Your Lead Problem Might Be a Referral Problem with Andrew Z. Brown

A well orchestrated, a well informed, a well timed referral moves the prospect from the top of the funnel all the way to the bottom.

When I was reading the book, you made a pretty bold claim at one point where you were saying, look at the biggest sales you've ever made in your company.

Very likely it came from a well timed and well placed referral.

And I gotta be honest, Andrew, immediately I was like, bullshit.

No way.

And then when I went through and I actually thought about it and I thought about the biggest sales we've ever made with capital business development projects, the biggest clients, 100%, every single one of them came from a referral.

The great Mark Cuban once said, business happens over years and years.

Value is measured in the total upside of a business relationship, not by how much you squeezed out in any one deal.

And we couldn't agree more.

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Let's do it.

Welcome to the Business Development Podcast.

And now your expert host, Kelly Kennedy.

Hello.

Welcome to episode 336 of the Business Development Podcast.

And today it is my absolute pleasure to bring you Andrew Z.

Brown.

Andrew is recognized as an Authority in B2B referral, marketing, strategic alliances and sales acceleration.

As president of Bridgemaker referral programs, he helps organizations unlock predictable revenue by designing and managing referral ecosystems that act actually work.

Andrew has launched more than 200 products, guided executives through high stakes growth challenges and served as a senior advisor to billion dollar brands across North America.

Often referred to as the father of B2B referral programs, Andrew's strategies have been featured in the Globe and Mail, Financial Post and Profit magazine.

And his Amazon best selling book, Get Referred to has become a go to guide for business developers and sales leaders alike.

If you're ready to stop chasing cold leads and build a referral engine that scales trust and drives revenue, Andrew Z.

Brown is the expert you want in your corner.

Andrew, it's great to have you on the show.

Oh my goodness.

Everyone listening?

You won't have heard that, but I can't talk today.

That's.

Do we have any time left in the podcast?

I don't know.

I don't know.

I'm pulling your leg.

I'm pulling your leg.

It's a pleasure to be here in fact, when you provided me with this opportunity, I thought, I really want.

I mean, why am I here other than having a great conversation with you?

And ultimately, I just want to share a message with BD and sales professionals in organizations small, medium, and large.

You can systematically harness the unique power of referrals and turn them into more profitable and more predictable business.

So that's what I'm here.

And, Kelly, I'm so glad that you've invited me because it's always a blast talking to you.

I appreciate that greatly, and I. Dude, I owe you, like, multiple apologies.

This has been probably the longest road to an episode that I've had in 330, 36 episodes.

Not to mention today I was just so crazy that I almost missed it again.

So, my gosh, dude, from the bottom of my heart, thank you for putting up with me.

You know what?

I'm gonna invoice you afterwards.

So.

Yeah, we're good.

Oh, goodness.

Yeah, it's been a.

It's been a road, but honestly, I'm super excited about this conversation today because after reading Get Referred, it was a wake up call.

I should hold up.

You should hold it up.

Yeah, after reading get referred, it was a wake up call for me.

I think I told you before this, I thought I knew about referrals.

Until I get referred, I realized how little I actually knew or how little I understood the referral process or what was involved or how to create what we're going to talk about today, which is a managed referral program, which is the right way to go about doing it.

It was honestly eye opening.

Andrew, like I said, in over 300 episodes, we have never talked to anybody about referrals.

And I think our audience today is going to be super excited and super informed.

By the time they get to the end of this 100%, they're probably going to go buy Get Referred, which is highly recommended.

But the other part is, is that I think they're going to have their eyes opened to the power of what a managed referral program can do for them.

So I'm excited to get into it with you.

I'd like to think that.

And Kelly, to be fair, you're not alone, right?

Don't feel badly if this isn't something that you've read about or had practice with.

There are a number of things that have to come together in an organization in order for them to say, you know what, we should really give this a go.

And, and sometimes it's a, it's a, an attitude, sometimes it's Experiences that they've had with other methods.

And there are different approaches to referral programs.

Of course, just like with any sales development or business development initiatives, there are different flavors and there are different variations.

So the fact that you haven't been exposed, don't beat yourself up on it.

I shall beat you up later.

Okay, sounds good.

I think the funny thing or the maybe the surprising thing for me was how much intention is actually required to do this.

Right, right.

I think almost everybody is like, we love referrals and, and you know, we get into it in the book where there's parts where you talk about where the best referral sources come from.

And I really, I hope to elaborate on that with you today.

But I think I was surprised because I, you know, I've worked at a lot of different companies and none of them had a manage style referral program.

You know, pretty well all of them were on Hope and a Dream.

Exactly.

And that, and that, Kelly, is a surprising proportion of companies that their referral strategy or their, their referral program.

Is this right?

Yes.

Cross your fingers and hope something comes in.

And we know, all our listeners know that if you want something done properly, if you want to see results, you have to manage things.

You have to have intention, you have to have targets.

There are skills that are associated with the success of a program.

And just like how the field of project management, let's say, is a discipline.

Right.

It's cross industry discipline.

It can be applied anywhere.

You can launch a software with project management or you can build a building complex.

And the core, the core tenets are the foundations of project management.

That stays the same.

Yes.

And the same thing with good referral management as well.

But to your point, organizations sometimes say, well, you know what, something comes in.

Great.

Yeah.

And it.

I want to take one step back because we will talk more, I'm sure, about the different approaches that organizations have about referrals.

And every approach has its pros and cons.

We all know that every initiative, every strategy, you're making trade offs, you're making choices.

Yeah.

Resources and time tend to be finite.

So you have to put your efforts where you believe you're gonna get the biggest bang.

And of course that's managing.

But let's just step back for a moment.

Part of the confusion may very well lie in what we mean when we say a referral.

So when an organization, when it's B2B, when there are big ticket offerings, services or products and a company wants to sell that the buyer is going to be thinking, oh, that's, that's expensive.

There, there's risks involved and we're trying to mitigate their hesitancy.

All the negative emotions.

Yes.

During purchase and getting a phone call or just a casual conversation saying that Kelly's awesome and is not going to cut it anymore.

Not when the stakes are high.

Not when the risk is high.

Those people who are looking to plunk down a whole whack of money and their ass is on the line.

Can I say ass on this podcast?

Absolutely.

Okay.

When their ass is on the line within their organization because of the money, because of the opportunity costs of making that investment in buying that, that product or that offering, when that is at play, again, they need something more than just a yeah, they were okay, or yeah, I recommend them.

No, they need a full throated supporter, an advocate that says, you know what, this offering is right for you.

It's right for you now.

So there's an understanding of the offering and the product and the company that is actually selling the product or offering.

There has to be that understanding.

And that's when referrals just are amazing.

Right?

They the power of referrals.

And I'm sure, again, we'll talk about this later, but a well orchestrated, a well informed, a well timed referral moves the prospect from the top of the funnel all the way to the bottom.

And think about the time savings that has when you bypass the top of the building awareness and dealing with consideration.

So you actually blow your competitors out of the water by using a managed referral program because they're not even considered any longer.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, we like unfair advantages on this show, so I'm all for it.

And this.

And so this is why referral programs as a systematic way to harness that unique power and that unique advocacy has to be intentional.

Yeah, it was interesting because when I was reading the book, you made a pretty bold claim at one point where you were saying, look at the biggest sales you've ever made in your company.

Very likely it came from a well timed and well placed referral.

And I got to be honest, Andrew, immediately I was like, bullshit, no way.

And then when I went through and I actually thought about it and I thought about the biggest sales we've ever made with capital, business development, the best projects, the biggest clients, 100%, every single one of them came from a referral.

I'd like to say that I was managing, that it was a hope and a prayer and that's what happened.

And it was great.

But you were absolutely right and it immediately got me thinking well, what if I could have more control in this process?

And again, you're not alone.

And that's not a bad thing.

That business comes from referrals.

And there is a messiness that is inherent in managing referrals because you have to manage referral sources.

And referral sources are people that needs to have trust in you and also be trusted by the organizations you want to sell your offering into.

Yeah, there's three people in every situation.

Exactly.

I generally think of an Oreo cookie, right?

You've got the company that wants to sell its offerings, companies that potentially wants to buy the offering.

So those are the cookie, the wafer part of the, of the Oracle cookie, the middle part, the ooey gooey stuff that everyone really clamors for and that holds everything together.

That's the referral source.

And so the, all those three components needs to be aligned, otherwise you get a mess.

Or the way that I bake cookies, they look horrible.

So, so I don't bake Oreo cookies.

Oh goodness.

Yeah, no, it's, it's super interesting and, and you know, I want to get into this a little bit further, but like, how in the world did you end up on this path?

You know, take us back to the beginning.

Like, were you always heading down this path of referrals?

What led you here?

Okay, so for about well over 30 years now, let's just say I had a lot more hair when I started.

Me too.

We share that in common.

Exactly.

And let's, let's say we, we'll both use this line going forward.

We exchan.

Care for wisdom.

Sure, I like that.

I'll take it.

So for over 30 years I worked in professional services, financial services, software as a service, digital marketing agencies to help companies grow by increasing revenue.

And that meant I've held again, some of those held senior executive positions in marketing, communication, business development, of course, and sales.

Yeah.

And during that time I've written a lot of articles, but I also worked with, I don't know, four or five dozen tools meant to optimize every stage of the sales cycle, particularly generating leads, because that's where the glamour is, right?

Yeah.

And I consistently found that new good quality leads were coming in via trusted referral sources.

And that was happening in parallel to sales and marketing initiatives.

And this is not to take a sledgehammer to those, those initiatives or those strategies, but the consistent, profitable business was coming via referral sources.

So while organizations were building these infrastructures and budgets and content to deploy digital tools, when it came to selling the Big ticket items.

Those turned out to be secondary.

And at the same time I found that organizations that leverage referral sources.

Sorry that the way that organizations were leveraging referral sources had negative consequences.

So referral sources were being overused, neglected and disrespected.

And as a result, businesses lost existing customers, they had reputational damage when referral sources weren't representing a business well.

Or they companies also alienated referral sources and lost what would have been truly high value leads.

So I knew there had to be a better way to harnessing referral sources, energies and their enthusiasm while avoiding those real negative downsides.

So while I was working inside and for these organizations, I started pulling together a methodology and found out, you know what, I'm not the only one that's doing this.

But it does kind of fly under the radar.

It doesn't get the airtime that's let's say, ooh, we're going to go out and we're going to buy some new software.

It just doesn't.

But all of us know that, right?

Implementing some kinds of, some processes within organization, it's messy, it's time consuming, it's change management.

Change management is involved.

Who wants to do that?

And that's why I pull together in get referred a methodology that can run completely in parallel with sales and marketing initiatives.

And you probably saw this in the book people, and I encourage people grab the book, go do it.

There are things you can do today right now that will help you get on the train towards using referrals in a more systematic way.

So again, I'm going to of course be a strong advocate at the same time and we'll get to this.

I'm sure not all organizations are ready for referral for a managed referral program.

And that's okay.

Yes.

In the book you talked about, you know, I think I want to say four referral systems.

There's the hope and the dream, which is I think the one most of us are working with.

There's the half assed approach, which in your mind is the absolute worst because people tend to get neglected and hurt and beat up and it's typically bad for everyone involved.

Then you have it was the channel approach and, and then you have the managed program itself.

Can you maybe break down each of these for our listeners so they can understand and maybe understand where they fit right now in the way that they handle referrals for their business?

Sure, I'll grab the three.

Well, I'll touch on all of them.

So the ad hoc, the close your Eyes and hope for is just that's the activity.

And when something comes in, you take it and you thank your referral source.

Sometimes you don't.

You just take it and you run along and you don't learn from the processes to what they brought in, whether it's profitable, whether it's coming at at the right time.

You just take it and you don't give constructive feedback to the referral source because you think, oh man, what happens if I give them feedback or try to impose any kind of structure?

They won't bring anything back to me again.

So there's a little bit of fear.

So it's not as a transparent understanding necessarily, it's just a hope.

And again, hope is not a strategy.

I know I'm not the first person to say that.

In fact, there's a book.

Hope is not a strategy.

Yes, the channel approach is the one that perhaps is the most widely recognized because you are leveraging other people's authority and other people's reputations and their connections.

But channel programs, and I've run channel programs, have their own series of challenges.

One being or one fundamental assumption that isn't always true is that channel programs are built on the assumption that growth comes via scaling.

Get more people, get more assets, get more people out there and we will naturally succeed.

But that forgets the time that's involved and the resource in order to manage that.

The other thing about channel programs is that it largely becomes a one size fits all kind of approach.

If you're running a program, you're trying to minimize the time and you're placing the bet set.

Again, if you've got more people out there, you are going to succeed.

So the way that you treat people often approaches cookie cutter.

And again, I'm not saying all channel programs, but these are common things that happen happen across channel programs.

Yeah.

The other thing is if I'm a reseller of 14 different softwares, the company I'm selling into knows this and they, they know that I'm going to recommend, or I could recommend those things that.

Are beneficial to you.

Exactly, yeah.

And so it breeds a skepticism and actually a lack of trust between the buyer and the seller and selling programs.

Finally, the other structural challenge with reseller programs is that it builds in increased cost in terms of acquisition.

So let me explain what I mean by that.

So if I am a channel reseller for a company A, and they give me, you know, a thousand dollars to bring their offering in, that's the commissioner, the sales bonus I get, company B is going to offer me 1100.

Well, that's.

And then company A's gotta go back and say, okay, now it's 1,200.

And it's this constant escalation.

Yeah.

It's not about what's best for the customer, it's about who pays the best commission.

That's right.

So that's, that's very much the channel.

The ad hoc and the channel approaches are the most widely used approaches against.

You mentioned a few others.

Well, I want to.

Sorry, Andrew.

I want to touch on half assed approach.

And I know this is like maybe the one that's a little bit harder to articulate, but I think it's important because I think there are a lot of companies that I've worked at who say, yeah, you know, let's go and try and see if we can get this person to suggest us or who can we leverage to get into this company.

Like I've been in a million rooms where that's the conversation, who do you know that can get us into XYZ company?

Right.

Which to me is the half assed approach.

Right.

There's nothing structured.

We're just leveraging people to try to get into various organizations.

But I want you to touch on that because it's actually dangerous.

And, and I do.

I mean, again, the world is messy.

Each of these approaches, they can bleed over one another.

Right.

The, the thing that is consistent about the half assed approach approach is not being straightforward with the referral sources that you want to use.

Hey, Kelly, I would really love you to be part of my referral program.

Yeah.

This is what it looks like.

There would be no discussion like that.

No, there isn't.

No.

Okay.

Another element that's very consistent in the half assed approach is Kelly.

Well, Kelly's been referring us for a few times, so we're just going to put slap his name at the back of proposals.

And whenever someone asks for a proposal, Kelly is the person that gets the call.

Meanwhile, I've seen these.

Meanwhile the organization's moved on in different people, different offerings.

And Kelly isn't being.

It hasn't been brought up to speed on any of these things.

So when a company phones and says, hey Kelly, so I'm thinking about purchasing this offering and they put you down as a referral source.

Tell me what you think about this.

You are at a loss.

Yeah, I have no idea.

Right.

Just because people have moved on, different offerings, maybe a different focus, maybe a different value proposition.

So there you are.

And it's puts you in a tremendously awkward position and it's really unfair.

And so that's also very common to the half assed approach.

And as you, and as you can imagine the damage that's done.

So not only will the potential buyer say, I'm sorry, that was weird.

Yeah, that was weird.

Kelly didn't really seem to know much about what the company does or why should do it or why should join now.

So not only does it do that, but it ruins the relationship with you.

Yeah, I'm left feeling abused, abused, neglected completely.

And that's unnecessary.

And again, I recognize that people are busy and sometimes putting things down in a one page.

That's nice and articulate as to who we're going after, why we're going after them and, and who we should call.

I understand that it takes time, but we would not expect a go to market strategy to be, to be done without intention and without measures of success.

Why would we do the same thing for referral sources?

So does that help?

Yes, it really does.

And now please do lead us into really the main topic of the book and the most ideal way to handle a referral system and a referral program and that is your managed referral programs.

What is a managed referral program?

For people that probably haven't heard of it before, which is likely 99% of our audience.

So let me just step back just for a moment to say, who cares?

What's the business advantage of managing referral sources?

And when I started this, I saw tremendous results of managing referral sources.

And I went out and saw that other organizations were testing and trying out to manage referral sources.

And some of the astonishing findings, like 69% of B2B companies that use referral sources see deals move through the sales funnel faster.

So I mean, everyone wants speed, right?

Yes.

For a number of reasons for keeping your supervisors off your back.

Or it's because if you get the prospect moving along faster, they'll close faster and you'll be able, you'll be able to take that money and invest it elsewhere in the firm for a number of reasons.

Sales acceleration.

60% Or near 60% of customers coming by referral have a measurably higher lifetime value than business coming without a referral.

So lifetime value, so retention.

Who doesn't want that?

Yeah.

Over 70% of leads coming via referral are more likely to close than coming.

Yes.

So there alone those three elements.

Those are three enough reasons scream, why.

Should we harness referral sources?

Yes.

So what is a referral source?

Let me give it in the most simple way imaginable to think.

And that is this.

Do whatever you can to provide support to make your referral sources successful at bringing you the right business.

That's the foundation and the focus is on the referral source and making them successful.

So we have to, by extension that means we have to understand the referral sources and it means we have to understand what it is that they need to be successful.

And that is the foundation that all of a sudden when you start to think about a program that way you get to ask a whole bunch of different questions.

Yes.

Right.

You know, I put in the book sort of a seven stage model.

That's not rocket surgery.

Right.

It's a, it's, it's a variation on a, on a planning cycle.

And all programs, you could say, have some elements of this.

And again, it's very much driven by project management because we want to be able to establish goals and we want to put, we want to do some early validation and we want to measure along on the way.

So again, it's a very disciplined approach.

But if someone ever asks you about a manager referral program, again, fundamentally it's, we have to make our referral sources successful.

Yeah.

Bringing us the business we want.

Yeah, yeah.

And you touched on something that I think most people aren't really considering when they're going to ask somebody for a referral and it's what do they want?

Or like how do we make them want to refer us?

Most people are just assume that people are going to refer you.

Well, if I ask Jill to refer, refer me, she will, right?

Yeah.

But you're missing kind of the key motivators.

And you know, we're going to get into key motivators because that one surprised me too in that there's multiple, typically not just one, but multiple motivators, five or so that contribute to people's choice to refer you.

And I look forward to that point.

But you have to understand why they would want to do that in the first place.

And I think most people just forget that altogether.

Brilliant.

Exactly.

One of the things I speak about quite a bit is what I call basic referral math.

And that means that in order to get a referral source, and again, this isn't rocket surgery.

Right.

These are things that we know.

But to get a referral, a piece of referred business, the referral source has to have three things and it's cumulative.

They have to have all these three things or they're never bringing you what you want.

They have to have the skills to refer.

They have to have the opportunities to refer and they have to have the willingness to refer.

And when we are evaluating, I mean, account based marketing or business development tiger teams, when they go out and they say, okay, who within an organization should we be focusing on?

They're having these questions, not necessarily about referrals per se, but this idea of recognizing that people have to have the opportunities, the skills and the willingness.

Yes.

In order to bring the referrals that you want.

I want to pause you right there because you know when we're talking all the time on the show, we're talking about your ideal customer profile, right?

Yeah.

An ideal customer has all three of those things.

They have the ability, the willingness and the skills to do so.

And for.

Sometimes people will say, well, you know what, as you said earlier, Kelly, can't we just ask Kelly to refer us?

Can we just do that?

You can, but keep in mind that when you ask them, you are asking them to put their reputation on the line.

Again, we're thinking larger ticket items.

So are you ready for referrals?

Are you worthy of that?

And what are you asking Kelly?

Precisely.

And are you putting him in an awkward position to ask him to bring referrals to.

Well, and the one thing people aren't always considering is that person, the person you want to be referring you.

What is their character?

What is their reputation?

Maybe they don't have a great reputation.

Now you're asking somebody without reputation to refer your company and guess what?

You get a crappy reputation.

Exactly.

Which is why part of the process at that cycle of phases is to actually take a look at referral source candidates and spend the time to understand.

And you.

And again, oh, let me compare, go back to the channel, channel sales reseller or channel reseller program, which again, some people think of as referrals.

And we spoke earlier that refer channel programs assumes more is greater.

Right.

It's scale.

Yeah.

Yes.

Every managed referral program I have run in the last 30 plus years has been wildly successful with fewer than 10 referral sources.

Wow.

Just think about that.

Yeah.

The focus on literally a handful of people will get you better results than a channel program that will have dozens, if not hundreds of people.

And think about the resources that are required now.

It does take focus, it does take discipline.

It means.

Wait a sec.

Kelly may not be a great referral source for me now because we've gone through this, an evaluation to determine that maybe he'll be a great referral source in six months.

Sure.

So you keep that, you keep those relationships going just as you would if it was a straight BD relationship.

But there is that recognition that you do not necessarily get growth by a scale.

You get growth by virtue of relationships, and you help nurture those relationships.

Actually, nurture isn't necessarily the right word.

You support those relationships with the referral sources.

Now, that support could mean a whole bunch of things.

So if a referral source, you understand what skills they have.

So again, and we'll go into the.

We can go into the different kind of skills that a good referral source needs.

They have the willingness, and you truly understand the different motivations, but they don't have any opportunity because they sit in front of their computer all the time.

That's great.

So as a.

As part of that referral program, you would be working with a referral source and saying, okay, what kind of opportunities would allow this person to refer our offerings to the target that we want?

Yeah, yeah.

So it's very bespoke, right?

Well, and you keep touching on, and I think the piece that maybe the listeners might be missing from this conversation right now is that if you don't have one of those pillars, it's like a stool.

I don't know, for people that have done photography, right, you have like, the stool concept of photography.

You need the right shutter speed, the right contrast.

You know what I mean?

And so it's the same thing with your referral sources, right.

If they're missing one piece, it doesn't matter what other two pieces, they have the puzzling coming together.

Precisely.

And that's why, you know, when we were talking about the earlier approaches, like the ad hoc approach, is because organizations will not have the discipline or the interest or the attention to say, well, does this person really have the skills to refer?

Yeah, again.

And it can be very damaging when they bring in bad business.

Again, we talked about that earlier, so you're right.

It is a pillar.

And again, under that rubric of referral, math skills, willingness and opportunity.

And I would encourage listeners, I always encourage people I speak to build a referral program based on reality, not on the assumptions that you bring to the table about referrals and referral sources.

And that, as you said, that's one piece of reality.

Referral sources have to have all those things together now.

Amazing.

Now, not everyone is exceptional at all three.

That's part of the managed referral program to help fill in the gaps when people are missing some of the skills.

So maybe you run scenario workshops with them so they know what kind of conversations or what questions to ask or what to Listen for.

So you're filling in the gaps, or if you're, if you understand that their motivation is not necessarily monitoring, it rarely is just simply monitoring.

But maybe it's profile building.

So you identify how do I build a profile, how do I help that referral source build profile?

Because that's what's motivating them to bring our.

Essentially be part of our go to market.

Right?

Yeah.

So again, not everyone's going to be 10 out of 10 on skills, willingness, and opportunity.

That's okay.

That's okay.

Basically what you're saying is that ultimately, as long as they have, you know, pieces of all and they're willing to do that, you can help them with the pieces they're missing.

Exactly.

And the wonderful thing about a managed referral program is you can say, wait a Second, we've identified 10 candidates.

We understand what their skills, willingness and opportunities are.

We've identified the gaps.

And you know what?

We only have so much budget this year.

So instead of focusing on all 10 of them, we're going to choose three or we're going to choose five.

Because those five people we believe we can support better, we have budget for it, and we believe that there will be a return on those five.

Those other five that we've neglected for this year, we're going to keep conversations with, but we're not going to activate them.

We're not going to spend time actively finding out ways to fill in the gaps that they have.

And that's the power of a managed referral program is in advance.

You know what the budget is before you spend $1 on helping them become better.

Oh, well, let's speak to that.

Let's speak to the fact that most people don't even have a budget for a referral program.

Yeah.

How much money should companies be spending on referral programs?

So we know that our referral programs have an ROI of.

And I just saw a some research done on this last week, at least 40 times.

Wow.

Should companies spend money on referral programs?

I'm going to say yes, but I'm going to actually say be smart, be smart about it before spending $1.

Check out the book.

And Kelly, I'm happy to give away a handful of books for those enthusiastic people who are saying, I want to know if I should be doing this and when I can be doing this and how I should be doing this.

I'm more than happy to.

And the book was written so that people could execute them without me, without anyone.

So, Andrew, I'm just going to pause you Right there.

So for the launch of this show, when you guys are finding this episode, head over to LinkedIn, shoot me a DM and the first 10 DMS I get, I'm going to grab your contact details, I'm going to shoot it on over to Andrew, and he can get you a copy of Get Referred.

Thank you, Andrew, for doing that for us.

Thank you, Kellyanna.

It's my pleasure.

Because again, when we go back to the why I'm here today, it's really to let you know that you can do this.

This is not insurmountable, but it does mean rethinking a few things.

One of them is by thinking about intention, about referral sources, and there's this mindset about referrals that it's very passive.

Right.

People bring you stuff, but passive doesn't mean that you don't have to manage it.

And that's where a lot of people kind of get caught.

They think, okay, well, if it's passive, I don't have to do anything.

What a relief, right?

But how many things in life are such that you just close your eyes and good things happen to you?

Yeah, not very often.

No.

I.

But I guess that is the difference between.

What we're talking about today is that most people are living that way.

Most businesses are operating that way.

Tell your friends, tell your family, we would love it if that opportunity comes, but we're not going to follow up on that.

We're not going to wait.

We're just going to.

We're going to.

I like to.

I had an amazing mentor once who said, kelly, when you get commissions and stuff and like, people come into your.

To your era and just give you stuff, it's called pennies from heaven.

We love pennies from heaven, but we never rely.

Right.

Shout out, shout out to Kevin Pitti.

And so, yeah, those things are wonderful, but they are pennies from heaven.

They are few and far between you.

You acknowledge them when they happen.

But I would say you also go a little deeper.

One of the tools, actually that's in Get Referred is a very simple grid with two dimensions.

Right.

One is the dollars coming from referrals and then a time element of frequency.

How often does this happen?

And.

And I encourage everyone to go and take a look at their own internal data right now and take a look at seeing where referrals are coming from and start to plot that against the graph.

And ideally, you want to really focus on first.

First focuses on those people who are bringing you great referrals at the frequency that you can handle and that you believe that the referral sources are capable of bringing.

And if you've got that, that's awesome.

Let's spend some time with them and find out why that's the case.

Yes, because that's the other piece that most people are missing is we don't even understand why people are referring us.

Exactly.

And that is very much part of this.

We want to find out why people.

And at the same time, the removing of why something why people are referring us is not the same as why people aren't referring us.

So a tremendous referral source may be not referring to.

Because they are conflicted out.

Right.

They just can't because of internal policies.

Or maybe it's because they've got a wide network and they want to distribute referrals over the span of a number of different firms.

There are several reasons under to.

So understanding why people refer us as well as understanding why they don't refer us is a discussion that you want to have with those people who are referring.

I want to take that and I want to lead it into the best referral sources because this part surprised me.

And you know, we already had a conversation about this where I was like, are you kidding me?

Because I would have completely thought that my current customers were our best referral sources.

But on the list of referral sources, your current customers fell short of pretty much every other referral source, which really blew my mind.

Can we elaborate on that?

Because I know that that's surprising people right now.

Your customers are not your best referral sources.

Right.

And again, Kelly, thank you for surfacing this.

This does not mean that current customers will not bring you business.

That's not what this is saying.

This is saying that if you're looking for consistent, profitable business, that existing customers or clients are not on the top of the list of the people that you want to activate.

It turns out that professional colleagues, former clients, former employees, suppliers, prospects provide referrals more consistently and better referrals than existing customers.

Please tell us why, because this part shocked me.

There are a few reasons.

One, what I refer to as the babysitter effect.

And if.

If anyone's ever had kids and the pleasure of a great babysitter, you'll know that come Saturday night, you're not really anxious to share a babysitter who's really good.

Nope.

Sad to say, right?

You go, I'm going to hoard that for myself.

That's right.

And the same thing happens with companies.

If someone is awesome, you organizations often go, well, wait a sec.

If they're out there giving their offering to someone else, less attention will be spent on me.

I'm not saying it is a valid reason, but I'm saying that it is a very common reason why existing clients and existing customers do not refer.

The other reason that is that they know you.

Every company, every organization, let's face it, is not perfect.

We're humans.

None of them are perfect.

Yeah, we're not perfect.

And our organizations, our structures, our processes, we're not perfect.

We're always trying to improve, which is what makes life exciting.

But we're not perfect.

And our existing clients and customers know this.

They know maybe that our customer success group isn't firing on all cylinders, or they know that the billing isn't as smooth and isn't as smooth as it needs to be.

Or integration.

The integration team is.

They're fantastic people, but they have issues with managing a lot of tasks at once.

So it's.

They know warts and all, what you're about.

And so there is a reluctance to refer because they're not sure whether or not the experience is going to be positive for the companies that they're referring.

And again, think big tickets.

You're not going to put your name on the line.

And why would you expect someone else to put their reputation on the line unless they feel all really confident that your offering was right, it was right for the organization and it was right for them.

Now, in your research.

Yeah.

What was identified as the best referral source?

Like, is it a past customer, is it an employee?

Was there any of them that stood out above all the rest?

If I remember correctly, I don't have the book in front of me, but it was professional colleagues.

And that might mean that if you're an executive, an accountant, it.

That might mean that it's someone that.

It could be a bookkeeper, it might be another.

It might be another accountant, it might be someone who provides advice.

Advice.

But it's definitely professional colleagues that have been time and time again the most consistent source of profitable referrals.

Now, they can also be.

They're.

They're likely very busy and they're likely very skilled.

And so the lovely thing about a referral program is that by identifying the right people.

Yeah.

Then you again, you focus on that.

So at a high level, think beyond everyone.

Think beyond your existing clients.

Think about focusing more on the professional colleagues and again, then apply when you get there, referral math.

Right.

The skills, willingness and opportunity.

Yeah.

You talk about a concept in the book for creating your managed referral program.

And you call it the secret sauce.

Right.

Can you elaborate on what the secret sauce of a managed referral program is?

Fundamentally, what runs through the secret sauce is the.

It's an approach to how we deal with people.

It is one of coming to them with a sense of respect and not thinking of people as mere transactions, but people as a part of a trusted network.

So the acronyms identify specific types of approaches.

But every organization is going to be a little different in how they apply that.

So even respect as a core tenet of the secret sauce.

And when we went back when we were talking earlier about using someone as a reference on a proposal, part of that respect how in one organization could be, you know what, we're going to meet with these references quarterly and we're going to bring them up to speed as to what's happening within the organization.

That could be one organization's application of that quality of that desired behavior.

Be respectful.

And other organization may apply that in a completely different way.

Sure.

So that's the secret sauce.

And that's always encourage clients to sit down.

And when you take a look at that secret sauce, think about how you would operationalize that within your organization.

Yeah.

Yeah, man.

Yeah.

It's.

There's so much in the book, like there's no way.

I just want like the listeners to understand there's no way we could touch on probably a quarter of what is this book.

So I am trying to hit on the key points just to try to keep them rolling and give them something they can leave with.

Right?

That's right.

One of the other things that I want to maybe chat with you about, and we talked about this really briefly, was the right size who should have a managed referral program.

We're talking to people from organizations like billion dollar organizations.

We're talking to people that are solopreneurs.

Right.

Who can all benefit from referral programs.

Let's talk a little bit about what makes a company ready for a managed referral program.

Okay.

I'm going to do a little bit of shameless plugging as well.

Sure.

We actually have a 15 minute on demand webinar so you can access it anytime.

And it's called the five steps to getting Referral Ready.

Perfect.

It'll be linked in the.

In the notes for this.

Thank you.

And that in itself is a bit of holding a mirror to yourself or to the organization and seeing if you're.

So let me talk about a couple of the components of being referral ready.

Again, we've talked time and time again about the importance or the expectation that you're, that you have of a referral source putting their name on the line, their reputation.

So you owe it to a referral source to be able to quantify what your reputation is.

Now, there are a number of different ways that you can take.

Think about your organization's reputation.

You can take a look at the employee surveys that you run.

Yeah.

Okay.

And so a reputation measure there that tells you about employee churn and that it's a great place to work.

That's one measure of a, that's part of that reputation.

And quantifying that, how about taking a look at feedback online monitoring on what customers are saying.

So that's another data point that you can pull together a bunch of data points that you can summarize and say, this is what our customers are thinking about us.

Yeah.

So you need to really, you owe it to referral sources.

And again, everything is going to come back to referral sources.

Remember the primary tenet of a managed referral program.

Whatever it takes to help the referral sources be successful, they need that.

It reduces their anxiety and it also gets conversations going with you.

It opens, if you will, opens the tent when you start sharing with referral sources your genuine reputation.

Yeah.

Then there's a trust that you've just built with a referral source.

You are actually reducing the likelihood that this is going to be a transactional relationship.

But now it's much stronger, deeper relationship when you air your dirty laundry, regardless of how dirty it is.

And a lot of this is stuff that you have within your organization.

So there are a number of different things that you can do to capture a snapshot of your reputation and sit down and be completely straightforward with your referral source.

The ones that you've gone through, the evaluation skills, willingness and opportunity.

And you've said, okay, here are the people that we really want to harness.

Then be honest with them about your reputation.

Capacity.

Do you have the capacity to deal with the business that will come in via referral sources?

Yeah.

And so take a look at.

I mean, unfortunately, a lot of organizations struggle with onboarding.

New client onboarding.

Sure.

But you can't allow.

You can't allow for that and still ask for referrals to bring in your business because it makes them look bad.

So take a look at your onboarding.

In the end, it makes sense to identify how you're going to treat the business that comes in via referral source.

How are you going to treat those people better than through other marketing and sales initiatives?

It doesn't have to be, you know, rolling out the red carpet, but there has to be something that you apply and it might be as simple as putting in your calendar that you.

That people coming in are going to be called by an account manager quarterly or monthly or maybe during that first hundred days that they're going to be treated, they're going to be invited to a company event.

It can be any number of things, but we have to identify something special.

Again, think about the importance of dealing with that client coming in because they're coming in via referral.

So if something goes wrong with them, if they don't have an exceptional experience, not only are they going to be not happy, but the referral source is going to hear about that.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And so it is incumbent and again, it doesn't have to be heavy lifting to do something special for organizations or opportunities coming through referrals.

One client did a very had a letter from the president just coming in.

Just a welcome letter.

Thanks.

Yes.

And had that couriered to them.

Yeah.

It doesn't have to be big.

Let's also talk about that.

I interviewed a gentleman who owned a company called Cardly and he put out a statistic that most people only receive about two pieces of personal mail per year.

So imagine what a letter from the president signed and mailed to them personally means.

It's one of probably three letters they get all year.

Like that.

That's huge.

It gives an air of special.

Right.

And that's when we're pulling together a program.

You're identifying these referral sources and you want to give them that sense that they're part of something special.

Yes, largely.

That's a big.

I found consistently that referral sources are doing this.

I mean, we haven't really dug into the motivations, but one thing that runs consistently across is they want to see your organization succeed and often they want to feel like they're part of something.

Part of something special.

Yes.

And it doesn't take a lot to do that, but it is intentional.

Right.

We have to allocate some time and a little resource to make someone feel special.

And going back to your question a bit earlier about organizations and when organizations can do this and again about being referral ready, you have to be able to have the resource and the intent to treat people differently.

Special.

Yeah.

But this isn't anything new in a sense because there've always been top tier clients that we treat special.

Yes.

There have always been market segments that marketing will message differently.

So this isn't so different a concept.

Yeah, yeah.

Oh, man.

Yeah.

It's one of those things too, where if you don't know how, you don't know how.

Right.

Like, I'll be honest, guys, I was super surprised at how little I knew about referrals when I read this book.

I literally talked to Andrew like a couple days after.

I was like, dude, like, I had no idea.

I didn't realize how like, in the dark I was.

And I think anybody who reads the book will feel the same way.

And it's not to like, it's not to make you feel bad.

I think if anything, it makes you wake up and realize, holy cow, this is a, this is something we should maybe be considering, especially if you're part of a large size company that doesn't currently have a managed referral program.

But you know, once again, if you've never enacted one of these programs, it could be a bit of a daunting task.

And I imagine that that's where Bridgemaker referral programs comes in.

Thank you for that.

So we have one objective at bridgemaker and that's we help organizations give we by giving them whatever they need to make their referral sources successful at bringing profitable business faster and more predictably, that's what we do the organization, because it's built largely in my experience, we have worked with 15, over 15 different industries in running out referral programs.

Again, the wonderful thing about referral programs is it is industry agnostic.

Again, I draw the parallel with project management or a sales management program.

Right.

You can pick that up and you can move that.

There are nuances for every industry, sure.

But there are nuances for every organization.

But that's, that's the, that's what makes things exciting a bit more dynamic.

So they're, they're industry agnostic and they're technology agnostic.

I've had clients that ne didn't have even a CRM.

Right.

We were talking about organizations and what they need to have in place and we, we touched briefly on referral readiness.

But technology isn't an obstacle.

Yes, you do not have to have a CRM or a PRM or a partner relationship management.

No, you don't need a spreadsheet if you don't want to.

So it is not technology driven.

And again, the nice thing about the program is you can decide how broad you want this to be.

It can be.

You can focus on three referral sources and go to town.

You will be remarkably happy by applying this discipline to a handful of people.

It doesn't have to be.

It doesn't have to be gargantuan.

It's meant to give great results and it does, but it doesn't mean that you have to put resource after resource after resource for it.

Yeah, yeah.

Well.

And that's it.

And you mentioned too, like an average return of 40 times.

Well, I think that's probably worth at least trying it.

Right.

Like you might.

You can't win the lottery unless you play.

Right.

Precisely.

Yeah, yeah.

No, I love this.

Andrew, thank you so much for coming in and sharing your time with us.

And you know, one of the things we didn't touch on is that you're a bit of a prolific author.

You know, we.

We're talking about one book, but it's one book of four.

Do you mind just briefly going over some of your other books for the listeners if they might want to pick them up?

Sure.

Because of my background in helping organizations grow and sales and business development and marketing has always been my passion.

Get referred, obviously, how to increase sales velocity, volume and value.

There is a. I wrote a book called two plus two Equals five and it's a guidebook.

It's a playbook, rather, on how to build strategic alliances.

Putting it out there, which is a playbook for how to manage channel reseller programs.

And another book called Business Truths, which was one of the first books.

And that's when I was a co host of a successful business podcast and we interviewed leaders from across the globe and then we captured the essence of their learning.

Yeah.

In I think it's 96 lessons.

Wow.

Wow.

No, that's amazing.

But yeah, the focus right now, if I may, about the book, one thing I want to let everyone know is that spent a fair amount of time on making sure this was easily digestible.

Yes.

Each section.

And you can tell me, Kelly, if it's not, please call me out because I want to know.

No, I was honestly, I was surprised.

I saw things in this book I've never seen in any other book.

Which one of the pieces you put in was the time to convince content.

Like the time to value.

Like how long until you get to the valuable piece of this.

Of this chapter.

And dude, that was amazing.

More books need to have that.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Yeah, I did want.

I made a few assumptions.

One assumption was people are busy.

They're not going to read from COVID to cover.

They're going to want to go and find out stuff that is actionable and actionable now.

Yeah.

So there's a quick start guide.

So you know what?

This is relevant to me.

Go.

I don't want to read about the approaches.

I want to know how to build a program.

Go straight to that section.

Yeah, so that was one thing.

Summaries that I thought were important to reinforce learning objectives.

So you read the first section, you go, yeah, that's important to me and I've designed it as well for you to read in five minutes.

Each section has a key takeaway section.

If you want to spend five minutes reading the book, just read the key takeaways one at the beginning of each five sections and you pretty much have the book.

You don't have the dexterity and the nuance, but you'll have it.

Yeah, yeah, I did read it end to end and yeah, like basically the, the chapter endings were kind of like just a reinforcement, like summary section was like just a reinforcement on my learning from it.

So I think I got a lot out of it in one read.

Which you know, I think a lot of books you need to read them multiple times to get that one read.

But in certain ways the way that you laid it out, it's kind of like you've read it multiple times if you actually read it end to end.

Good.

Well, I'm glad that it didn't feel onerous.

Yeah, no, it was fine.

It was absolutely fine and highly recommend.

And like I said, you know, per Andrew's generosity, there will be 10 books given away from this.

Please do shoot me a DM.

Hop on over to LinkedIn.

Kelly Kennedy.

Shoot me a DM.

Kelly, I heard the interview.

I would love one of the books and if you're one of the 10, I will make sure that your contact information gets over to Andrew.

So thank you so much for that Andrew.

Thank you.

It's been my pleasure as always chatting with you.

I'm happy to come back if another if, if discussion.

If the feedback is help and we can run a work session.

Yes, right.

Yes.

Or actually I might get you into one of my other programs to come in and give like a quick over teaching session.

We actually just launched the Catalyst Club so by the time this comes out it'll be a year old and there might be a great opportunity to do something like that.

So I appreciate that.

If people want to get a hold of you, what is the best way for them to do so?

Sure.

Email Andrew Breferred Biz.

Perfect.

You're on LinkedIn as well, correct?

On LinkedIn?

Yes, I am on LinkedIn.

You're welcome to reach out and I'll also was going to make an additional offer but again that time it'll be a while before it gets out there.

That's right.

That's.

By all means, reach out to me.

If you do mention Kelly's podcast.

I'll take a, I'll take a 10 minute with anyone who mentions Kelly's podcast.

Amazing.

Thank you so much, Andrew.

That takes us to the end of today's show.

It's been an absolute pleasure.

It's the very first episode we've ever done on referrals, believe it or not, on a business development show at 336 episodes, we have never done one.

So you, you mark a first in our, in our show.

And honestly, you are a pleasure of a human to spend time with and I've enjoyed every conversation we've.

Your energy is incredible.

Your book is incredible.

What you do is incredible.

Thank you for spending time with me today, Kelly.

I can say precisely the same about you.

It's a pleasure, it's a thrill to spend time with you and I look forward to other opportunities to do just that.

Likewise, until next time.

You've been listening to the Business Development Podcast and we will catch you on the flip side.

This has been the Business Development Podcast with Kelly Kennedy.

Kelly has 15 years in sales and business development experience within the Alberta oil and gas industry and founded his own business development firm in 2020.

His passion and his specialization is in customer relationship generation and business development.

The show is brought to you by Capital Business Development, your business development specialists.

For more more, we invite you to the website at www.capitalbd.ca.

See you next time on the Business Development Podcast.