Episode 36: Mastering Referrals: Retaining Clients, Cultivating New Referrals, and Building a Referable Business with Stacey Brown Randall
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Alyssa Lang interviews Stacey Brown Randall, the Owner and Founder of Building a Referable Business. In this episode Stacey Brown Randall shares her methodologies on how she teaches her clients to create relationships that turn into referral partnerships, without feeling icky.
In this episode you’ll hear:
How to create a systems of referrals to help you build your business
How to cultivate long term relationships with clients and others to help bring in referrals
Her recommendation of different phases a client is taken throughout the working relationship
How to level up your client experience to make it a no brainer for clients to refer you
Resources mentioned in this episode:
⚙️ Bonjoro
📚 Generating Business Referrals Without Asking by Stacey Brown Randall
🎙 Roadmap to Referrals Podcast
💻 Building a Referable Business Course
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Getting referrals to your business WITHOUT asking for them is pretty much the dream, right? But it also seems kind of impossible if you haven’t already experienced it at some point in your business ownership journey.
The best way to get referrals isn’t actually to ask for them – it’s cultivating relationships that make people want to refer you automatically.
Intrigued? I’ve got the whole scoop on how building a strong referral-based business works in the interview I just did with Stacey Brown Randall, owner of Building a Referable Business!
In it, she explains:
How to get referrals without feeling icky about it
Why referrals should never be part of your marketing strategy
How to automate AND personalize your client touch points for stronger relationships
And a bunch more golden nuggets are tucked in along the way, so let’s get into it!
How To Get More Referrals in Your Business
When Stacey started her first business, it was going well until it totally burned her out and she decided to shut down. Because even though she was getting clients and making money, she always felt like she was chasing down that next client, and the next, and the next.
Once she decided to start a second business, she was intentional about her client processes and client experience — and ended up getting 112 organic referrals within her first year! Then, she knew she could create strategies from this method of landing new clients and pivoted her business to solely focus on referral-based businesses.
One thing to keep in mind that Stacey’s super passionate about: Referrals come from cultivating relationships. If you put energy into genuinely connecting with people, they’ll send you referrals without being asked or expecting anything in return.
You don’t have to set up an affiliate program for your services, you don’t have to bribe people, and you don’t have to send out incentives to share with their network. All you have to do is ask yourself:
What do I do for people who already refer me to others?
What do I do to help them get more referrals?
What do I do to cultivate relationships with people who could refer me?
Do I have a referable client experience/business?
And once you have your answers, you can use that information to create a strategy that strengthens the relationships you have with your clients. Or, you know, you could just work with Stacey and use her courses and coaching to make the whole process even easier!
Why Referrals Aren’t the Same as Marketing
Stacey makes it VERY clear in her interview that marketing and getting referrals are two totally different things. And there’s actually a third piece of the puzzle: Prospecting!
When you shift your mindset to understand that prospecting, marketing, and referrals are all independent from one another, everything makes so much more sense. Because then you aren’t relying on one source for new business and you have two other legs to stand on just in case one goes quiet.
The 3 Stages of a Client Journey
When you sign a new client, they’ll typically go through 3 stages:
New (the length of this phase might vary depending on your business)
Active (once they’re in and doing the things)
Alumni (when they’re done working with you)
In our industry, we’d love to keep every client in the Active stage forever, right? On the chance you’ll have to off-board someone, there’s still ways to maintain that relationship so they might refer you in the future.
But if we focus on the New and Active stages, there’s plenty of ways to keep that connection with your clients so they feel EXCITED to tell other business owners about working with you! Stacey says to start small and just get into the habit of sending out a personalized gift once per year.
Then, you can get more creative by reaching out in different ways to keep in contact outside of the normal monthly, “Here’s your Profit + Loss report”. Always keep in mind how someone might feel when you reach out to them and let that guide what you choose to do.
How can you make your touchpoints memorable? How can you make them easy to execute? How can you make them fun for both sides?
How To Automate Without Losing Personal Touch
A LOT of people worry about automating too many tasks because they think they’ll lose the personal touch you need to make genuine connections. But that’s simply not true!
Stacey’s approach is really cool because she loves batching and automating where she can, and infusing those things with personalization. For example, if you want to write a hand-written card to your new clients to welcome them, you can simply write the message on 10 cards at once and put the client name on them as needed!
The message is still genuine, but the personalization piece comes in later so you don’t get distracted or put it off until it’s too late. I LOVE using Bonjoro for this reason — because I can create quick, personalized videos for new clients and prospects at a moment’s notice.
The connection is super authentic, but the task isn’t an inconvenience. Looking for ways to sprinkle those types of things into your client experience is an awesome way to stay top of mind and get people excited to talk about you without actually asking them to.
After having this conversation with Stacey, I realized that getting referrals from existing clients is actually super simple! But without intention and strategy behind it, the process feels like a lot of extra work — which no one has time for. Her ideas about keeping connections with clients and using behavioral science to create systems around client relationships were mind-blowing and soooo interesting.
In my current bookkeeping and consulting firm, I’m constantly trying to under-promise and over-deliver. And that’s been working well to help me get client referrals up to this point, but I absolutely loved her perspective on how to have a system behind referrals instead of just hoping they show up!
About our guest:
Stacey Brown Randall is the multiple award-winning author of Generating Business Referrals Without Asking, host of the Roadmap to Referrals podcast and national speaker. Stacey teaches business owners how to generate referrals naturally… without manipulating, incentivizing or even asking. She has been featured in national publications like Entrepreneur magazine, Investor Business Daily, Forbes, and more.
She received her Master’s in Organizational Communication and is married with three kids.
Connect with Stacey Brown Randall:
Follow her on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/staceybrownrandall/
Connect with her on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/staceybrandall/
Send her an email: stacey@staceybrownrandall.com
Check out her website: https://www.staceybrownrandall.com/
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