🏆 How to Unlock The Holy Grail of Growth

Hello! 👋 Welcome back! ☕️

I’m back from a few days in Austin, Texas for Keller Williams’ Mega Agent Camp, and ready to get straight to it.

A couple of weeks ago, I had an appointment with a potential new customer who was wanting to learn more about what it would look like to sell their home next spring. While I’m grateful for each and every opportunity I have, this one was different.

This potential customer had been referred to me by a client I worked with a year and a half ago. 🙏🏻

But wait, there’s more. That client was referred to me by a client I worked with three years before that! 🙌

Today, we’ll uncover the holy grail of growth: Referrals

Undoubtedly, this isn’t a new idea or something you haven’t experienced in your business. Hopefully, your business is referred by your clients often. I’m grateful that the vast majority of my business over the past ten years has come from referrals. Where I’ve failed though, and the growth of my business has paid the price, is that I haven’t been purposeful in doing the things that cause more referrals.

What would our business look like when we are intentional about earning referrals to our business more frequently?

When more people refer your business than leave, your business will grow, forever.

The answer to unlocking this holy grail of growth is simple, not easy. We must focus on two things.

HERE’S HOW IN 8 MINUTES:

1. Perfect Your Product 👌

2. Ask For Referrals 🫴

Step 1: Perfect Your Product 👌

Have a great product or service and provide a great experience, earn more referrals, and make more money. Seems simple, right?

The trap many of us run into, and I certainly have, is we spend time servicing the business we have and then working to find new customers, and don’t focus enough on continuing to iterate on our value proposition and the level of experience our clients receive throughout their buyer journey with us.

Ask yourself, “If all of my future business can only come from one customer, who would that customer be, and what type of experience would my business provide to that customer?”

Here are 5 ways to perfect your product and increase the likelihood of referrals as a result.

1. Narrow Your Audience

2. Set Clear Expectations

3. Deliver Better Results

4. Deliver Faster Results

5. Surprise & Delight

Narrow Your Audience

The more defined your niche or target market, the more qualified your clients will be, and the inherently better your product will serve your clients, without having to change anything, thereby increasing the perceived value and in turn the likelihood of referrals from your happy clients.

Review the top 20% of your clients. Determine what they have in common, then market to people with those traits and filter for them going forward.

This is also why consistent lead generation is so important. The more opportunities you have, the less likely you have to work with a client that isn’t the best fit for your business and what it offers.

Set Clear Expectations

This is where we must maximize the perceived value of our offer and then over-deliver.

Expectations can mean a few things. It could be promising an outcome you know they’ll achieve if they complete each required (and proven) step. It may simply mean proactively educating them on each step of a process, what they’ll encounter, and the tasks they’ll need to complete or options they’ll need to make a decision on.

Businesses often fail to do one simple thing that keep clients feeling great about the business throughout their journey. Proactively informing clients of what the next step is. Leaving clients in the dark about what comes after the step their currently on, is one of the biggest ways to negatively impact their experience.

I’ve found having email templates outlining and breaking down each major stage of a transaction to be helpful in setting clear expectations, and educating my clients while reducing their stress and anxiety.

Having empathy and putting myself in their shoes is what ultimately guides my communication and has proven time and time again to create exceptional experiences, that generate better reviews and more referrals.

Deliver Better Results

While this one is self-explanatory, be present throughout your time with your clients and use their verbal and non-verbal communication as insight into how they’re feeling about their experience. Use that indirect (or direct) feedback to top-grade your product or service until your business and its results sell itself.

Deliver Faster Results

People may like slow mornings, however, they like everything else as fast as they can get it. You can thank Jeff Bezos and Amazon later, and for now, find the moments in the buyer journey where you can deliver wins quickly, if not instantly. The faster they see themselves moving toward their dream outcome, the higher their perceived value of your product.

This begins as soon as they respond to a Facebook or Google Ad, or complete a form on your website. Leverage technology to provide a response within a minute to give them that win and build trust with your business right out of the gate.

Then from new client onboarding, through the end of the transaction, make micro promises throughout the process and deliver on those promises promptly.

Surprise & Delight

There are numerous points in a client’s experience with your business where you have the opportunity to really, “Wow!” them.

In my opinion, this is really where you can set your business apart and almost guarantee your clients will refer your business to everyone they know. It’s the little things in life that really count.

I know from experience that this is true. For years, I served my clients at a high level.

Or, at least, I thought. 😬

I communicated quickly, clearly, and proactively. I set clear expectations. They never had to wonder, “Where did that Gordon guy go?”

Yet, something was missing. Sure, the reviews were good, but their referrals were very infrequent. 😔

In 2021, I began strategically adding a few emojis in text messages to make my communication a little more fun and not so bland. I brought coffee to the first showing. ☕️

Those email templates I mentioned earlier, I revamped and created more of them to really help put the client’s mind at ease. Those created some “Wow!” moments. They appreciated the thoughtful attention to detail and the heads-up.

These are just a few examples, yet each took the experience to an entirely new level and it worked. 🙌

The client reviews were far better than before. 🤩

More clients took time to write them. ✍️

Most importantly, they became raving fans and referred my business more often. 📈

When you find moments to surprise & delight, it’s not only proving an amazing experience for your clients, it’s making the experience more fun for you. Find those moments to bring joy. You deserve it. 😃

Step 2: Ask For Referrals 🫴

I rarely ask for referrals. I’m terrible about it. Horrible. Just horrible. 🤦🏻‍♂️

Hopefully, you’re much better than me about it. If we’re twinning today, here’s what I’ve learned can help with the ask.

First, if you want to grow your business, you have to ask for the business. 

Your clients, like most people, only know what to do if you tell them.

Don’t be shy. Be proud of the work you’re doing, and ask the people who’ve already supported you to invite friends to experience the same care, guidance, and attention to detail you have given them.

There are certain steps in your process that can be a great place to ask for referrals. 

Think of all of the moments when your clients are most excited and happy with your product or service.

Start by setting the expectation at your first appointment or consultation that you intend to deliver such an exceptional experience that they’ll be compelled to connect you with more people they know who may be interested in learning more. Then, it’s an easier lift if you’re hesitant like me to make additional asks later when they go under contract and when they close, etc. because they expect that you will ask when you’re delivering those wins.

Let’s practice together, shall we? 😅

My goal, each week, is to create a newsletter that provides a thoughtful, and perhaps, fun, space to think about how you can grow personally and professionally, by seeing things through a unique lens.

If you’re enjoying reading Onward Everyday, and are finding value and/or joy in it, like I do, I’d love for you to invite a friend or colleague to subscribe and read it for free, at OnwardEveryday.Beehiiv.com/Subscribe

As always, your candid feedback is welcome. No one succeeds alone, and my goal is to grow this newsletter to 2,500 subscribers in the next 90 days, so constant improvement is critical. Thank you for your support these first 90!

Have an amazing week, friends.

ONWARD TOGETHER.

In The Weeds 🌾

Additional resources for you to dive deeper.

• What an Effective Client-Referral Strategy Looks Like [Harvard Business Review]

• 14 Effective Ways to Get High-Quality Referrals from Your Customers [Hubspot]

• Referral marketing: What it is and how to use it successfully [Sprout Social]

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