Get More Referrals Challenge: List Your Sources (Day 1 of 5)

What's great about working with professionals is that they have more than one lead for you. So while a client might just come across one referral for you, maybe once a year, a professional, someone else who's operating a business, they can send you more than one lead.

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 is day one of the Get More Referrals challenge, and what we're going to do today is list your sources. A source is anywhere that a referral can come from, not just your clients. This can include business partners, collaborators. This can include supporters of your business, fans of your work, neighbors, friends and family.

I want you to think about your referral sources as anyone in your network who has a connection to your buyers? Who is networking with your buyers? Who is spending time with them? Are there people that are vectors to your buyers? In my case, I find other professionals are my best referral source because they're networking with my buyers and they're talking with them about their needs, and they can surface that buy ready moment. They know when that person is hurting for clients, when they're hurting for marketing support, and that's when they can direct them to me. 

What's great about working with professionals is that they have more than one lead for you. So while a client might just come across one referral for you, maybe once a year, a professional, someone else who's operating a business, they can send you more than one lead.

But for your action today, what I want you to do is start or revisit your list of referral sources.

I want you to begin with the last 10 people who sent referrals your way. I want you to list their name, their contact info, the kind of referrals they sent you, whether or not those closed, and any notes that you have about how those referrals came about. If you've never had any referrals, then you're going to skip to this next step.

The next thing I want you to do is list 10 people you think could send you referrals. 

So these are people who have connections to your buyers. They are people who are in the industry that you're interested in working with. They are people that are in the location you're interested in working with. They are people that are connected to and know your buyers.

If you do not have people who immediately come to mind, I want to encourage you to cruise your LinkedIn. Look at your connections. Go back through those college classmates, those past colleagues, see if anyone in there is connected to the industry, the space, the job titles, the kinds of people that you work with in your business. Go through your email inbox, who has sent you an email recently.

Who have you been corresponding with? Who's in your contact list? In your Gmail? Go through your text messages. Think about events you've gone to recently. 

Think about business cards that are piled up on your desk. Who could be those people who will send you referrals? They are out there. They are people that are connected to your buyers. They are people that are interested in connecting with others. They are power networkers. They are people that are plugged in. If you're struggling with this task, I want to encourage you to network from the inside out. So another approach you can take here is thinking about someone you are close to you do connect with often and thinking about their network.

Who might they be able to introduce you to? If you're talking to someone on a weekly or monthly basis, it's likely that they will do you a favor. So if you happen to know that that person is connected to an industry you're interested in working with or a particular kind of buyer, you can make those asks and see if you can get to a referral source in your second degree network. 

I always recommend that you work from that area of banked trust so that you're not just shaking hands and meeting people for the first time and then immediately asking for a favor.

When it comes to referrals, these have to be people that trust you already. When someone makes that introduction, they pass that trust on to you so that can be a little bit faster than you just cold outreaching to a potential partner. You don't generally want people on this list who aren't out there doing stuff in the world. You want people on this list who are networking, who are focused, who are building, who are collaborating, and who are connecting with other people.

Those are going to be your power referral sources. So to close us out, you should now have a list of 10 to 20 potential or validated referral sources. I want you to load that into a spreadsheet, a Google sheet works great and keep that list handy for day two of the challenge. 

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 at 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. Stay tuned for the rest of the Get More Referrals challenge, and catch up on the other steps by looking for the playlist on YouTube.