​Transcribed by Descript

Erin Marcus: Hello. Hello. How is everybody?  All right, here we go. I want to go deeper into something that yes, I've been talking a lot about in the last couple of weeks, but truthfully, I've been talking a lot this for years, for years and years and years, and it's about referrals in your business. How to create referrals for your business.

Erin Marcus: And I've been talking about this for ages and let me set the stage for you. With some stories and examples. So you get the idea of where I'm coming from. When I owned my franchise, I got to the top 10 out of 200 offices in about 18 months, and I will tell you that a good 75 percent of that business came to me through referrals.

Erin Marcus: When I started conquer your business. I got booked for speaking gigs, paid speaking gigs, often due to this particular detail. When I would share with different real estate groups that when I owned my franchise, I gave out 6 million in referrals to real estate agents. 6 million in referrals that I gave out to real estate agents while I own that business.

Erin Marcus: And just that fact alone often led to opportunities for me to get on stage and paid speaking it. Fast forward a few years. Last week I was in Salt Lake City and I was there for a meeting and I had a lot of downtime because of my travel schedule I had, I was expecting to have a fair amount of downtime the afternoon before the event and the morning after the event, and I was like, great, awesome.

Erin Marcus: I'll bring my computer with me. I'll bring all my stuff with me, I will get so much done, and then my tech. Decided to take a vacation. Like, the iPhone didn't update, and the iPad didn't update, and then the Wi Fi didn't work in the hotel, and then I killed my data plan, and like, Freaking nightmare. And I basically lost access to almost all of my tech.

Erin Marcus: Beyond using my phone as, God forbid, right? A phone. And texting. And everything else was gone. It just, nothing was working. And yet, last week, I will tell you, was probably one of the most successful business weeks that I've had in several, several months. And that was because I was there to take part in a referral mastermind.

Erin Marcus: Fifteen people going deep into who did they need to meet and how could everyone else in the room help them meet those people. So again, right. Referrals. Another example. I had a client with a very, very niche business where we were able to eliminate a good 75, 80 percent of her marketing activity and instead focus on creating relationships.

Erin Marcus: Based on two events a year that she could go to and how that became the million dollar plan to create a sellable business within two years, right? So we, it was like the 80 20 rule. We removed 80 percent of the Activity she was doing that really wasn't producing results going deep on the 20 percent of activities were getting referrals, building those relationships that were making the difference for her in order to create the million dollar business and sellable asset that she wanted, right?

Erin Marcus: So you should be catching on by now about the advantages and opportunities of receiving referrals for your business and cannot. tell you enough how important it is to be receiving referrals for your business. But how do you do that? So let's get into some tactical things you could be doing and how do you do that?

Erin Marcus: One of the things I tell people is consider powerful relationships instead of the referral version of spraying and praying. And I get it, it's totally fine if in the signature line of your email. It says, I'm always available for your referrals, right? That's something I see realtors and financial advisors doing a lot.

Erin Marcus: I'm always available for your referrals. That's great. I'm not telling you not to do that, but what are you doing? Ask yourself, what are you doing to create actual relationships with people who can refer you a significant amount of business? And sometimes these are very easily reciprocal. There are certain businesses that line up really well with each other, and you can refer business back and forth regularly.

Erin Marcus: And that's great. But that doesn't have to be the case. So, as an example, when I had my franchise, as much As I referred out to realtors, the truth of the matter was because of what they did and because of what I did, I received a lot more referrals from realtors than even though I gave out six million dollars, right?

Erin Marcus: It was easier for me to receive referrals from realtors than give to them. From a quantity standpoint, they were coming across my prospects much more often than I was coming across theirs. That's fine. That's absolutely fine because you don't have to only build powerful relationships with a one to one reciprocal referral source.

Erin Marcus: You can build the relationship in other ways. You can help them in other ways. And in certain businesses, you can't give referral fees, so you have to build those relationships in other ways. And it's very interesting to me. That when I look at my keep in touch process, and when I look at what I do to build these relationships.

Erin Marcus: How few people reach out to me compared to how many people I reach out to, to maintain those relationships. I've had people literally say to me, Oh my God, there's a woman in California who does event planning. I've known her for years. And when I met her at an event, and then I reached out to her to have another conversation, she was ecstatic.

Erin Marcus: She's like, Oh my God, I'm always the first person to reach out. Nobody ever reaches out to me first. And there are a few people in my world who reach out to me on a regular basis just to connect, just to see how we can help each other. And how different I am to them than to the people I feel I'm reaching out to, always trying to help, and it doesn't feel reciprocal in nature.

Erin Marcus: So it's kind of like making friends. It's hard to make friends if the other person doesn't want to be your friend. But you need to be looking at what are you doing to build those relationships. Not just saying, refer me business, refer me business, refer me business, refer me business, because truthfully, 5, 10 really powerful relationships are going to do more for your business than asking everyone you meet to refer you business.

Erin Marcus: So number two, make it so easy for people to refer you by knowing exactly the problem that you solve and who you solve it for. The outcome that you provide your clients and who exactly your client is. Not just the slick marketing version, but the types of things people say and do. Identify the types of things people say and do.

Erin Marcus: Paint the picture of What could trigger in someone else's mind, Oh my God, you need to talk to Aaron. Oh my God, you need to talk to John. Whoever it is. And here's the thing that I've become acutely aware of. Making connections and giving referrals is easy for me. It's the way my brain works because of the strategic thinking strength finders in my brain.

Erin Marcus: Not everyone's brain works that way. So make it easy for them. I'll give you an example. I will often tell people who am I looking for? I'm looking for someone who's overwhelmed by their business But their business is working a lot of times people see oh my god You're doing well as you don't need any help, but truthfully the person who is So busy in their business because it's working is a perfect client for me because what I teach people how to do is become a business owner and work differently so you can scale that business without it killing you, right?

Erin Marcus: That paints a picture for people. So you need to know that about your business. Paint a picture for people so when they come across that person that makes it really easy, really specific. For them to refer you business, make it easy for them. And number three, part of making it easy is keeping it simple.

Erin Marcus: You don't need every person who could possibly refer you business to understand everything you could possibly do for a client. My friend, Josh tap at the lucky Titan at Pantheon. He, his podcast is the lucky Titan. You should check it out. He has been talking to me about these ideas of personas, create five personas.

Erin Marcus: That would be a great introduction for you. And you only have to focus on one at a time for this to work. You don't have to create a situation where somebody knows, as deep as you go in a relationship, where that person knows everything you do, and everything about your business. This goes under, like, you can consider this its own number, or you consider this 2A.

Erin Marcus: Right? Keep it simple so that you know how to talk about what you're doing and who you do it for, but also keep it simple with just focusing at one thing at a time, so that you're not overwhelming the person who could potentially refer you business. Pick one at a time, it will still work. So, number one, build powerful relationships.

Erin Marcus: Not just with one to one reciprocal referral sources, but with people in general who can refer you business. Number two, make it so easy by knowing exactly the problem that you solve and who you solve it for, and be able to talk about it in a way that paints a picture. Number three, with the keep it simple, is don't get overwhelmed and too complicated.

Erin Marcus: Create your personas. Because your Many client avatars so that you can tell other people exactly who you're looking for and they can easily find it for you. And number four is pay to play. Number four is pay to play. Yes, there are certain situations where you need a license in order to receive referral fees.

Erin Marcus: I get it. That's not what I'm talking about. There are ways to give referral fees, legal ways that are give to referral fees. And look at it this way. Look at it this way. Marketing is a very large part of a business's budget. Client acquisition costs are a very large part of a business's budget. If you don't have to go through the time and money it takes To cultivate your own clients by receiving a referral, you can afford to pay a referral fee to the person who introduced you in the budget for conquer your business.

Erin Marcus: There is a 10 percent line item across the board for referral fees. So that I always have space in the budget to pay referral fees when people are introduced to me. The challenge here is, you have to be charging enough to be running a profitable business in order to do this.

Erin Marcus: You can budget for this. And conversely, the flip side, you can build an entire income line of income for your business by receiving referral fees. I created a resource called multiple streams of income, and I talk about this as a stream of income. If you start thinking strategically, creating partnerships, You can make referral fees, an entire income line in your business.

Erin Marcus: You can grab that resources on the website. ConquerYourBusiness. com Go to the resources page. It's called multiple streams of income. You can grab that. It talks about this. So pay to play in terms of giving and receiving referral fees. But the second version of pay to play is to pay to be in a better fit room.

Erin Marcus: And I will be the first one to tell you that I have met absolutely great people in free and low cost rooms. And there are certain types of businesses where it absolutely makes sense to stay locally in free and low cost rooms. But for the rest of us who are really, really trying to scale, You often need to pay something to be in a better fit room, whether that's paying to be in the room, whether that's paying to travel to get to the room, whether or not this is something you should consider has a lot to do with the type of business that you're in.

Erin Marcus: But if you are feeling stagnant and it makes sense for your business type. Consider the concept of paying to be in a higher level mastermind, paying to be in higher level networking groups, paying to get into the places where better fit opportunities be a right, rightly available for you. So to wrap this all up for you on going deeper in a referable business, let's put a few things to remember for you.

Erin Marcus: Referral business is almost always easier to close. And they're better clients because they're coming to you from people who already know, like, and trust you. They might have worked with you as a client. They might have worked with you as a partner. They already know you. They're only going to send you good people.

Erin Marcus: They're already singing your praises. It's much easier to close that than cold people through other avenues. Number two under wrapping this up is give referrals out into the business world. Give before you get not linear. I give you a business. You give me business now, but into the business world. Give referrals out into the business world and the business world will send you referrals.

Erin Marcus: And the third thing is, while you can certainly make some quick connections, building a true referral powerful network is a long game. It's a long game because it's about building relationships. And the piece that I love about this strategy the most is it falls absolutely perfectly in alignment with my entire, I don't know what you want to call it, my soapbox, my content pillar, my core value, which is connect as a human first.

I hope you enjoyed this episode of the ready yet podcast. I truly enjoy bringing these stories of success and inspiration to you. Please join us in our mission to empower entrepreneurs to be in charge of their businesses and in charge of their lives by sharing this with anyone you know, who would benefit from our tactical and motivating advice, leaving us a review and letting us know if there are any particular topics you would really appreciate hearing about.

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