[Sales] Efficiently grow your pipeline through referrals

The best time to ask for a referral is when the other person is experiencing the most value or most impact from you. And we often think that's a point of a successful delivery.

Right. Which is great.

That's a lovely time to ask. However, another time when people are experiencing the most value from you, or at least perceived value is when they sign a contract to start a project. And the reason for that is if they didn't think it was going to be successful and they didn't like what you presented, they would not have signed the document. So at that moment in time, they are at this high of. Of perceived value, and that's when you ask. So welcome back to another one. I've got a few tips here I want to do today. So what I'd like to talk about is I recently wrote one of the newsletters and I focused on the best way to build pipeline, and the quickest way to build pipeline and fill it with deals that are more likely to convert and to convert quicker is to go get referrals. And in the newsletter, I gave four various ways of doing them. So I thought we should maybe chat about them a bit here, add a bit of color to that newsletter.

Yeah, I mean, referrals are literally the best way anybody can go. Build pipeline, close deals all, I guess. But we always forget to ask. So how do we ask, Nick? How do we do it?

Well, the first thing is do it right. Just stop thinking about any referral to ask. And the point behind that is I've never met anybody yet that is infuriated and angry that I asked. I've had people that don't do it. I've had people that say, I'll try and fob me off, but nobody that's like flipped a table and walked out of the room. No one cares about you asking. Just get over it and ask.

However, you probably, if you completely botched something, you probably don't want to ask them for a referral right at that moment. Right?

Yeah, you may not want to ask at certain points in time. And that kind of brings me back to I, I went over four main points and four ways to ask this. There's probably many more, but these four stood out to me and we should probably dive into them. So one was like, give an ask. And we learned this from Assad on one of the other podcasts about in any negotiation, there's give and take and you should always be willing to ask for your piece of that pie. And in that particular example, it was, we are always engaging with Clients and talking about information. We've learned publications, protocols, all of these different pieces of like nuggets of information. And the client will be like, oh, do you know anyone who knows this? Or could you, could you get that publication that your, your, your company just published? But I've got a behind a paywall. Can you share that with me or can you introduce me to your scientific officer? Because I know they're an expert in this and as reps rules are, yeah, sure, we'll do that because it's building lovely rapport. But at that point in time you're like, yeah, happy to do that for you. While we're on this, any chance you could do something for me? Like give an ask and then be like if you know anyone else that this would benefit, just introduce me. That's it.

Yeah. Or even better, I mean I think maybe you'll talk about this one too. Not sure, but like, like one of the things, there's challenges I think with referrals oftentimes is if you give them like an open ended referral and say, hey, do you know anybody? It's really hard sometimes for them to come up with that in their head right at that moment or whatever. So I think that one of the best ways that you could actually ask for a referral is specifically to list the person that you them to intro you to. Like for instance, let's say you're in that exact same situation. Maybe right before you go and send that message, you go look that person up on LinkedIn, see that they're connected to somebody in one of your target accounts, be like, hey, you know, happy to send this over to you. Hey, by the way, do you have like, how well do you know, like you know, Jane Doe over at Pfizer, you know, would you be able to maybe intro me to her and would love to, you know, if you think it's relevant to her as well and like that way then you're getting this. Like that way that person doesn't have to think about anything.

Sure, right.

They could just like manage that introduction for you right away.

Yeah, I agree. If you could do that, that's always better. The other way around is like sometimes we forget to do that prep and we're in a room. If you haven't done the prep, you should still ask, but do the prep if you can. If you're going to ask. Actually it's like one of the things when you say do you know anyone else? Is kind of a closed question. There's another way of phrasing that that has a bit more impact and it's who do you know? And it instantly makes people process a list of like, who do I know? It's sort of shorthand and if they know anyone off the top of their head, they're more likely to do it. The second point about that is if you're asking them to send an email introduction, another tip I actually read from somebody else on LinkedIn was give them a template. Most of the time when people don't do this when they said they will, it's not because they don't want to do it, it's because it's quite a lot of effort to think about what is your company doing, what should I highlight, what should I say that's good about you and bad about you? You know, all of that kind of gump that you've got to go into writing an email introduction, if you go, oh, I've got this template, I'll send it across jail. Feel free to use it or write your own. I don't mind, I just didn't want to put the eff on you. Then all they got to do is add the names and send the intro CCU in. Job done.

Let's take a quick break from the podcast to talk about what we have going on over here at Succession. We work with 40 plus life science sales companies to help them find more opportunities and close more deals. We provide a range of services to support your sales growth. So whether it's increasing top of funnel opportunities with done for you, lead generation in person, or virtual sales training reinforced by personalized training plans, recruiting top sales talent, or just building custom AI workflows to help make your team more efficient focused on selling. So if you're ready to transform your sales strategy, visit Succession Bio and schedule a call with Nick and I and see how we can support you. We had a client of ours do that with us. Like they went to our LinkedIn, found people that we were connected to and were like, hey, can you help facilitate some introductions? It was so easy. Like we could literally just go through the list like and yeah, it's great.

I was going to move on to another one of them that I really like. And often we One is the best time to ask for a referral is when the other person is experiencing the most value or most impact from you. And we often think that's a point of a successful delivery. Right.

Which is great.

That's a lovely time to ask. However, another time when people are experiencing the most value from you or at least perceived Value is when they sign a contract to start a project. And the reason for that is if they didn't think it was going to be successful and they didn't like what you're presented, they would not have signed the document.

Exactly.

This is a large amount of money. Right. They would not have signed. So at that moment in time, they are at this high of perceived value. And that's when you ask, great, you've signed this, we're working together. I'm sure you're really excited about this as I am. Do you think John Doe is going to be as excited about something like this? And does it fit what I need? Could you facilitate an intro?

Right. Yep.

Obviously, don't ask for a competitor because they're not going to do that. But that's a really good time.

Yeah, totally agree. I think the timing of referrals, you don't have to like wait for like that perfect moment, you know, but if you can do it around something where that person has received some value to your point, like it could even be they just thanked you for like a status update of something and you're like, hey, you know, whatever. They just got some value from that status update that you shared. Then you could ask there, or to your first point, you're going to share a publication with them or you're going to intro them to somebody on your team. They're getting something of value from you at that point too. Right. So it's like there's little value, little pieces of value that you can align to. It doesn't have to be the actual order or the outcome of actually them doing the experiment or when they actually publish is when you ask for this stuff. Right. The longer you wait, the less likely you're actually going to do it too.

And I would actually argue at that point of where they're expecting something to the point where you deliver, often the value is higher in the expectation. Because I've never seen a project, a complex scientific project, just do this. Oh, we start the project and every experience was amazing. And it got better and better and better until we delivered. If anyone's got one of those, like.

We want to know, like this, right? It was like, right.

So at the end of it, they're like, happy is done. But they may not be as ecstatic as when they went to sign up.

Yep.

The next one we spoke about, I'll mention just quickly because I think this is the most obvious one. Find your champion customers and ask them. Find, go through your, your CRM, your logbook, wherever you've got written down and look at the people that you are.

Your logbook. What are you like a pirate from.

The 1700s if people's names get crossed out and skulls next to them? Yeah. I couldn't think of the word and I went with logbook, which is not right. Your maths are.

Rolodex is the old school word you were looking for.

So go for it. Find the ones that we've created value for and message them. And this is a task you should do periodically. So every quarter, once you've done it, once you've gone back to most people but then from then on you need to repeat that quarterly or bi, yearly so that you can look back at the people you successful then and ask again if you haven't already asked them. And then the last one I don't think is. This is one of the ones I didn't think is obvious as well that we spoke about is peer to peer swap. So think about Pokemon or swapping sports cards. But instead we're swapping customers. Right. And if you've got customers that really value you and trust you, we've all got those customers that become semi friends or that they, they see us more than just a rep. They ask for information. They'll be like, do you know so and so do you know anyone who can do this service? Like they trust your opinion, not just your service. Then if you guys trade those with intros, they're going to be really powerful.

How do you do that? Give us an example, an example of.

A client you could do it with or an example of how you approach.

Yeah, just like what does that look like? Like how do you. What are you swapping? Like I guess. How do you like walk me through like give me an example of like that scenario I'm coming up.

I think the best case scenario here would be to think about complementary services.

Probably great is if you're downstream of what you're doing, downstream of what you're.

Doing, then that's going to work. That's going to work best because it's obvious that you're going to have a strong overlap of client.

Like our example like when we were at sent to go like Lonzo was a nuclear factor which you needed our CRISPR guides in order to like run the nuclear vector. So if somebody bought a nuclear vector they'd be a great lead for us for guides, that sort of thing. Right? Is that kind of thing?

Yeah. Upstream, downstream or parallel products. If you're selling media and reagents. But you know that they Someone else in you sells antibodies and you don't. That's a. They're the same people using the tactics. Or it could be like upstream, downstream. So I've got this piece of equipment that does X, but if you're doing X, the follow on step is Y. Then you want to find the person of what. There's a lower value version of that where you just know somebody who's a rep really well and you sit down and you go like, oh, who is a target list of my top 10 companies I'm going after? Who do you know here you could get me an intro to? Yeah, it's a little lower value, but if they've got respect in that, in that company, then they can also facilitate that. Yeah, that one's really good. Because like, why wouldn't you want to do that as a rep? Why would you?

Reps. Reps are going to help reps out. Like, especially if you're not like selling things that are clashing or competitive things, like, why wouldn't you help them out?

Exactly. And for me, that was four types of referrals I was talking about and I think they were really, really good. And if you're trying to build pipeline that's going to close quickly this year, like this half of the coming half of this year, then I think there's no better way.

I mean, you can even give yourself like a mini objective. Right. Like they say, what measures, what measures matters or if it's not measured, it doesn't matter. Something like that, whatever that saying is. And yeah, it's like give yourself a goal of say, like ask for five referrals this week, like each week, ask for five referrals or intros, whatever. And I bet you just by simply doing that one action, you're going to identify tons of new pipeline opportunities, et.

Cetera, especially on a discovery call. I think that's a great place. If you're doing a discovery call and people are interested, you should be asking there.

Yeah, it's a good one. Cool. All right, go ask for those referrals.

Don't ask me. Don't everybody email us.

Like, referral. Unless you become a client. Then we're happy to.

Yeah, we're everybody then.

Awesome. All right, see you all in the next one.