Get More Referrals Challenge: Share a Success Story (Day 2 of 5)

Testimonials and reviews often fall short of actually capturing the before and after, and that's why you telling this story is also important.

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 two of our Get More Referrals challenge, and today we are sharing a success story.

Remember, show and tell from elementary school that worked so well because people like to see what you're talking about with their own eyes. When it comes to creative services, it can be hard for people to visualize what exactly we're doing, how exactly you're working, what does a copywriter do anyway, what is involved in the design process.

People can't understand that if they haven't done that professionally. When you share your success stories, you help people picture themselves in your work. You help them picture who they should refer to work with you, so what you're going to do is you're going to choose a success story that highlights both the kind of people that you help and also how you help them. It's going to illustrate how you work and it's also going to show the kinds of clients you are interested in working with. 

This story works best if you have a quote from that client that you can use, but it's also okay if you don't have any testimonials or reviews from them. Here's what you're going to do. You're going to write three sections. The first section is the initial situation.

What state did they come to you in? What was their business like? What was going on in their life? Why did they come to you? What were they looking to solve and what was the state of that situation? The second is going to be the transformation that you had to together.

So what did you do for them? What changed about that situation when they were working with you, what did that look like? How did that feel? How did it go? What was involved in that? And then lastly, you want to explain the result. What were the outcomes of that work? 

How did that situation change? How did that client get what they wanted or achieve an exciting result that they were after? Initial situation transformation and result. A three part story that you're going to share, it doesn't have to be super long. It's probably going to come out to be somewhere between 10 and 12 sentences. So you're sharing the play by play.

You're walking people from the moment that they're in now to the moment that could be, and for your referral partners, they can picture, oh, I know someone in that situation. And when they come across those people, they can recognize that exact situation that you laid out and they can figure out when it's time to refer you as you're choosing a story to share, you want to think about your favorite clients to work with and some of the most exciting project outcomes you've had, so you want to give them your best foot forward. 

You want to share an example that is really indicative of the kind of people and the kind of project you want.

So think back through your last year or two of work to a project that really stood out to you. That's the story that you want to share here. So whether or not you actually have a review or a quote from that client, it doesn't matter as much as sharing the story you want to tell as helping people see inside the most valuable part of the work that you're delivering.

Bring it to life any way you can. If you have images or quotes or examples or the final result, if you're a designer or a copywriter and people can go see that result. Testimonials and reviews often fall short of actually capturing the before and after, and that's why you telling this story is also important. 

Show them, tell them and bring them along for the ride. Get them excited about the kind of work that you're doing. The other cool thing about these success stories is that they make really great forwarding material so your referral partners can forward this on to the people they want to send your way, and it's very convincing, persuasive copy for them to read way more interesting than a brochure about your services or your bio or anything else.

They want to know, what can you do for me? And that's exactly what this story is telling them. You're really trying to get people to see themselves and the people they know in your work. We're going to keep building on this in day three and four of the challenge, but you can also use this story in more ways than one. It can go on your website, you can reuse it on social media. 

You could share it in a podcast interview, send it out to your broader email list. There's more than one use for this, but I think it's an especially important piece for your referral system that we often leave out.

We think that our referral partners don't need any information about us, but the more information, the more specific that information is, the more they can send us the right kind of referrals.

Social proof is big leverage, and the more you share your client's stories and perspectives on your work and the value that you deliver, the easier it is for them to step into those shoes and picture themselves working with you or picture who should work with you. Now you have your success story. You have your list of potential referral sources. I want you to come back for day three and day four. We're going to build on this and we're going to send it out to your referral sources. 

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.