GET AN INTRODUCTION: Build Relationships and Ask for Referrals with Christoph Karger

In my opinion, if you're going to do it otherwise it just actually feels kind of like, almost feels grimy, you know, like oh, here's a $10 gift card for an introduction. You're like no, I don't got time for that.

We have to be very patient because it's like any other skill that we practice requires patience. It requires practice and a lot of repetition.

The over specialization I think has really killed some great old school tactics that.

Might help us that we can also ask to start this whole thing and to get used to it. I think that's something that's really, really critical.

How do we incentivize our customers and like you'll see things like oh, you know, get a hundred dollars off your next month or something like which I have my own thoughts on. How do you think about incentivizing referrals? Or is it mostly just goodwill, good nature? You make the ask. As long as you are providing a.

Valuable service, I think both is totally fine. So what I mean, I don't believe that someone ever made a referral because your local bank offered, I don't know, a hammer as a, you know, as a gift because you brought in a customer. I don't think that ever happened. But having a referral share that you give back to someone is something that I think is totally fair and can build, I mean can even build revenue streams for some people. And so if you're willing to give back a couple of percentages of your revenue to someone who makes you a couple of intros, I wouldn't do that for someone who just does one intro. But if you work closely together and you get a couple of introductions, that's totally fine. I used to have that at a previous company with some other reps and they brought in constant referrals and it was pretty good, I think, pretty good deal for both sides. I'm not a fan of just giving a $10 discount on a subscription fee just for one introduction because I think it should happen anyways and usually it happens anyways Some more the over topic of not being there even if you already made that sign sign up or a sale, building the relationship, maintaining the relationship, saying hi to birthdays, you know, those kind of little things that should be totally normal. But I think most people in software sales, but maybe also because we have this role split often just see their role as I'm part of this, my journey and everything before and after, I don't take care of and I think that's something that could be a mistake.

I was just gonna go there because if I think back to some of my top reps, they stayed in touch with their customers even though they weren't supposed to. Like, and I hear this all the time where says like, well, I'm not allowed to reach out to my customers once they are closed because now they're in cs. I'm like, that is ridiculous. Right? Like, so you have to stay in touch. And I do think you were just talking about this, this singular road mentality of like, well, I already closed it, so now it's in CS's world and I don't get to do those things. I do think is really, really foolish because we should be staying in touch with our customers because that allows for the referrals to come through regularly. And to your point, if you're going to incentivize it and that you mentioned it, it's got to be a good deal for both sides, right? Because I think it's hilarious that we'll spend tens of thousands of dollars on leads and then an SDR to call it and pay them to book it and then the AE to work it and to close it. And we pay all the managers all that, that cost of acquisition, 5,000, $10,000. Then we'll offer a customer a hundred dollar gift card for referring someone. It's like, make the math the same where if I knew, like, dang, like I'm gonna get a year for free if I can get them two customers, game over, I'm gonna go get you those two customers because now I'm getting it for free. And so you gotta make the incentive really strong. In my opinion. If you're gonn, it just actually feels kind of like, almost feels grimy, you know, like, oh, here's a $10 gift card for an introduction. You're like, no, I don't got time for that.

No, definitely, fully agree. But I think it's something which is scalable. And for example, I'm working on this right now because I think there is a lot of value in there. So I think it's something that's definitely worth looking into for organizations.

So then just like any skill or any tactic, right? This has to be coached. This has to be taught. It's like, how did you teach your teams how to do this? How did you coach them? How did you develop the skill of this as a leader? Because it's one thing that I think probably even a lot of people listening right now, they're like, yeah, this makes a lot of sense. We still really haven't done it. How did you enable your team, how did you coach them, how did you make sure this was actually happening?

Yeah, I think this is the most difficult one because there's so many different touch points where we can actually ask for referrals and we have to be very patient because it's like any other skill that we practice requires patience, it requires practice and a lot of repetition to really also incorporate that mindset of okay, I'm going to do this whenever possible basically and or leverage every opportunity that I get to do this. The second is I think is constant training and repetition and making it part of for example we have those core reviews basically when we, when we speak about like like a check baby, check boxes around. Okay, did you do this? Do you this where can you prove what can you keep what you should start doing etc. And I've never seen any where this was a part of. So also making this part of every habit, make this part of every meeting, speak about it constantly as you know, look at the sources where we generated pipeline from and just make it present. I don't think it's like any other thing, like if we speak about it it's going to become a priority and it's just the thing that we most often don't do it. And it's also funny when I host a training, I had one a couple of weeks ago and I was doing a follow up conversation with them four weeks later and I think only 20% of people actually did something around it. They had remarkable results. The other ones didn't. And it's the same thing with our own teams. We can tell them once and they're not doing it. I think you recently spoke about micromanagement on the podcast and a blueprint for success. It's kind of the same thing like we can, you can tell you what to do but you have to execute it in the end. And I think as leaders we basically have to continue to the very end and not just stop. Why we think okay, this is what's the regular call now? The sorry, not the referrals are the bonus. No, the referrals are actually part of the regular process. We speak about the sales cycle. How is it a sales cycle if it doesn't generate new pipeline?

Yeah, the over. The over specialization I think has really killed some great. Call it old school tactics that now because we're so specialized we don't do. We have AES that don't know how to prospect, we have SDRs that don't know how to close. We have AES not asking for referrals because it's not their book of business anymore. We have CS not asking for referrals because they're only compensated on churn or upsell. They're not compensated on new business. Like, all that doesn't work well together. And to your point, we actually did. We had that on our closing scorecard, asked for referrals. I was on our closing scorecard as a checklist. Did we ask for referrals? We built out a cadence to follow up 90 days later to check in. How are they doing? Ask for the referral. Like, we built in the systems and processes, and then we did every month, we pulled up people's pipelines. We pulled up where they were closing and showed them like, look, y', all, referrals close at 50%. Why are you cold calling? Like, I'm, you know, I'm a big believer in cold calling and all that, but damn it, if you can do it through referrals, why don't we do that instead? Why are we killing ourselves on cold calls? And so as we get closer to kind of wrapping up here, what else, what else haven't we touched on yet about referrals that you think is just an absolute must do if you're trying to build this into your team?

I think what you just mentioned is also very important point, right? When we speak about referrals, it's not something we do instead of cold calling or instead of social or instead of email emails. They all work well together, very well together. Actually, referrals and social work best together because I got so many leads and introductions from LinkedIn that are not my customers just because I was present. I was helping people and asking for their support in return. And I think that's something we should also think about. And now opening it up a bit more again is we often think about business when we speak about referrals. What we want is actually introductions. And introductions can basically come from anybody who's willing to support us. And we know probably even more people outside of our business world that are willing to support us and help us. And if it's just to get started, that might make us an introduction that might help us, that we can also ask to start this whole thing and to get used to it. I think that's something that's really, really critical. Sam.