds context to the ask, it adds context to the request for referral. And we're going to be talking more about that here in a minute. The other idea is to ask in person. So ask for the referral in person or over the phone. The point is to try to avoid email. And I understand that email can feel less threatening. It might also feel like a better way to deal with rejection if you get a no or maybe or you don't get an answer. But email is just not effective for asking referrals. And, you know, I've been guilty of this. I've used email before. But you know what? Even I have to admit that it's just not effective. And there are a couple of reasons for it. One of them is that you need the human element. You need a high level of human touch or human touch for the referral to work. For the referral request to work. You need dialogue. You need dialogue to explain where and how you can help. And you need it so you can uncover potential referral opportunities which you know can only. It can only happen if you're able to ask follow up questions and have a real conversation with the client. If you ask via email, that's one directional and it's not going to have the same effect. You know, there's no opportunity to dig a little deeper, to offer some suggestions and add some specificity that could make all the difference between getting something and not getting anything at all. Which leads me to this next idea. Ask with confidence. You have to remind yourself that you're not begging for business here. You're looking for people who need help in your area of expertise. So you're looking to add great value to these potential clients. So remind yourself of your value. Remind yourself where you shine. Remind yourself what clients have said about you in the past and what they're saying about you today. I think most of us tend to undervalue and discount our true genius and our skills and gifts because this stuff comes so easy to us. You know, we can write what we write so well and it just seems effortless so many times. It just, it can cause us to feel like we're a fraud. Because if it's this easy, should we really be asking for this much money for our work? So this is a problem in many creative disciplines. It's not just writers, but I've seen this happen over and over again. So you need to get over this idea that just because you're good at it, because it comes easy to you, it's not worth something. Again, you're adding value here. You need to remind yourself that people seek you out, they need what you have to offer and they're willing to pay very good money for it. And you shouldn't feel bad asking who else you can serve. You know, sometimes I like to use that word, serve, because I think it takes it away from a transaction, it takes it away from asking for money, and it comes from a very different place. And that's essentially what we're doing. We're serving our clients. Another idea is to position the request the right way. So I have a couple of ideas there, and I think these are really, really good. So make sure to take notes on this one. One of them is to explain to your client that most of your business, or a great part of your business, or maybe your best clients tend to come from referrals. So a couple of different ways you could say that. So. Hi, Cindy. You know, Cindy, most of my business comes from referrals, therefore. Or maybe a great part of my business comes from referrals or my business depends on referrals. Okay, so that's kind of the. You're positioning the request here, and by doing it that way, you're letting the client know, basically. Look, I count on referrals to keep my business alive and to continue to serve you as best as I can. Therefore, do you know of anyone? And we're going to talk about more in terms of how to ask. But that's. I found that to make a huge difference in the results you get when you position it that way. It also communicates a very important point, which is that people refer you a lot, so they should feel. They shouldn't feel weird referring you to others because others have already done this. So it's kind of a. It's got an element of social proof to it that's. That's very important and kind of works at a subconscious level. Another idea that I came across recently is from a gentleman by the name of Bill Cates. And Bill is the author of the book Get More Referrals Now. And he's got a great line. I haven't tried it myself, but I plan on using it. And he ends every client meeting, many of his newsletters, blog posts, and many of the communications that he has to prospects and clients with a line, don't keep me a secret. Don't keep me a secret. And there's so much going on in that very, very simple phrase. So try to experiment with this and get in the habit of saying this and using this to position your request. Don't keep me a secret basically communicates, look, I know that I'm valuable to you and I love that, and it would be a shame if others don't find out about me. So you're going to look like a hero referring me to others because I'm one of your secret weapons. Okay? So that's what it communicates without being arrogant, pushy, or weird. So try that line again. I haven't tried it, but I think it's fantastic. I think it's brilliant. Another idea would be to suggest specific Categories or industries or situations or needs where you can fill a gap, where you can provide value. So I think what really happens here is when you put someone on the spot, even if you've done everything right, like I've suggested here, when you put someone on the spot and you make that request, the request is often so broad, they just can't think of someone right off the top of their head. So the idea here is to kind of narrow it down by suggesting very specific situations or industries or needs or categories that might help the person kind of narrow the search down in their head. And I'll give you an example because we're all wired this way. Let's say that you're coming to Atlanta and. And you need a restaurant recommendation. And you just asked me head, I know you live in Atlanta. Can you recommend a place to eat? Right. Well, this is a city of 6 million people. It's huge. There's thousands of restaurants here. I have no idea what to recommend. If you ask the question that way, I have no idea what to recommend. Now, if you were to say, ed, I'm going to be Atlanta for a couple of days, so I'm going to be there with my wife. I'd like to take her to a really nice dinner. And, you know, we love Italian food, and we're going to be in the Cumberland area of town. Wow. Well, you've really narrowed down for me. So right away I'm thinking, Cumberland area. It's a nice dinner, you want to make a good impression. And it's Italian, so, you know, I can probably think of one or two places right off the bat. Very easy, or at least much easier for me to think of something. When you suggest a category, you give me more specificity than if the question is too broad. So it's the same thing. You know, just figure out how you can phrase it to help the person think of someone and don't worry about, oh, gosh, but if I do that, then there are going to be other opportunities that maybe they would have thought of. But because I narrowed it down too much, they can't think of someone. So, yeah, I think there's a danger if you narrowed it down way too much. But, you know, try to at least bring it down one or two notches in specificity. Narrow down just a little bit. It really will help. So an example would be, hey, do you know any other marketing professionals either inside or outside your company, who may need help scripting explainer videos or who also are charged with producing white papers? Whatever it would Be. But notice how I, you know, in that case I talked about a very specific product. You know, I could have talked about colleagues in their industry or if I happen to know, because I did a search on LinkedIn, that they're connected to a lot of people in ABC Company and that would be a great prospect for me. I mean, I could get really specific and say, Cindy, do you know anyone at ABC Company who might need help in this area? You know, I think you connected to a lot of people there, I know you used to work there, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. That could really narrow things down and help her come up with a couple of names to give you. And finally, under the step number two in terms of how to ask to increase your chances of getting that referral, find creative opportunities to add value first. Now, this one's a little tougher and it requires you to get a little creative. And because there's many different possibilities here, I will just give you one example of how I've done this in the past and it hasn't happened a lot, but I had a client a few years ago that they worked with retailers and big name retailers specifically because of the type of work they did. They had to be big retailers in order for their very expensive services to pay off. Anyway, they were trying to get in the door with Home Depot. Now Home Depot is based where I live, which is the Atlanta, Georgia area. And I happen to know an executive who had just left Home Depot after 18 years. He was pretty high up in the company. He's a friend of mine, personal friend of mine. And when I happened to know from the client, my client, that they were trying to get in the door with Home Depot, right away that triggered the thought of, wait a minute. My friend David used to work at Home Depot for 18 years, high level, I think he was in the area where my client could use some help. So in other words, my friend was connected with people who could potentially get my client in the door. So I offered to arrange a call with my personal friend. I had no doubt that my friend would be willing to do it. Sure enough, he agreed to do it. I put them together. I kind of led the call. We did a conference call. I was there. And my friend was able to provide them with some very specific kind of insider information and ideas and insights and some names that really, really helped them out. I can't tell you how grateful my client was in my having the initiative to do this and to put them in touch with, with my friend to get that kind of information. I tell you that it led to a very, very loyal client over the next couple of years, and it led to a couple of referrals that probably wouldn't have happened otherwise. So they just were very grateful and that definitely paid off. So again, that's an example or an idea that. Where you have to get really creative, and there's many different things you could do there. But I wanted to kind of get you thinking in that direction because that kind of thing doesn't happen frequently. When it does, it can really pay off. All right, Step number three is to create a referral expectation from the start. So something I've seen some people do, and I used to do this myself in my last sales job. But I have to be honest here. I haven't really tried this as a freelancer, although it's. I think it's a brilliant idea, is to make referrals part of the expectation that you set. You set up front with the prospect or with a client, and not in a pushy or arrogant way, but more in a, hey, I want to add so much value to you and to your business that I hope I gain enough of your trust and enough of your confidence that you'll refer me to others when and where appropriate that it should be that kind of attitude, that kind of approach. So one way to communicate this is, you know, most of my clients come via referrals, as we talked about earlier, right, in the previous example I gave you. And that's because I deliver excellent work every time, and I do it always on time. I require very little handholding, and I manage every aspect of the project with great care, yada, yada, yada. Because of this, many of my clients automatically refer me to others once they see how I work. However, I want you to know that once we've done a couple of projects together, and if you're thrilled, and only if you're thrilled, I will also proactively ask you for a referral, something along those lines. And this is doing this very, very early in the relationship. And I think it does a couple of things. First of all, it holds the client accountable in some way, right? Because you're letting them know up front. Listen, just. Just FYI, this is. This is how I operate, and this is kind of the expectation that I have. That's the first thing. The second thing it does is look, because this is the way I operate, that's one more reason why I'm going to delight you in every way, because it gives me that extra incentive. So I think it kind of sets up the relationship for real success. It lets them know up front, look, I'm not in this just for this project. Heck, I'm not in this just, you know, for a few projects. I'm in this because I want to serve you to the highest level possible. And I know that only in that way can I get referrals from you, which is going to help me grow my business and so forth. So it makes you look smart. I mean, that is a very smart way of marketing yourself as a self employed service professional. Now I'll give you an extreme case of this idea. I met a guy a few years back who would only work via referral. And the reason he did that is he realized that his best clients always came to him via referral. And he noticed that basically all prospects flow through some kind of system or some kind of path or funnel when checking you out and when they decide to hopefully eventually hire you. So if that prospect didn't flow through a certain funnel or path, meaning a referral path. So if he didn't come via referral, what this guy realized is that the chances of them being a good client or much, much lower. So he figured, look, I know that if they come via referral path, their chances of being a great client and a good fit for me are more than 90% and I'm just making those numbers up. But this is what was going on in his head. When they come through the web, when they come through, you know, an article I wrote, posts that I, you know, guest posts that I did somewhere or through some other means, the chances of them being a good client are less than 50%. So the difference was significant enough that he said, look, if they don't come to me via referrals, I'm just not going to take them. And he had set up his whole business so that it was all referral based. And he told people up front that this is how he worked. And just like the idea I just shared with you a minute ago, he set that expectation up front. But anyway, I think that's an extreme case, but I wanted to kind of give you an idea of how some people have done this. And by the way, I'm pretty sure that that extreme case is a Jay Abraham strategy. Some of you are familiar with Jay Abraham. He's a marketing genius. He's been around for a long time, advises many of the big people, and this is kind of the advice that he gives. And I'm not certain, but this has Jay Abraham written all over it. So that brings us to the end of the episode. And again, we're going to be addressing this in more detail in future episodes because I think this is one topic that truly deserves a deeper dive. This is the age of referrals. This is the age of trust. And really this is the way that most of us should be getting a bulk of our business. So just know that we'll be talking more about this in the show or in my sister podcast, Smarter Freelancing. So make sure to stay tuned for that. I wanted to make sure you knew that the detailed show notes of this episode can be found at b2b launcher.com forward/episode43 the number 43. Also, I wanted to give you a heads up that I'm going to be opening up enrollment for my B2B business launcher program very soon. And this is the program where I work with you one on one in a small group setting to launch your B2B or commercial writing business in 10 weeks. This is a very intensive program. It's fully online, and the successes that have come out of it have been tremendous. So if you're very serious about launching your B2B writing business the right way with a lot less risk, and if you want to shortcut your path to success in this business, then this is a program you should seriously consider. And if you want to be notified the moment I open enrollment, go to b2b launcher.com waiting and I'll put you on the early notification mailing list and that way you can learn more about the program before I announce it to my general list. One last item. I wanted to thank all the people who have left a review for the show and itunes specifically. And I'll read out some of the usernames in itunes that have left reviews. Public Persona, Final Touch, Editing, Nathan C. MK Soroka and Life is Rock and Roll. Gotta love that username. Life is Rock and Roll. So thank you guys so much for taking the time to leave me a couple of sentences about the show. Give me a star rating really means a lot to me. And you know, frankly, this is how the show gets noticed in itunes. And this plays a huge role in rankings in the podcast section of itunes, which increases the chances that those who haven't heard of the show will come across it and benefit from the material. If you're getting a lot of value from the show and feel compelled to do so, best way to leave me that review you is at b2b launcher.com forward/itunes. So that brings us to the end of the episode. I am your host Ed Gandia, thank you so much for listening and I hope you have an awesome day.

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