Get More Referrals Challenge: Choose a Stay in Touch Channel (Day 5 of 5)

You're driving the word of mouth engine, you're not letting it drive you.

Welcome to our five day Get More Referrals Challenge. Over the next five days, we're talking concrete actions you can take to drive more and better referrals for your business.

Want to get this challenge in your inbox? Head over to lowenergyleads.com/challenge to get on the list. 

It's day five of our Get More Referrals challenge, and today we're choosing a stay in touch channel.

As we talked about yesterday, you're going to send a one-time referral ask this week, but people might not have referrals for you right now. They might not know anyone who's in buy mode for what you're doing. They might not have an immediate introduction that they can make.

That's okay, and it's pretty common. Some folks might, and it's always worth making that ask because if they do have someone you want that referral and other folks might not, and that's why you need a stay in touch mechanism with your referral sources.

You want to stay in touch with them throughout the year so they're up to date on the fact that you have availability on who you're working with, what you're doing, and the fact that they can refer work your way. 

Now, the default way that many of us stay in touch with Referral Partners is through our email list. You can create an email segment for your referral sources for supporters, maybe for clients that have indicated they're interested in referring work your way or clients who are already on that referral source list.

You can create a segment and you might communicate with them differently than you would send your normal newsletter or your client communications. You're going to do more behind the scenes content for them. You're going to make more specific asks about referrals, maybe let them know about your availability. Here's how many spots I have coming up for Q2.

Email is certainly one way that you can stay in touch with referral sources. Other ways I've seen people stay in touch are through events, communities, and social media.

I've mentioned before on the show that I worked for an agency that did quarterly events. That event worked on multiple levels in their business, both for clients and for referral partners. If you're interested in hosting events, if that sounds fun, events can be a great way to keep up with these people and to stay top of mind with them and to assess is there still a good fit? Is there still a good relationship here? Are we moving in the same direction?

Community is probably most relevant if you have a lot of referral sources. So if you're moving more towards an affiliate model, you've got a lot going on. Maybe you're selling themes or digital products and you want a lot of referral partners, that's when a community might make sense. What people do with communities is things like drop templates, swipe copy, answer questions, empower their referral partners. So that's not going to be relevant for every business, and again, it has to be something that you're excited about. Like, yes, I'd love to run a community of my referral partners, if that sounds like you. Community might be your stay in touch channel.

And the last one that I can think of is social media. Social media is also pretty baseline. If you're already on social, you can keep up with your referral partners there. Now, I think the downside to this is that if your referral partners don't engage with your content because it's not that relevant to them, even though they know your buyers, you might sort of fade from their feed and we don't want that. We want you to stay top of mind for them. So I think social is the least strategic play of the bunch. Unless you do some kind of group chat in social, like a private DM conversation, you're able to put them in your close friends on Instagram or there's more control that you have. 

You're sort of siphoning off a smaller group within your social network. So these are the four that I can think of. Email events, communities and social media, but there might be others. What are some ways that you can stay in touch with your referral sources? You're round.

Let's talk about the cadence in which you are staying in touch. The more frequently the better, but I think a good starting pace is quarterly. Can you commit to sending a quarterly stay in touch message to your referral sources?

So I had you send on day four and ask via email if you want to continue in this vein, you can send three more emails this year, once a quarter, a reminder of what you're doing, who it's for, and a success story or a recent win. That's a formula you can use and you can run with it right away. 

If you're like, Lex, I'm not going to do that, or I hate email, or I'm not sure this sounds fun or like me, then I would invite you to consider what's the right pace for you and what is that channel. If you'd rather show up on a social media channel, then I would encourage you to put in your calendar when you are going to do something for those referral partners on your social media, are you going to invite them into a specific chat?

Are you going to do a live stream that's really targeted at them? Are you going to DM them once a quarter, a couple times a year? How are you going to leverage that channel to stay in touch specifically with your referral partners? Same question for communities or if you're going to do events, how are you going to weave that through the calendar for your business this year so that you stay in touch with those referral sources? 

Now, I want to point out here that this is just an opportunity for you in your business.

If you're like, Lex, I've been getting lots of referrals and I don't really need to work this hard, then great, a little goes a long way. And maybe just having that copied it forward and that list of referral sources is sufficient for you. But when you stay in touch with people who send work your way, when you stay in touch with those, especially those powerhouse referral sources where you're getting more than one lead, those really pay off.

You get better leads, you get more control over your leads. You get better fit clients. You're driving the word of mouth engine. You're not letting it drive you.

So that's our five day get more referrals challenge. Let's recap.
Day one, list your sources.
Day two, share a success story. 
Day three, have a one step ask.
Day four, send your ask out.
And day five, choose a stay in touch channel.

Thanks for tuning in to the Get More Referrals challenge. If you want more info on how to take these action steps, make sure to sign up for the challenge list lowenergyleads.com/challenge.

If you're looking to move even faster with referrals, check out my Rev Your Referrals System in my Gumroad store. It's not a course, it's a set of tools that you can put in place right away to drive more referrals. It's a system that includes trackers and templates. You have two choices. You can do it by yourself or you can do it with my help. Both are available now with a discounted pre-order with delivery coming in January. Find more info in the show notes.

That's it for the Get More Referrals Challenge. We'll be back next week with predictions for marketing your business in 2024. Until next time, remember, you miss a hundred percent of the referrals you don't ask for.