Mastering Referrals to Gain Clients

You have an extensive network of connections, and you are a professional in your knowledge business providing a quality experience, but getting clients is still a struggle. Referrals are essentially a vote of confidence, and including them in your marketing strategy can make generating leads and growing your business 70% easier.

Thommy has been in the top 2% of all network marketers, having built an organization of over 100 people. In 2014, he built a dropshipping business from scratch to over $750k in revenue on Amazon in less than 2 years. With a passion for training and coaching, he shifted his focus to helping others build a referral business that feeds their family and soul. He shares his story and secrets on leveraging relationship building and master referrals to gain clients and grow your business. You can tune in for the full podcast episode here.

Start by asking people how you can help them

A lot of coaches create a list of people to call and ask for something: a referral or to buy a course. This is not an effective way to start a relationship that will help grow your business. You should shift this focus, and instead, call and ask people how you can help them. This strategy is presented in Michael J. Maher’s book, The seven levels of communication: go from relationships to referral and it is how Thommy overcame his impasse moment. This book is special because it combines success with significance and the strategies presented are rooted in love, generosity, and appreciation. While many coaches started their businesses with the support of people who personally know them, this number of people is limited. You can’t build your business solely relying on them. So how can you overcome this challenge? By learning the skill of meeting new people and developing those relationships. If learning by reading is your thing, you can find an exclusive guide into the best coaching books here.

Check the balance of the Emotional Bank Account

We can look at relationships through Stephen Covey’s emotional bank account model. Relationships have 2 sides, giving and taking, and you should always check the balance: have I deposited enough into the emotional bank account that earns me the right to ask for something?

When you make that list of contacts and call them to ask for something, you’re asking for a withdrawal without considering the relationship balance. How well do you know these people? What kind of relationship do you have? What is the emotional bank account balance?

Take a look at the relationship scale to understand where your relationships stand and where you need to get them.

The relationship scale

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The scale measures the relationship from the moment you meet the other person till the referral. This is how you should read it:

• Zone 1 to 3 is where you don’t want to continue the relationship

• The 4-6 zone is like the friend zone in dating. Your connections might want to hang out with you, they like you, they might even want to refer you, but they don’t know how because you’re not intentional and not communicating this. You don’t want to be stuck in the friend zone.

• 7 is the client zone. Great! You managed to turn your connection into a client. Unfortunately, this is where most people go wrong, thinking this is the point where the relationship is ending. Instead, you have to push further and get them into the referral zone.

• 8-10 is the referral zone. This is where you should be.

You should always keep the goal of the relationship in mind: you want to get referrals. If they become a client, that’s great! But if they are not a client and you keep on giving, there will naturally come a point when they are going to ask you: How can I help? And here you ask for referrals. And then you show your appreciation for those referrals, and guess what? You get more referrals. You’re at level 8 on the relationship-building scale. Now you continue to appreciate and develop that relationship.

Make sure you are appreciating and depositing enough into the emotional bank account before asking to make a withdrawal.

Proactively communicate and focus on quality, not quantity

There are two mistakes that people keep on making when trying to boost their business: not proactively communicating and focusing on quantity rather than quality. Firstly, instead of directly pounding people with information through emails, try being proactive and telling them before that you are going to send them an invitation to an event or whatever you are planning and that they are going to receive that invitation through email. This will bring them closer to you.

Secondly, many people make the mistake of focusing on quantity, on adding more people daily to their database, rather than on building a relationship. You should focus on having a poll of people who like and trust you and thus, will refer you. These people are aligned with your beliefs, and they will show their trust by referring you. A way to personalize your Facebook messages or cold emails to build that relationship is by using Loom videos.

Staying intentional and purposeful when growing

If you have an audience of 8,000 members in a Facebook group, you can’t write 8,000 different personalized messages. Instead, you should filter your audience based on who also wants to be in communication with you, and who is more engaged with you. Let’s say you organize a mastermind event and 50 people show up. This is your opportunity to filter your audience and share the hand-written notes with the people present at the event. You should analyze where it makes the most sense to share handwritten notes based on whether people are in your influential zone yet or not. If want to learn how to build a Facebook community to grow your business, check out this free guide.

Communicate how you are helping people

One reason coaches don’t get referrals is that people don’t know what to refer them for. Are you helping people grow their skills? What kind of skills? How? You have to communicate this information clearly. An interesting parallel to follow here is between realtors and coaches and this is what the book The seven levels of communication: go from relationships to referral by Michael J. Maher is doing. The most significant difference between coaches and realtors implementing these tactics is the ease to understand what services they provide and what people need to refer you for. The book follows the story of America’s most referred real estate agent, so, naturally, most of the tribe consists of realtors. But when you look at the tactics, none are realtor specific. The difference stems from the fact that the realtor can help you buy, sell or invest, while coaches have many ways to help people, so they need to do more work to communicate what they do and how people should refer them. And if people don’t know how to refer you, they are less likely to buy from you. You need to create clarity and convey a consistent message: this is how I help people, and this is how to refer me. Discover more about how to build your high-ticket coaching offer here.

To become an expert at getting clients through referrals, stay tuned for the second part of the interview with Thommy; it’s full of tips & tricks. Until then, keep practicing what you learned today!🤘

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