Why Referrals Are Gold, But Not Enough – Warming Up Your Leads Like a Pro

Hello and welcome back to the You Can Podcast. I'm your host Sarah Jolly Jarvis and welcome to episode 34.
So what we're going to do this week is we're going to be talking around why referrals are that best kind of lead, why you want referrals in your business but why you shouldn't rely on them. I know I don't tell you if something's great and then I'm going to tell you that not to rely on them totally but we're going to be talking about how to create a warm lead experience for non-referral leads so how are we going to warm up those leads to help people to get to the point where they feel confident to buy from you and that's what this thing is all about this is what this process is all about it's helping people to get to a point what you want to do really is have somebody so warmed up so confident that when you get onto a call with them or when they head onto your landing page whatever way it is that they buy from you that person is as convinced as a referral that is the optimum that's what you're really wanting to achieve okay and referrals are the very best type of a lead that you're going to get.
And the

reason for that is, is that they tend to come from people who you know, who you like, who get on with

well, who you might've worked with before. And so they are normally of a similar type of personality,

a similar approach, or at least they get on with that individual. And so they are not just, just some some random they are more likely to be somebody who you're going to work well with they're also going to be way more informed and way more confident because they have been told by somebody they trust they know like and trust that you are a good option and that is why these people come to you already so pre-sold so confident so interested because they have got that connection with you and that person that they rate and whose opinion they care about has told them that you are good so that is why you know they are those sorts of leads that you'd really like to just just make multiple or just clone them all but you can't okay so what you need to do is you can't be sat there waiting for past clients people you know from networking people you know from online contacts that you have within business um you know your auntie joe you can't be just waiting for them to find somebody to know somebody to send in your in your direction.
You need to be a little bit more proactive than that. I speak to people regularly who have relied purely on referrals and the challenges is right.
And I totally get it is when you've got loads of referrals and people are coming to you and it's also easy, it's great. And it keeps you busy.
And when you're busy, you're not thinking, you know, where's my next lead going to come from? Because you're busy serving and supporting and delivering for the leads that you've already got. The problem comes as if that resource dries up, somebody retires, somebody moves on, somebody forgets about you, somebody uses somebody else as a referral partner, or they start offering that service themselves because they see how many people they send your way.
And there is a little bit of a trek on that, but I will, I i will talk to you about in a minute but you know at the end of the day it's the power of trust they already trust that person and so therefore they already trust you and that person's vouched for you it's an easier conversion it makes you feel amazing at sales i spoke to a salesperson um about a year and a half ago now and they were um i was i was seeing if they would be a suitable candidate to to work with me and to support me um within my um it was at the time when I had a sales team I was working with a sales team and they were saying to me yeah you know it's great because this individual that the leads come and they come through her Facebook group and they're already really switched on and I'm like well, well, actually, then you're not much of a salesperson. I didn't actually say this to this person.
Obviously, I was very polite and I nodded lots. But that individual isn't actually having to sell very much.
They're not having to sell very hard or use their sales skills very much because they're almost like an order taker. And that's the thing is, is the more convinced they are, then the less convincing they need.
And therefore, therefore the sale is faster it's easier it's less reliant on your sales skills so for those individuals that i've worked with and they said to me sarah i'm terrible at sales um most of the people actually they can really switch it around you can change your mindset on it you can upskill yourself and you can actually become a much better salesperson but what can make you feel even more confident what can make your sales experience better for both you and that individual is that they already come to you pretty convinced that you are the right option. As I said before, the downside of this is it's passive.
You can't control it. It's unpredictable.
You don't know how many you'll get and when. And if you only rely on those referrals, then your growth, your business growth is out of your hands.
You are not in control. And if you're anything like me and you like to be in control, you like to feel like you know what's going on, you like to be in control within your own business, then that is a not a nice feeling to, a position to be in, not a nice feeling to have.
So how do you warm a lead up like a referral? Well, the goal here is to make cold leads feel like a referral for you and for the sales sales process okay so you nurture them with touch points okay one interaction just is not enough you know what i sent them an email they saw my post they liked it why aren't they buying from me if you think about your own buying habits if you look at even the bigger organizations when they retarget you through your facebook feed after you've been on their website they they understand people understand that it takes more than one interaction with you as a business to decide that you know it's a good idea to work with you so they're going to need lots of touch points now there is some evidence out there that they need in excess now of 18 plus touch points in order to be in a position where they think you know what this seems to be the right thing for me and that's the thing is it's not just it's not just potentially seeing your brand it's actually seeing the information it's you reiterating stuff that is an awful lot of touch points particularly if you're for example relying purely on social media you know haven't got an email list you're not emailing individuals who've come into your world you're only sending posts now if you look at your reach it is very easy to see why it takes so many months for some people to get in a position and sometimes years to be in a position that they want to buy from you and kind of moving on from that not all touch points are equal for example like an in-person meeting is the strongest I went out today and saw a potential client and sitting down with somebody understanding their workspace understanding their business it business, it has so much more power. You know, what you are saying, you are saying to their face directly, not through a screen, not through anything else, but actually to that individual.
You know, that builds real rapport. It's human to human contact.
That's what is, you know, we're used to, that's what has been the traditional way of doing business and having, um, and conversing with people. But that isn't always possible.
So, you know, it's kind of stepping down from that. You've got the fact that, well, actually in a zoom meeting where that person sees your face, they build up more rapport.
Um, and therefore you build up more trust and you can rely on that person a little bit more. I've got a client who their clients, their potential, keep ghosting on them.
So they'll have a call, but it's a phone call. And so that person isn't building up that rapport.
You're not getting that face to face. They're not showing their face.
They're faceless. And so, you know, if you think about how people behave on the internet when they haven't got a face, when they've got a picture of a squirrel, for example, not that I've been trolled at all by somebody who had a picture of a squirrel as their profile picture um but you know they hide behind that because they haven't you haven't seen their face they haven't shown up as their full selves it's been a conversation over a phone they're less identifiable between juggling client meetings managing your website keeping up to date with everyday tasks who has time to stress about website security well Kinsta, they take care of the technical stuff so you can focus on what you do best, which is probably not website security.
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It means less. You mean less to them.
And so they feel able to do it. Messenger conversations, they build up relationships.
It's one-on-one conversation. You're actually chatting to that individual.
You're giving them airtime. You're talking to them.'re talking to them you're better understanding them you're asking questions so like then stepping down from that it's like social media posts they help with awareness they might think oh you know what what this person's saying here really resonates with me you can obviously get it out in front of way more people but it's not as valuable to that individual as a conversation which i'm sure you can appreciate those emails they nurture trust and they nurture trust over time but they're there around about there with a social media post possibly a little bit more depending on what you put in it it could feel a little bit more personalized uh but doesn't have social proof but it's again it can be lost in the noise of an inbox how often are you getting emails from people like this there's a person person that I've been on their email list now for a couple of years and I've really rated them.
But I've noticed recently, I've been like, where are their emails? And they're just getting lost in my inbox. And so, you know, you are easily lost in the noise of an inbox.
You're easily lost on a platform like social media. And equally with something like social media, yes, you can absolutely be warming people up.
But if you aren't consistent with who you are, if you're not showing up as your genuine, authentic self, then you can mess up. You can say something that is incongruent with the person that you are trying to be online.
And then that can damage their trust in you, their belief in you. And so that is worth bearing in mind.
That's a whole new episode and a whole additional episode on its own. But you know, that is worth bearing in mind.
What you want to have really is a mix of approaches. You can't be just relying on social media because that can, you know, somebody's, somebody's platforms can just, they can go down, they can, the algorithm can be messed around with, they can set up new rules.
Okay. So it's not enough to just be posting with your content, you want to have those referrals as well.
Okay, but you want that mixture, I was saying to somebody today, you actually want referrals, you want social media being proactive, you also want to be actually actively outreaching and engaging these people with DM conversations, conversations networking emails etc so that you've got a an entire mix um you know i'm i think if the internet went down we'd have bigger problems than you know oh wait a minute i can't find my leads right now um and you know everyone will be changing the way that they behave in the same way that when we were all made to stay at home during lockdown um the UK you know people found new ways to communicate and the use of Zoom was like crazy and I've never had to explain to somebody ever since then how to get onto Zoom and so you know things change behaviors can change you don't want to be doing this as like oh well you know something happened to the internet something happened to the internet then you know that'd be quite catastrophic in itself and the impact would be far-reaching um but it is the fact that you aren't just playing on somebody's platform um if you only relied on a particular for example networking group to go and get your leads from you're reliant on that networking group continuing to keep going to continuing to add value to people so those people keep showing up and it's the same with the platforms things come and go some things have longer life cycles than others um but you know the popularity does does peak and trough so you know it is worth bearing in mind that when you are using social media platforms you are playing to somebody else's rules um and you should always be working to build your own resources to build your own email list not only as a touch point, but also as a way of firming up your business so that if something was to happen and you weren't able to get onto that platform anymore or that platform changed, you still have a way of contacting those individuals. Again, I could talk in depth around this and some of the scenarios that people have found themselves in, but hedging your bets is the way forward forward and that is what we're looking at doing by balancing referrals with that online presence with that online with the outreach whether that outreach is online or in person okay you want that strong online presence the content the social proof the authority you want google my business if you can so that you can show where your um your your feedback and and everything else are there, your reviews are there.
You can set up an outreach process with personalized messages, building connections, following them up, whether that's through a platform or via email or by the phone. Outreach is still a very, very effective tool and one that's overlooked by most people because it's not something that they enjoy or they're struggling to understand how to navigate it if that is you then please do get in touch and I can talk you through it in a little bit more detail and see if it's the right thing for your business you also want to look at in-person networking now not all networking events are worth your time they're not all made equal but the right ones can create

valuable opportunities and contacts and that's the thing is if you find yourself sat at home if you find yourself not creating a community online where you get to know other business owners if you find yourself more isolated you want to get out there you want to meet people locally uh you know that's something that i've taken on board and done recently and thoroughly enjoyed and it is that opportunity to just touch touch base and be in the same room as other people who are running their own business so that is well worth um thinking around i tend to have a rule that um i only will entertain breakfast meetings if people are doing lunches and whole afternoons you've got to wonder how busy that business is and so I tend to go for the breakfast ones where people they get up they get on it they do the breakfast and then they go off and they do their day's work so that is just my take on it but that has for me that has as a rule of thumb has worked really really well so just to kind of recap on all this referrals they are amazing but you can't just rely on them alone if you want to be growing your business or you want to know that you have a consistent pipeline of leads coming through you want to warm up leads through strategic touch points so that they're getting those touch points at the right time with the right information so that you can take control by building that online presence and a process which means that you can turn it on you know what I can do a bit more outreach I can get some more clients I can step off that outreach I can just look after my referral partners I can just do the social media presence and then when I need more clients again I can put in that outreach and that to me is what I tend to do with a lot of clients is use it as a bit of a boost and so that's worth taking um you know thinking about um implementing into your business so if you're not doing any of these things right now then pick one proactive so something that is actively getting you out there more getting in front of more people and you try that strategy this week use that strategy this week and see how it goes some of these strategies do take time to come to fruition so it is worth bearing in mind that you know you're not going to just I know I've I've been um posting for a week and I haven't got any clients yet it does take time but it will happen so that's it for me this week I hope you have enjoyed this episode guys if you have then please share it with somebody who needs to hear it will happen. So that's it for me this week.
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next week. Bye for now.