Advanced Techniques For Increasing Client Referrals: A Masterclass

So, hey, everyone, welcome to our very first masterclass in the series of masterclasses we're going to do here at Brancaster's Pot of Ties. We are doing things that we know are going to help our clients businesses grow. All of our entrepreneurs who follow us on social media and everywhere else we want, we're sharing this out with all of them because we want to make sure that you're growing, too. And this is the number one question I get when I'm out. And I don't know about you, Tom, I'm sure that you get a lot of questions about sales because that's your area of expertise in this particular business. But the one I get is like, how do you get people to share you? How do you get them to refer you? How do you do that? And one of our statistics is really high.

Tell them. Sure. Well, and really, the big question that I get the most is how do you find new customers? How do you generate leads? And without a question, it's referrals. And so for us in our business, and we think many of you might find the same thing after you create a strong referral program, you might find you're similar to us, where for us, 89% of our new customers come from referrals from existing customers. So this is critically important to our business.

Yeah, absolutely. And so let's talk about a little bit at the beginning here about why referrals matter. Right. Why do they matter to our businesses? And why are they really actually efficient and a great way to grow your company, especially when you don't have a lot of dollars to spend, when you're bootstrapping it and you're growing at the very, very beginning. And the thing is, is that we all know as we're busy entrepreneurs, especially when we're starting a company that we are so busy and that if the sales process and cold calling and cold contacting and all, they take a lot of time and a lot of effort, and it distracts us from growing sound businesses underneath. I mean, you know, Tom, how long did it take in the very beginning when we were first trying to reach out and talk to people and get them to, you know, join us on our podcast platform? How many sales calls would you have on average?

Oh, my gosh, I think those first customers, to get those first dozen customers was the hardest. Took the longest amount of time because we really had no history. I mean, except for what we had done for ourselves. Now, the good thing in our business is we practice what we preached, right? We were podcasters too. We did this for ourselves first, so that helped a little bit. But my gosh, I would have dozens and dozens of sales calls and.

But it was like, I think we were somewhere around five to six in the very beginning of calls. You would have before you would close someone when you met them cold. Right when. And so that's expensive time when you're the co founder of a company. Right. That's expensive time and it takes a lot of energy and time to make that happen and convince people. Right. So when you get a referral, though, it's a lot more efficient.

Oh my goodness. I mean, really a lot of time. And we're going to get into some of the details here, but when we have a referral and when you create a referral program and incentivize people properly, they're selling for you.

So you got an extended salesforce.

Yes.

Yeah, I love that, that idea of that because I mean, even now, today, I mean, this is our biggest holdup is we should have been adding sales team right now. But with the virtual world that we're in at this particular moment, we aren't able to extend that and start our office as we had planned earlier. We're going to have to wait three months on that. So we're a little delayed behind what we wanted to. But that doesn't mean our sales are stopping when we have the sales force out there working on our behalf in the form of our clients and our network. So that extends us.

Absolutely does. You know the other great thing about referrals as a new young business, they don't cost you anything up front. Zero. I mean, you mentioned Traci, we want to build out a salesforce. We plan to. We will build out a salesforce, but early on we couldn't afford to build out salesforce, no way.

And so we couldn't afford to pay salary and then commission on top of it or something like that. And so in this case, we also don't. We don't pay for advertisements. So we don't pay to push out ads for our network, for our shows and for the other things. We don't pay to do that because it's also inefficient on its way back to us. So, you know, we're looking at that saying we don't have to shell out dollars hoping we get a return. Tom and I hate to do anything where hope is. Your plan. Like that's just ridiculous. Not going to happen. So we like to do with. With a certain return. So we're more than willing to spend the money or in a form of a reward or form of an incentive or some other thing after you receive the sale. Right. And so building all that into your process is something that we're going to talk about in the next segments here because we're talking about 21 different models and ways.

Right. And one thing I want to share before we get into that is just that we have not only relied on sales or only referrals. Sorry, we haven't only relied on referrals and only tried referrals as our sales process and marketing process. We have actually done our fair share over several years of social media marketing, other, you know, Google pay per click, other paid marketing. And we now have years of data from our own business that have showed us clearly the referrals not only are most successful closing faster, shorter sales cycles, but paid marketing is very hard to do and we were much less profitable. We in fact got so few leads from that it was a lot of wasted time and money. So this comes from not just hey, referrals worked for us and we're telling you about it and it's all we did. No, no, we have tried many, many different things but we have found through analyzing the numbers year over year that it not only works, it's very profitable. And the incentives we give that we'll talk about are some of the cheapest advertising and marketing we could ever do.

Well, and as we mentioned, the return on investment and time and energy to close, you're shortening that closing cycle. So you're shortening your sales cycle so it makes it more cost effective and really efficient in the process as well. So, so just looking at all those things, that's some of what we're doing and we're going to talk about it in different ways. We've got 21 different models, ways, key factors, whatever you want to call them to creating a great referral program overall and maybe aspects of it that you would like to incorporate. So we want to give you some different perspectives on the things that we know have worked and we've tried and, or built in, in sort of sub factors within the program that we utilize today and give you some ideas on how that might work for you. You. And so you can take that back and sort of think of examples and say think of some ways that you might adopt it in your business because everybody's business is different. So we're, you will look at that overall with you right now and each one, they're not in any particular order but we want to consider that There are different types of referral partners, so I want to mention that. So sometimes it's your clients, so it's like a one on one, someone shares you, they sell. Your network is a referral partner as well. But you might dive deeper into joint ventures and other things like that. So we want to be really clear that thinking about that model, it's not just a one on one referral basis. You want to look at it from that broader perspective as we head into it. So, you know, the first one that I think we should talk about is attraction, because, I mean, that's why we started a podcast, right? We wanted to attract business. Right.

Really is the foundation of our business. And so. And it applies to everybody that works with us. So I think it's a great place to start. Tracy.

So, you know, attraction, you know, being active, being vocal, being out there, being served, being easy to reach like that. Being out there is in and of itself a referral process. Right. People are drawn to you because you're putting information out there that they care about, that they want, that they need, and. And that helps you get more in all kinds of ways, right? It might get. In the early days, it was getting me speaking engagements, it was getting me my column, which then got us referrals, right? So like, and then they would come in and they would already be warmed up leads. So sometimes the referral isn't a real person. It's sort of an entity along the way.

Well, and actually, Tracy, you have. You engage in this process weekly in terms of attracting people. So share how you attract people. Well, some weeks it's daily, but share how you attract people and then how that is really, how do I say, stealth way to gain warm leads?

Well, you know, it ties into our second factor, which is give first. So we do. I do attraction and giving at the same time. And so what that is, is I want to give back into a community, or I'm giving back in terms of service, in terms of giving back in terms of content and topics, but I'm also giving back in terms of connection. So my show, which is now called the Binge Factor, but it's been called many things over the years, and I have five different shows, so I can serve in different markets, areas and different industries and all of that. But the binge factor, what I do is I go out there and I interview successful podcasters. So we analyze their show, I give them. It's like a psychoanalysis of their binge factor, and we talk about binge ability and how it gets created and in that process, I'm serving them and I'm giving them publicity, but also in that process, I'm demonstrating to them how our services work and what we do and how we do it for our clients and the deep level of commitment we have to the marketplace and to the industry. So all of that is happening at the same time. So I'm attracting high level successful podcasters through the content that I'm putting out. I'm serving them in the process. And then what happens is this, nine times out of 10, they just, along the way they go, I have a great show podcaster that you would be great for. Or can we just talk about my podcast and my business? And so it's a lead generation. And in that process, we usually close in one call because we've already gone through so much of them, seeing the results of what they get. It's a lot easier in that process. Now, it does take time. There's no, you know, we record, we share, like, I mean, there's time that spans in there, but there's not time on a sales. All of that stuff is serving our business, producing content, going out there, getting to become articles and other things. So all of it is a part of our marketing machine, but in it is built sales, lead qualification and generation. Like all of that is happening together. Plus, you got the law of reciprocity, right?

You do have the law of reciprocity. Now here's the thing, like you were saying, Tracy, you've got to give first. And that's one of the things that I really have always felt very good about our business and our core principles. From the beginning, we are serving first our podcast. And at events, when we talk, we will give away all of our knowledge for free. There's nothing we hold back. It was one of the things that bothered us when we started our first podcast. We did all this research about how to start a podcast, what was working for people. Each of these different gurus gave you their formula, but we felt they were all holding something back. And over the years, as we've really gotten into it in more detail, we know they were, they were holding something back they wanted you to pay for. That's not how it works with us. We're going to give you everything, all our knowledge for free. And if you want to do it yourself, more power to you, by all means. We succeed by people deciding, you know what, yeah, I could do it myself, but I have to manage four or five other people to do it. And I'd have to somehow make sure they're staying on top of what the latest effective techniques are. And you know what? I don't have time for that. I want to spend some money to save time, right?

I want to be an accelerator. But the other part of it is that what we learned over the years of being able to give and give freely like this is that there's a thoughtful and valuable way of giving, right? So I can just give content away and I can just give stuff away. But what's happening is that it is, it is recreating this like too broad. I'm going to call it too broad a type of giving, right? I'm giving too much information. I'm giving too much stuff out there. So when I go one on one with the podcasters and when I'm doing that and I think carefully and now learn some more about their business, if by the interview process, I can refer more valuably to them. And so I can say, you know, now after talking with you, you'd be a great guest on this show. Let me make a referral to you and you'll get even more publicity or, you know, you would benefit if you did this with your show. And let me give you some on air mentorship or like off on the side mentorship too. And they appreciate that. And so we've also started to invite all of my binge factor guests into our brandcasters group, which is only clients, but the reason we invited them in is because they have more successful shows, which means that they're getting views of our clients and inviting them on the show. So we're creating a richer network for our clients. At the same time, a lot of those podcasters are not as successful. They don't feel as successful deep underneath. So that this is helping mentor them without them feeling like, you know, they belong to a program. So that type of valuable and relevant service is really important in the process too, to. Right? So then we're giving, we're giving in a valuable way. So, you know, the one thing we forgot to mention is that, and I think probably it's the number one thing that I find people forget to do and it's probably the most often thing mentioned on the binge factor on how to get great guests or is ask, just ask.

My gosh, when you know, when it comes to a lot of businesses that are struggling to get new leads, often when we talk to them, we find out they haven't even asked for any referrals. Now this does depend on the fact that you've done some business that you're not such a brand new startup, you'd have no customers yet.

Okay, but even then you could ask for people to come into your program and try it out and become part of your program. Right? And become referral partners with you after they go through it. So you gift them that and work well. That's the thing.

You can give somebody either, obviously, if you're starting out and you don't have the testimonials, you don't have the social proof yet, you can give them either a deep discount to start with you, or even do it for free for that first customer in exchange for testimonial referrals, things like that. But just don't be afraid to ask for a referral. Now, having said that, one thing I want to be really clear about here, I feel this is very important, is that your ask it really, you need to think about it and frame it in a way that is more about them, how you're serving them, what you're giving them, what's in it for them and not just what's in it for you. Would you give me a referral because I need some more customers? Well, that's not really a very compelling ask for somebody that is new in business and doing all this, but saying I would be very happy to support you in your business in this way and give you a deep discount and hopefully you will value the service and then be willing to share what I did for you with other people. You know, that it might be a.

Good fit for see what Tom did right there. It's like an invitation, an invitation to do something. So you're letting them know what's valuable to you should they want to thank you or should they appreciate what you've done for them. And so making being very clear on that is really, really important. And then I want to tie that into our next way. So we're on number four right now and I call it niching down and I want to really narrow and specific on who my referral client is. So somebody is asking me, it's like, gosh, you've just spent so much time with me and I really appreciate it. What can I do for you? You're going to be prepared with, I would love to have some referrals who are exactly like this person and you describe it in great detail. And so I love that specificity and niching down. And we've discovered that it works really well when you have a podcast that's niche down. So I'd rather see a niche down specific choice because it makes it so much easier for us to visualize who can we serve you best with and when. We can search through our brain. Rolodex. I keep using that old school term, our brain contact. Listen, the CRM in our brain, right? Let's upgrade our technology here and really go through and say who matches that. And if nobody matches that though, if you were so specific in your language about who you were looking for, then what really happens to me is when I meet them out there, I go, you have to get, you have to meet Tom, right? You have to meet this person. You're a perfect match for what they're doing and you could really benefit. Now I'm making a really great referral from that side and I'm giving valuably back because, you know, it's just in general, you know, remember that old like friends and family. Like, oh yeah, introduce us to 10 friends and family. Like that was always like nasty to me. And it's not specific and it means I'm gonna spam my friends and family, right? At the end of the day, you don't want to get people in the, in the mode that that's what they have to do is to help you and to thank you. They've got to spam their network. No, we want them to be specific and help just the right person so they know it's a right match. So that niching down on the type of people and you might have four different types of people or three different types of people and you, when you choose one to refer to, mention as the perfect referral when you know you're talking about. So when I am talking to publishers or PR firms or certain things like that, I'm specific and I might mention authors, right? As authors are specific and authors who haven't launched their book yet, who maybe don't have a big enough platform and list to be sure that they're going to hit the best seller list. Those would be ideal clients for me. And so I just did that really specifically. It helps them go out there. And so when someone comes across their desk, you know, maybe even someone who they just meet in a sales capacity now, it gives them an ability to give back and pay it forward and refer out even if they're not a right fit for their business. So, you know, all of that is working for you if you're really specific about it. So niching down is really important.

Okay, so number five. And you know, this is one that didn't come easy for me. But I have adapted and learned over the years now, and that is be patient. Don't ask for referrals before you close a new customer and have started giving them value. It's just too soon and too pushy. Now, that doesn't mean. And we'll talk about this in another point in a little while. That doesn't mean that, you know, sometimes a prospect may ask you, do you have a referral program?

Or that you should mention it in the sales process. You have a referral program when you're ready, you know it's valuable, and here's why. You know, you can talk about that, but asking for that referral too soon can actually hurt you. And here's why, number one, they haven't experienced you yet. So they're going to become your client and they're going to experience you. They're going to have a deeper level of knowledge of how well you do and what type of person would be a right fit for you from their own perspective. So then they're able to share that in a deeper way. So the referrals that they make are going to become more valuable. So you actually, in the early days, if you ask too early, you get more general referrals that maybe aren't valuable enough to you. And so we would get, like any podcasters in the early days when we weren't specific about it or if we asked too soon, and what would happen there is that it would cost us more time and energy to find out that they're not a right fit for.

For us.

And so now once you. If you wait a little bit in the process and you're patient, it will pay off dividends later in terms of faster closes, better referrals, better clients at the end of the day.

So no question.

Yeah. You know, and along the lines of Ask Tom. So people, so many people forget to announce. Right. So, you know, it's great when we can announce, and I always get permission on it, but if I can announce, I just landed this great new podcast. We're just so excited that this podcast is coming on board. We can't wait for you to see the changes to their show. And they're a successful podcaster and you go out and make that announcement. What happens is that in and of itself is a referral partner for you, because the association of saying, I want to be like Mike, you know, out there. Right. I want to be just like so. And so this podcast or I want to be like that matters. So it's an association. Now, I caution you, though, especially if you're early and starting out, or if you're in a highly competitive marketplace where people are going out there and competitors are going out there and stealing your clients. Right. And we've seen it happen. So they'll come in and they'll try to contact everyone on your platform. So if you put everyone on your testimonial page, all of those people will get contacted at some point by one of your competitors. So be careful and wary of it when you use that. We don't use broadly. If we have a lot of new clients out there who've never been on our website. Now, you might be on our banner that we sometimes have behind us when we get, you know, when we do brand casters. Right. Your cover art might be on there, but that's. We use that in a very limited way. Right. And so it is sort of a general giving this broad brush, but they're also really small, and most people can't focus on them and find out. It just makes it look like we have a lot of great shows, which we do and we're proud of, but we don't do it specifically. And one of the good examples of this I see is that a lot of podcast production companies will bring business cards of all the shows that they produce and they'll put them out on the table. And what I see happen is, is that after they walk away from their table, all their competitors will come and take one of everybody's car and then.

Cold call on them to try to.

You know, upsell them, get them to switch. Right. So it's not really a great method of going about it, unless that show is so valuable and your relationship is so good with that, with that cl, but use it to your advantage. So making an announcement matters then this one, this next one. So we're on number seven, and number seven is magic seven, right? Seven is like a magic number here. And this is thanking, rewarding and incentivizing. And this is really where, I mean, our program has done so well.

This has been the most brilliant thing we ever did. And I'll tell you, we were nervous at first. We didn't know whether we were giving away too much margin, essentially, if it was going to hurt us. We found it was the best thing we ever did and the cheapest incentive and the cheapest cost for us as a company to acquire new customers.

Right. So remember we mentioned that 89% of our referrals come from all of our podcasts, our networks, our other things out there. So it's a little broader than just like all of our podcasters referring, right? It's our networks and our community growth, right? So, but all of that, it only costs us about 10%. So its commission rate is less than 10% overall of our cost factors. You can't pay for that in marketing budget. I can tell you that right now and have it be that effective.

And so what that is is we give all of our existing customers, you know, of course they, you all should know this, or a lot of you should know this, that you buy episode packages and put them on account. We don't sell monthly, you know, fees for episode production. You're going to buy five, 15 or 25 episodes. And the more you buy, the cheaper it is per episode. But when you refer someone to us that becomes a customer, after they do, we credit your account with five episodes. So I've got people literally that haven't paid us in six months because they're referring enough people that are the right profile, that are a fit that close. And I keep crediting them five episodes. We have a relatively new customer who has referred four people already and two of those have closed now. They became a customer first. We don't let people earn their way into starting a podcast because that's a slippery slope. There's too many problems.

But we have had a few podcasters recently who started referring so fast that while they were recording and before they really bought their first episode package, they were getting, they were getting referrals into it and building up a bigger package.

Maybe they bought their set of packages only and not episodes.

That has been happening lately because the referral rate is going. But here's a caution on that. That works really well when you have a good incentive program, right? When your incentive is very valuable, right? It's giving you a discount, it's giving you more services, it's giving you more, right? But if you have a very low cost program or you have something that's really not expensive and what you really want to do is start amping up your rewards over time. So you want to reward behavior. So multiple referrals should get a higher reward level. And so you start them out at a rate and then it gets them hooked. And then as they refer more and more people, you give them a greater reward for doing that because it's more valuable to you, right? They're starting to sell you better. So doing mapping a program for yourself from an incentive standpoint and looking at that, do you need to exponentially grow it over time? Do you need to incrementally, you know, what is Going to be your process for doing that and how do you keep it valuable And a true incentive at the end of the day.

So yeah, and really an incentive that's a win win. I mean, while we're giving this incentive, our customers, this is, you know, really overall value, the service that we're providing them. We're not giving them an incentive to trick people. We're giving them an incentive to just share with people they know are like them and could really use our service. And it's mostly people that have a real serious need. And then, you know, the referral bonus just makes it so much easier for them and certainly incentivizes them to remember to do that.

Right. And I want to mention one other or two other things actually on this, on this side of incentives, because it's such a big program. So rewards and incentives, there can be a model by which, you know, maybe you need the referrals and you're a non profit or there's some other things in the program. You, you could do a donation model. So you can also say, hey, we have this group of charitable organizations, we'd love to donate, you pick. And that way it can be a lower cost model when you're starting out and you don't have a lot of margin or you don't have a lot of ability to do an incentive that's valuable. But now you're giving somebody a choice of how they give back and a choice of what they do in that process. So that can be one. And then you can also create a referral process for companies that leave you. I mean, we have a lot of podcasters who just, you know, stop podcasting. They're done and they leave and they still refer people to us and there is no one. We don't actually have a formal incentive program for it, but we were like, should we do it? I was like, well, they're doing it anyway, so. And they, you know, but you could have a program for that, for people who like graduate out of your program and they move into whatever it is that they do. So let's say you might be a book publisher, you have an incentive program for them referring people in because it's valuable to you, but they've gone on and they're not coming back to, you know, do that. But maybe by that connection point, they might become a return customer. You never know. It's happened to us.

So still relative to rewards and incentives, this is though a different item number eight, you know, timely rewards, you want to, whatever it is you're Going to give people reward. You want that benefit to be immediate. You want to make sure they're aware of it and they, they know that, you know, they are appreciated for providing that referral.

Yeah. And so, so the part of it is a timely thank you. Right. So as soon as they make the reward, they make the referral. You do a thank you. Of course, our rewards, and many of your rewards will be tied to actually someone closing, becoming a client. And that could take time, and that's not on their time schedule. But if you can, you know, update them occasionally, do it. But as soon as that client, that becomes a client, we produce our incentive. Right. We add episodes to the accounts of our clients and we let them know that that's there. Right. So by doing that, it's an immediate gratification. Oh, I did something, I won, like, you know, I made it happen, I did something great. And they feel good about themselves. If you waited and just only did it like every 30 days, every 90 days, like some rolling affiliate programs do, it loses its momentum with that excitement of the referral process and the timeliness isn't there. And then we do hear nasty reputation stories about people who you have to chase down to pay you their affiliate commission. And you hear from whoever you referred tells you they were a client and you didn't hear it on the other side.

The other tricky thing, and I've had this happen where somebody was referred to me by two different people independently and genuinely within like two weeks. And they did close. And it was a really tough situation. But while I could have justified only giving the first person that referred that new customer to us the, you know, referral credits, I ended up giving it to both. And I don't regret that. Obviously, that costs us a little more on that one customer, but the goodwill that it built with each of those.

Existing customers, and we did tell them the situation, right. So that they understood the situation and so that I think that really helps in terms of that. And so that's a choice that you make. But we find that timeliness in it is a really big important part of making sure that that reward becomes a behavioral reward. Right. You want to reward the behavior of asking, of getting referrals. So make sure that you do that in a timely manner. And, you know, I want to touch, because I mentioned it just briefly. Affiliates, right? So our number nine on our list of 21 ways is affiliate. And we're seeing diminishing returns on affiliates. We're seeing a lot of it, you know, not working for many people. And I want to be really clear about why that is and when it can work and when it doesn't work. Right. When you're willing to share your customer base and in turn receive others customer basis, like this is what you're doing, you're really excited exchanging your lists. Okay, so that means that your list is not that valuable to you personally or you've exhausted your sales prospects on that list. Right. Because I would not give up my client list to just anyone. Right. I will do it. And we'll talk about that in a little bit with joint venture partners, people who can add value to my client base, make their shows more successful, and in turn make sure that they're going to do more business with me. But from an affiliate standpoint, an affiliate refers this more passive model of, hey, I'm sharing out a program and you know, this is it. And all that anyone cares about is opens and clicks and signups. Right. And so just looking at that, I think people are getting really tired of it and people are getting really wise too. And we're seeing open rates drops, conversion rates drops, all of those things. So if two companies are going after the exact same market and you won't be losing customers through the collaboration and sharing of resources, then I think you can greatly benefit from this. And that's where we're seeing it can really work well for you. So be sure you're okay sharing your list and your clients with other people and then really check out those affiliates, because bad affiliates, bad lists, bad programs that you market to your list really reflects badly on you and hurts your referrals across the board.

Yeah, I think it has to be something that you use and value yourself and like Tracy said, is in complete alignment with your existing customers. But also it's a service or a company that is not in competition with you. Really, I think there, no question, if it's in alignment, it works very well.

Right. And so we've done some tests over the last six months and you will have seen it go through our process where we tested some where we thought they were tighter partnerships and we tested some that were more traditional affiliate models or JV programs. And I could tell you right now, the feedback, the flack, the lack of the unsubscribe, like all of the things that happen because of not following our model of a tight partnership hurt our list. And so we don't. We really saw and it demonstrated in our own programs that it wasn't working, which is what we were seeing out in the marketplace. So we did guinea Pig on ourselves. But we also were really careful with our real core client list and didn't mess with that list. So those of you out there, you may not have even seen it. So. But you know, part of that affiliate program is that I want to, I want to, you know, like we do this when we guest on people's show. I want to steal listeners. Right. I want to steal people off their list. But why not do it with their competitors? That's our number 10 on the list.

Yeah, definitely. There are opportunities. I mean, especially if, you know, your competitors, you know, are the same profile, custom, have the same profile customer, you would. There are opportunities to figure out. And we've had it happen. You know, we've had it happen because we initially, organically happened to have a lot of people come work to us that were with another company. And there was this trend, hmm, people may not be being served very well where they are. Can we profile and find out who those customers are and then, you know, target them?

Now, we didn't do it unethically. We didn't just go down their pages, but we analyzed their website, their social posts, their connections, and found a list of their podcasters, basically. And we took it and we created a lookalike list. And that's how we did it. So it was not as unethical, but in the process it happened that some of those podcasters received our promotion. Received our ad. Received it. And so this is where we were testing things out. As I mentioned, we don't normally do ads, but we were testing some things to see if we could make it work. And these are some ways to do that. The other thing we do is follow their employees and their company pages. You'd be supporting all the information that they share out there. Right. We know we're sharing it freely, like it's purposeful, but we're sharing it to the best interest of our clients and not to the best interest of our company as a whole, as first and foremost. And so at the end of the day, they believe in what we're doing as service. And so there's again, that model going to our place. So the other part of it, I want to say on the steal, you can do it in a soft touch way. So remember I was talking about the binge factor. Right, Right. Or our podcast publicity pop ups, which we haven't mentioned yet because we're not really doing a bunch of events right now.

Physical events they require, they'll be back.

Right. But when we have a profile, like I'm looking for Shows that are in the health and wellness world. I will invite half of them being my clients, and I will invite half podcasters who I don't know, but I know have successful shows out there and invite them to be a part of our podcast publicity pop up, which is where we go into an event and we offer a publicity opportunity for podcasters to interview top speakers that are on the stage of that event behind the scenes and. Or maybe VIP guests and sponsors and other things, guests that they wouldn't be able to get. So they get a lot of content in one day, they get attraction to it and they get visibility in a event that is focused on health and wellness. So it's matched with their industry. So now they get all these listener shout outs, so their listener base growth. So you can see there's a great benefit to what I've done. And they sit back and this is software touch, because we follow up with them, we send them emails, we send them all these different information, we take care of the tech for them and we're there serving them for however many days the event is. And in that process, though, it invariably comes up and like, wow, you are really serving your podcasters well. Tell us more about your company. We didn't at once say, oh, now we've earned the right. Can we sell to you? We didn't do that. We didn't send out an email. We didn't do any of those things. It's a soft sell. And it happens because we're calling creating this touch point that they've never seen before. So these are other ways at which you can serve your competitors clients in a better way and attract them to you without truly stealing.

You know, Tracy, this next one is a tricky one, don't you think? We gotta touch on it. Number 11, JV, profit sharing.

And then I put the profit sharing on that one from my topic, because joint venture, which is jv, right? JV Partners. Jv. I think it's used a little to imply like a curated affiliate list. And that's not what we mean. We mean where you can truly profit share and being in partnership together. So in other words, our ideal partner might be a PR firm where we set up and help all of their clients get on podcasts, start a podcast, do all of those things, and then at the same time, they're a direct referral source, giving us clients all the time, but we're giving them value on the other side. So, like there's a great matchup on it. And when they bring me people who aren't on our platform. I find them some show to interview them. So we're doing a give back to their bigger client base as well. So there's a great partnership and our businesses are both growing from the relationship between the two of us.

So this next one I really like.

One second. Yeah, yeah. The one thing on the JV partner share is like there's one caution that I have for you on it. If they are white labeling you, meaning that they are not telling people that they are doing business with you, we have found over time that unless you're extremely confident that there's no way in the world that they're ever going to be able to do the services and things that you're doing. Like we have 60 employees worldwide, right. So we've got a huge team on graphics and blogging and audio editing and video editing. And they're not. Their agency is never going to develop it. So I'm pretty confident in our white label program. So they can charge their clients for us and send us all of that and the clients never know they're doing business with us. That's okay. But if you don't have something that's that unique, that's that special and that you're that confident in, be careful of a white labeling program. Because I've seen it go wrong so many times where they claim JV partnerships, they learn everything about what you do and then they cut you out of the loop in the process and they. And they take over your service in house. So be very careful about that when you're, when you're doing this, when you're public and you're out there and they've announced this partnership with you and then they start offering up inside services. Their clients start to look at that as being unethical. And so that can be, you know, that's your kind of protection point.

Okay, so vendor partners, I like this one a lot because there are probably going to be, if there are not already in your business, there are going to be other businesses that you do business with. They're a vendor to you or you're a vendor to them and you have a tight relationship. They know what you do, they value what you do or you value what they do. Either way it's a tighter relationship. And so we have this actually with a couple different companies. One in particular brings us a new customer, if not more than one every month. And while they're doing that because were the best source they've found to help meet their needs for their clients. At the same time we still give them that referral, credit incentive, and so, you know, it works out very well. So vendors is a great source because you don't have to teach them about what you do and why it's valuable. Right. It's not like striking some new relationship with somebody you think their clients might be in alignment with. With yours.

Yeah, yeah. Now, one of the other things, when you're Talking about affiliates, JVs, all of these things, one of the models that we operate on and have operated on in certain parts of our business, especially in one of my podcasts called Product Launch Hazards, which it comes out of our design business, our product business, I don't take any commission. I actually don't take any affiliate, any commissioner, anything like that. I ask them to put it into a lower cost to the clients and the people that I refer, and that can build tremendous goodwill. And it also helps them close their sales faster because they know the prices aren't jacked up to cover these affiliates and commission costs. They're more likely to be great referral partners. So that's a consideration to you, especially if it's unimportant or inconsequential to your core business today. Go ahead and try a model like that and see if you can do that. You can do that with vendors, with JV and with affiliates. It works great. You want to talk about testimonials? That's our number 14.

Boy, I'll tell you, testimonials are very valuable. They're social proof, you know. And I'll tell you, even when I get a lot of these warm leads, referrals from existing customers, you'll get some people that, that really greases the wheels. They say, hey, John trusts you. I'm gonna trust you. I value his opinion and can have a one call close for a new customer. But you get some people that, you know, it's certainly within their right and perfectly reasonable that they want to do a little more due diligence. And they want to know, hey, who do you work with? Who have you worked with that I could talk to? Can you show me some examples? And so we do on our website, certainly we post a lot of testimonials. But then reality is, is anybody ever going to post a testimonial on their website that is not a glowing one, that is not speaking well of you. So, you know, giving them some other people that they can call and talk to to say, hey, what's their experience been? Are they happy?

Yeah. And one of the ways to get really great testimonial that becomes more of a referral source is to make sure that you ask for it and do it. So we actually do this. We do an interview with some of our clients over various time at time points. You know, when there are certain. Far. Certain far enough into the process of podcasting so they have some experience and some benefit has been received by them, they see the return on investment. And so what we do is we interview them, and then at the end of the interview, we ask them if they. If it's okay with them if we ask them a few questions. We set up why, what value did they receive? Where are they seeing the biggest return on investment in it? And then we ask them for that testimonial at that moment. So now you've already planted in their head why it's of benefit to them. Now they will utilize their own words to express that when you ask them for that referral and when you ask for. Or you use this in gaining a referral. Right. So that's really good. You know, I threw this when I'm in number 15. Buy one, get one events like, or bring one with you.

Right.

Incentivizing clients to bring their friends along with them. So if you're doing an event program or you're doing something like that, or even if it's a virtual summit or whatever, but offering tickets for doing that or offering a refund if you both show up. Right. Like that kind of thing. The other thing is that Tom and I have personally found very valuable is the events and programs and who have offered us spousal and partner programs where they don't charge us extra. And, you know, that's a really valuable thing because especially when you have co hosts, you have other things like that, if you bring them both together, the decision makers are in the same room, you have a better shot at closing and better shot at that instead of the sort of delayed process. So it can be really valuable to you. Yeah. You want to talk about client appreciation, Tom?

Gosh, you know, really few things work as well as making your clients look good and, you know, giving them.

That's that attraction thing, too.

Social media, well, part of it's the reciprocity, but part of it is, you know, just really making sure that they feel appreciated. And when you do that, they often reciprocate. They want to, you know, positive reinforcement.

Who doesn't love that? So when they give you leads and referrals, make sure you appreciate them. Make sure you demonstrate it, even if it's just with a thank you. But if it can be with a shout out to your top refers or other things like that, people like that. The other thing is we got to make referring easy, right? You have to make it so simple. We don't have complicated reforms links to remember, we have just a simple, send Tom an email, send me an email, I'll send it to Tom. Like it's that simple.

Just make an introduction. As soon as we reach out to anybody, usually via email. Although some people prefer text, some people prefer Facebook messenger, some people for WhatsApp. I think I get them all over with all these different communication methods we have now. But as soon as I reach out they, somebody gets entered in our CRM and I note what the referral source is, who did it come from so that eventually when they close and it might be immediate, it might be a week from now, it might be a month from now or six months from now, eventually when it happens, we know where it came from and we give that appropriate referral credit.

And one of the things to do is, you know, the footer in your emails or the, you know, the bio pages on your site, make sure they have something that people can copy and paste and use as a referral. Why are you valuable? What are you bringing to the world? That way they can just simply copy and paste it and send it off to the referral partner. Because most people don't just like to go, Tom, meet John. John meet Tom. You know, like they don't like it to just be that way. Some people do that. I have gotten text like that, you know, make magic and but in this case, you know, if you just gotta give them, give them a little bit more tool that's already pre written, it helps to present your value that can help them go a long way in just making it simple and easy. And then they don't, they don't say I'm gonna make the referral. And it's weeks later by the time they finally get around to writing that email because they had to draft everything. So anyway, you can do that to make it easier is better. And that goes to adding continual value. Right, so let's go on to number 18.

Yeah. So, you know, I don't know that every company is like this because obviously we're not involved in every company, but we are not just looking to produce a podcast and take a fee and see you later. I mean really at the core of what we do is helping our clients marketing grow their businesses, their brands to get new leads and you know, podcasts stick around, keep doing it, everything we do is a process and a tool to help you do that. So providing them continued value, whether it's technically within the scope of work that you're doing for them or not, if they need some assistance, need, you know, some advice, or, you know, want to run something by us, hey, we're going to do it. You have more touch points, points with clients they're going to value even more, and then they're going to want to return and help provide you value.

Right. And you know, keep in mind, there's no giving that doesn't have some give back rolled in it. Right. It's a reciprocal process. And so in the benevolence here of us going out here and saying, look at all these ideas you have for growing your leads and referrals, don't get despondent about how things are in the world. Try some of these techniques. We're also reminding you we have a referral program and we would love referrals. Right. So that's where we're doing. When you're adding that value, you have opportunities to remind them without being pushy about it, to just remind them that you're there and you're giving value.

So next one's counterintuitive.

It is. But you know what? It works.

It's really important. You have to know when to fold. Right.

You have to know when to reflect.

And I'm not talking about your own business, but how to. How to fold on a customer and say, this may not be a really good fit.

Yeah. And we've had to do that. And we learned that in our product business, like the clients we felt compelled to take, or if we took them for the wrong reasons, they were the worst clients. And we ended up. It hurt our business in the long run. So we've always been very cautious of it. But refusing service to someone who's not a fit is a great way to say, you know what, I don't think you're ready for us yet. We're here for you when you want, but I just don't feel good about taking your money right now. That's a great way to do it. But one of the sides of it is you have to go back to the person who referred them. You do that really well.

Sure. Yeah. You got to let them know maybe why it didn't work out. I mean, look there.

Every situation with every prospect or every customer is not going to work out. You're in business long enough, you have enough, you know, customers, not everybody is going to be satisfied. And that's just an unfortunate reality, but making sure you show respect and value to the customer that referred them and, you know, offer some insight as to why it didn't quite work out with them. But, you know, we've parted on as friendly terms as we can and we wish them the best and all that. That's very good. Now, there's another aspect of refusing to service somebody when they want to buy what you have, they're convinced even before you ever talk to them. But yet there's something about their business or more likely their website that is not, in our case, that is going to hold them back from getting the full benefit of what we do. I will tell people I don't want you to buy my service. I really don't. Unfortunately, sometimes that makes sense.

That's the opposite effect.

But I want to be honest with them. Like, look, you know, if you're going to hire us for this service, I just want to let you know your website is on Kajabi or Shopify and, you know, some site that you're not going to get the SEO value and the organic traffic from Google search, because we just know from experience that's what's going to happen. So we're upfront about it. We're honest about that. Refusing service, people will respect you more and still refer people, other people that are a fit.

Right. And so we talked a lot about, like, that benevolence, this I'm giving out, I'm serving my community. And this goes to the integrity point. And both of those things are connected, critical factors in building trust, which is how you close through and bring those referrals and how you create a greater community in general. So that's the one we're going to talk about. Community growth matters number 20. And, you know, if clients are hesitant to refer because they think they're going to lose focus and attention, you know, we've heard this early on. You're like, yeah, I mean, I have a, I have a ghostwriter that I've used on and off over the years and she's shocked that I refer her all the time. And she said, my clients always say, first off, they don't want to admit that they do business with me, and second, they don't want to hoard them. They want to hoard you. Right. So that no one else gets you. And I say, no, I don't think that's the way I think that I, you know, I do it the opposite. And so how can you convince them and remind them that there are additional benefits? So when she becomes a better.

More stable and in business and have steady business, because I can't give her it every single day. Right. And she's a more stable ghostwriter for a bunch of different companies. Her costs go down with me, her services go up, and we all win in that process. So turning that sort of negative where they're saying, yeah, I don't want to share you into a positive of, look what I'll be able to do with you when you help us grow this platform together. And that, I think is really a valuable way to flip that around and get the referrals flowing when you're in an early stage. And then let's talk about our very last one. A very last one on the list is reconnecting with your existing clients. Right. Like, they're still a good. They're not just a referral partner, but they may also have some things that they don't know that you now have. It's been a while. So we like to consistently reach out to our. To our older clients. Not our older clients, but the ones who've been with us the longest, to serve them, to audit them, to reconnect them, to thank them. It's an opportunity also, though, to remind them of the new services and value. Because, you know, the thing is, when you've done business for, with people for a while, you start to not pay attention to the emails. So you think you may have told everybody, like in our examples, like, we've got a web maintenance program, we've got new video editing. How many times do we go, wait, you guys are doing that on video and audiograms now? Like, how did we not get that through to you? But it happens every day. And someone's like, well, I can stop paying a third party. I can just do it with you. Yes. Okay, great. So new business can come from that and then new types of referrals. Because now we're getting more videocasters than we were getting podcasters. So when your business model changes, it's time to touch base with that community.

Well, I think it's just a good lesson in general to stay in touch with your clients and foster a community and cross pollinating all of them. You know, in a, you know, people see each other here either live on Facebook or see each other live in, you know, webinar. You know, there's a lot of potential there. Yeah.

Okay.

All right.

Okay. So we got through our 21. Our 21 different things.

I didn't think we were gonna get through it in under an hour.

We did. And we've got five minutes to spare. So I want to go over. You got referrals, now what? Right? And so that's the big thing. So this is what I see happen so often. You get referrals and people don't follow up promptly in that look, things happen and like they happen to send the referral on Saturday and Sunday and you're away at your family's, you know, at a family wedding and you didn't get it. Okay. But soon as you do get back, you respond quickly, you thank them politely, and you make the client who referred them, you know, look good and like it was not on anything reflection on them. Right. You take all that on yourself if you didn't reach out properly and you turn it into a positive and you make sure that you do this in a prompt and timely manner. And so what I like to do is just if I see referrals come through, and I don't usually like, do a lot of email on, let's say a Sunday or something when I'm with the kids, but I might go through if I see a referral, especially from a client I know or someone in my network who has value to me, I will respond immediately and say, oh, thank you so much for the referral. I will get back to you Monday morning with all of my links and I look forward to talking with you. And just leave it at that short sweet thing where I can't really fully reply, but I can really give them at least that. And so you do that really well. Tom, you're really great at your follow up and prompt because you don't want to make our clients who are referring and putting themselves on the line for us look bad. And also, lack of prompt response is not a sign of good service either.

And unfortunately, I mean, well, here's the good news that I want to share with you is, I mean, on a daily basis, I will get four or five referrals literally on a daily basis and even on the weekends. Today before we went live, I already had four.

Yeah, when I sent you in text.

One you sent me in text. And I got three others in emails that I've responded to. All of them except the one in text, because it was literally, you know.

Two seconds before we got on here.

We're going live here and I didn't have time to do a proper job of it. It kills me if I let a referral go too long before I respond or I, you know, hopefully not. But if I were to ever forget one or miss One or if I forget to check my junk email folder, I've had to get really good about checking that daily because once in a while my email system, somebody sends a referral with a different email address copied on it and somehow the system thinks it might be junk mail. You got to stay on top of all these things and I'm not going to presume what's going to work for everybody because organizational logistics are different for everybody and what works for them. But you've got to have a way to stay on top of these referrals, hopefully have a CRM and a way of making sure you follow up promptly. It's huge. It's critical to business. We would not be where we are today without not only referrals, but prompt follow up. And I mean, like the same day.

Yeah, you know, Tom, talk a little bit about the languaging and messaging. Just real quick about making it not about you, but about them.

I really cringe when I get these. And a lot of times they're cold calls. Sometimes it might be a company. I've done business before and I get these sales emails that are worded in a way that makes it sound like this company knows what I need in my business.

And you haven't even had a call.

How do you know what I need? You never even talk to me. I get really put off by those. And I usually immediately delete those emails. It's not worth my time. But when I get a message that's more empathetic about what I need, or when I'm sending a message to a new person, I'm usually saying, hey, somebody's thinking about starting a podcast. I would love to learn about the message you want to bring to, to the world. Or I would love to learn about your goals for your business as it relates to podcasting and getting your message out.

We don't say we have all these services and look, here they are and.

We don't say anything. I say, you know, and I and would love to share how we can support you, but hear about that, not say share what we can sell you or share, you know, what you need. It was like a share how we can provide you support. So you really want the language to be about them and not about you. That's, that's in the simplest sense, that's. It's huge.

And then the one last thing I want to mention is when you're on the other side of the referral. So in other words, I get authors, I get people out there who ask me to refer them to top podcasters to be guests on their show. So I will tap into my network because our relationship is valuable, maybe the PR firm relationship is valuable. And I will go in there and this has happened to me multiple times with some really big authors and they will go out there and I'll introduce them to the, to the host of a show and I make that behind the scenes introduction that's not that easy to make. And then crickets. The author doesn't tap on that. When the, when the, when the host says, here's my link book on my calendar or let's have a pre call, Nothing. No response. So when you are in that process of referral, if it's not right for you or right for you at that moment and the person who made the referral jumped the gun, say so right there. It will go along the way to three months later when you touch base with me and you ask to now be on my show. I'm gonna say yes because you didn't blow me off the first time. Right. So thinking about how you act on the other side of the referral is really important too in this whole process. So. Well, we're out of time here. I wanted to keep it to an hour. We just got in under the wire and you know, I hope you really have gotten some broad look at an advanced referral thinking. And really, you know, this can be such a core growth process. And right now, when it's so hard to market, when it's so hard to network, when it's so hard to be out there, these referrals can really work to your benefit to keep your business growing and going so critical.

So we just, you know, I'm glad we did this masterclass first, Tracy, because it's so fundamental to our business. We have a lot of experience in it. If you have any questions, you know, reach out to us on social media, in the Brandcasters group or @feedyourbrand.

And, you know, we'll be happy to answer any questions. But for now, until the next masterclass.

Right. The next masterclass coming up is going to be on POD to publish to audiobooks, and we're going to talk about that whole process for those aspiring and existing authors out there. So that one's coming up next.

Awesome. Okay. Well, hey, thanks so much, everybody. We'll talk to you next time.

Sa.