Joanne Black has more than 30 years experience as an entrepreneur, sales executive and consultant with startups and Fortune 500 companies. Joanne’s philosophy is that no one should ever have to cold call. Instead, Joanne creates a sales process that ensures every call is hot and her clients close sales up to 70% of the time.
On this episode of The Salesman Podcast, Joanne shares why you should stop cold calling and make outbound referrals your number one priority.
Featured on this episode:
Resources:
- NoMoreColdCalling.com
- Joanne on Linkedin
- @ReferralSales
- Book: Pick Up the Damn Phone! How People, Not Technology, Seal the Deal
- Book: No More Cold Calling: A Breakthrough System That Will Leave Your Competition in the Dust
Transcript
Joanne Black:
They are cold calling, they are outreaching by social media, they are typing emails away, and they are not getting results, so something has to change.
Joanne Black:
Have you asked every single one of your clients, everybody you’ve come in contact with during the buying process for a referral? The answer’s no.
Joanne Black:
We have the fear that people will say no. Well, when we think about it, I mean, referral selling is really like asking someone to help us out and what if they say no, the big no? I mean, that would be devastating, wouldn’t it?
Will Barron:
Hello, sales nation. I’m Will Barron, host of The Salesman Podcast, the world’s biggest B2B sales show where we help you not just hit your sales target, but really thrive in sales. Let’s meet today’s guest.
Joanne Black:
I’m Joanne Black, and I’m known as America’s leading authority on referral selling. I’m not bragging actually, but my publisher gave me that moniker, so I’m taking it.
Will Barron:
In this episode of the show, Joanne shares how we ask for a referral, when we ask for a referral, and why it should be your number one outbound prospecting strategy moving forward, from now till forever. So let’s jump right in.
Should Referrals Be a Company’s Number One Outbound Prospecting Strategy? · [01:10]
Will Barron:
Why should referrals be a company’s number one outbound prospecting strategy?
Joanne Black:
They’re wasting time doing anything else, and here’s why. Everybody’s saying, “We don’t get enough leads in the pipe. The pipe, the pipe, the pipe, we need more leads. We need more qualified leads.” Yet they are cold calling, they are outreaching by social media, they’re typing emails away, and they’re not getting results. So something has to change.
Should All Salespeople Be Focused on Getting Referrals? · [01:40]
Will Barron:
And is this for all sales people listening, or is this for B2B sales people doing perhaps bigger deal sizes? Is that where referrals really come into their own?
Joanne Black:
Well, they really do because that group of people and I am one and have been one for my whole career, we are the ones that have the relationships and we have more than one buyer. Our goal is to get in, have conversations, differentiate ourselves, and build those relationships within our prospect and client companies.
Why Aren’t People Asking For Referrals, Even Though They Know They Should? · [02:21]
Will Barron:
Okay, so I’m going to ask you a super open-ended question here very purposefully, because I don’t want to put any words in your mouth. I want you to kind of lead this because I know there’s tonnes of value in this question alone and it’s somewhat incriminating for myself. So I very rarely ask for referrals even though having done the podcast for, I think we’re coming up to nearly three and a half years now. We’ve had companies like there’s a Salesforce mug on the table edge, coincidentally.
Will Barron:
Salesforce I’ve been working with them for three years now. I’ve never asked anyone at Salesforce for a referral for, I don’t think I’ve even asked for an introduction to someone else or rarely I even asked for an introduction or a referral internally within such a big organisation like that. Why is it when clearly I know the ins and outs of some of this referral stuff, because we’ve been doing it on the show for three years now, why is it that even people like myself are not doing this often enough?
“When I ask people, “Have you asked every single one of your clients, everybody you’ve come in contact with during the buying process for a referral?” The answer’s no and that’s leaving money on the table.” – Joanne Black · [03:02]
Joanne Black:
Oh well, you know I’m going to make you feel better, Will, because nobody’s doing it. Everybody feels the same way. Because when I ask people, “Have you asked every single one of your clients, everybody you’ve come in contact with during the buying process for a referral?” The answer’s no. I mean, there’s lots of sources of referrals, but my goodness that’s leaving money on the table. And Will, I would be delighted to refer you so you can just ask me other guests you’d like to have, and I will let you know.
Joanne Black:
But there’s a lot of reasons why we’re not asking, but I want to get to the main one and that is it’s personal. We have the fear that people will say no. Well, when we think about it, I mean referral selling is really like asking someone to help us out and what if they say no, the big no? I mean, that would be devastating, wouldn’t it? What have I done to displease them? Did I say something that they didn’t like? Did I drop the ball? What happened? That’s the main reason. It’s so personal. So the fear of no is the biggest reason.
Joanne Black:
Then also people will say, “Well it’s like it’s intruding on a relationship,” or, “I’m asking a busy person to do more. I’m asking someone to help me out. That’s not really cool.” And here’s a recent one. Somebody said, “Well, Joanne, if I have to ask, it must mean my business isn’t doing so well because after all if I were really successful, I wouldn’t have to ask.”
Understanding the Fear of Asking For Referrals · [04:34]
Will Barron:
Are these fears founded in any reality or are these just excuses essentially that we’re using so that we’ve adapted to put enough work in or that we’re protecting our precious ego from being damaged?
Joanne Black:
They’re perceptions and I treat all perceptions as real. I think in an excuse more, somebody says, “Well I don’t have the time,” or, “I don’t know how to ask.” I mean, those are excuses, but these are perceptions and it’s real. We get that whether I grinch right in here? Do I have to ask? And then people don’t, or they’ll ask once in a while, but they don’t ask in the way that would get them the introduction. It’s not systematic. It’s not a discipline. There haven’t been metrics. They haven’t built skills. There’s all those reasons. But this fear is huge.
Joanne Black:
And by the way, Will, it doesn’t matter our generation, it doesn’t matter our culture. It doesn’t matter our gender. I’ve worked with 25, 30-year sales veterans who have this same fear. It’s real.
Joanne Black:
Now the only way to get past that is with the referral methodology. So people have metrics and they build skills. Those skills are reinforced. They practise. That’s what makes the difference.
How to Overcome Your Fear of Asking For Referrals · [05:55]
Will Barron:
That’s what I wanted to ask you, Joanne, of is this a and you kind of answered it there, but is this a case of we have process, we have habits, we don’t overthink things, we just do it, it becomes a routine or, do we need to conquer the fear? Do we need to change our mindsets? Do we need to change the perception and go and do some psychotherapy and sit down on a couch for 20 to eight sessions over the next four years, have some dude or woman regresses into our childhood of the first time we were told no and it made us feel bad? Is this a process issue or is this something that we need to ponder on over the long term?
Joanne Black:
You know what? No, you just work with me for about 120 days and you’re there. No, it’s not psychotherapy, but think of it, every two years I get to talk about the Olympics and you don’t just stand atop of a hill and do a giant slalom one time and well you’ve done it, right? It’s a skill you’ve learned. You practise, you practise, you practise, you practise. Oh, my gosh! The first time I was on top of a bunny hill, when I tried to learn to ski and did a snow plough, I was scared out of my mind. Second time, third time, not so much. So it doesn’t just happen. We need to build those skills and the more we do the fear goes away because we realise when we learn how to ask in the right way, when we practise, when we have goals and KPIs around referrals, that you know what? I didn’t die. I’m still here and guess what? People help me out.
The 5 Steps to Asking For a Referral · [07:32]
Will Barron:
Perfect. Right. We’ll come on to practising in a second. We’ll come on to KPIs after that. But first, and this might be the main meat of the conversation here, Joanne, what is the process for asking for a referral? I want to break it down as fundamentally as what we can here, because there’ll be lots of new people listening. There’ll be lots of salespeople who’ve been in the trenches for 20 years who think they know all this, but maybe they don’t. If we can break it down as fundamentally as possible, that would be amazing. What is the process that we need to put in place or go through with the end result of asking for a referral?
Joanne Black:
There’s five steps. So I say, “It’s simple. It’s not so easy,” because referrals are our biggest competitive differentiation. When you think about it, our goal is to get in. Well, how do you get in? You get an introduction and you’re in there and your competition isn’t. So what does it take? What it doesn’t take is a sales leader saying, “Go out and get referrals”. That doesn’t work and then it’s happenstance.
Joanne Black:
So the first thing is it needs to be a strategy, which means a sales leader needs to put that stake in the ground and say, “Referrals are going to be our number one prospecting outreach.” And I underline outreach, because people get freaked out about this. They’ll say, “No, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. We still need to do social media and market.” Yeah, of course you do. But instead of these random calls, you’re actually focused on referrals as an outbound prospecting. That takes commitment and for many people that takes guts. That’s one.
“Referrals need to be part of our sales process. It’s not something we do outside of that, referrals need to become the way we work every single day.” – Joanne Black · [09:20]
Joanne Black:
The second, referrals need to be part of our sales process. It’s not something we do outside of that. None of us need something extra to do, at least I don’t. And so, referrals become the way we work every single day. That’s the way we work; integrated into our sales process. There’s lots of different places to ask during the sales process, but we always need to be asking. So that’s two with sales process.
Joanne Black:
Three, metrics. We all know unless we have metrics, it doesn’t matter and there’s two kinds of metrics, which we know. There’s activity metrics and results metrics. The results metrics for referrals are typically revenue. They could be new product lines. They could be new GOs. It just depends, but we can’t manage to results. It’s a lagging indicator, but we can manage to activities.
Joanne Black:
So here are typical referral activities. One, how many people am I going to ask every week? And well, the minimum is one. So I’ll give you that assignment. The minimum is one. Okay? And it should be more. So how many am I going to ask each week? How many referrals do I receive, another metric. How many referral meetings do I schedule, a third metric and how many referral meetings do I conduct, a fourth metric. At that point, you should be ready to put it in your CRM, either as an opportunity or at some other level that you’re actively working. So those are simple metrics.
Joanne Black:
I had somebody write to me on social media and he said, “I set KPIs for referrals for my team and they’re not doing it.” Well you can’t set KPIs and have nothing behind them. It just doesn’t work. So that’s three so strategy, process, metrics and the fourth is skills.
“A lot of people don’t realise that referral selling is a behaviour change. It’s actually a shift from the way we used to work to a new way of working. And for any skill, it needs to be learned. Nothing works without reinforcement, coaching and execution with precision. To get any new skill, we need to practise.” – Joanne Black · [11:16]
Joanne Black:
A lot of people don’t realise that referral selling is a behaviour change. It’s actually a shift from the way we used to work to a new way of working and for any skill, it needs to be learned. There’s a way to ask. We can’t ask for a referral until we’re clear about the business impact of our solution and specifically who we want to meet and have figured out who we’re going to ask. So it’s a skill is four.
Joanne Black:
And five, nothing works without reinforcement and coaching and execution with precision. To get any new skill, we need to practise. We need to be reinforced. We need to be coached.
Prospecting as Outreach and Why It’s So Important · [12:02]
Will Barron:
Okay. I’ve written down four things here, which I think will be really useful to run through. The first one was to just touch on prospecting as outreach. What does that look like physically on a computer screen or on a call? I guess, this comes into the skills element of this as well. Is this rather than cold calling a prospect, we are shifting our focus to who can I in my customer base reach out to who would know this individual who can give me a referral, an introduction to them is a mindset shift. Then what does that physically look like in an email, in a call, shaking someone’s hand in a meeting?
Joanne Black:
So here’s what it looks like. That may I use you, Will, as an example?
Will Barron:
Of course you can. Yeah. Any coaching or training I get, well, this’ll be even better.
Joanne Black:
Oh, you’re good. Okay. Got it. So you’ve had a lot of guests on your show, right?
Will Barron:
Sure. Yep.
Joanne Black:
For three and a half years, something like that. You could be reaching out once a week, twice a week, four times a week, it depends, to each of those people and your podcast has evolved over the time. You reflect back on what your conversation is with them and maybe they’re doing something new and it would be great for them to come back, but who do they know? Then what are the qualifications you’re looking for? You don’t want just anybody. You want someone who’s articulate who has a powerful platform, who has something valuable to share with people they’ll learn. So you can do that and you should be doing that. So make a list, make a list of everybody you know and organise that list by the people with whom you have the best relationships. That’s where you start. It’s exact because if you don’t write it down, it’s not going to happen. So how many guests have you had approximately in the last three years, Will?
Will Barron:
I have a list of previous guests, email addresses, contact details. We would just document it all so that when people come back on how’s the work’s already done forwards and I think there’s about 350 people in that list as it stands right now.
Joanne Black:
Okay. So off the top of your head of those 350 people, how many would you have good relationships with, really clicked with them and knew that if you called them, they’d return your call? You wrote to them, they’d check back with you? How many of the 350?
Will Barron:
I would say a good, a good hundred people I go back and forth with over different projects and helping them out and sharing content and that kind of thing regularly.
Joanne Black:
Perfect. So take those hundred and of those hundred, organise it by the people that you could call. Who would be the first person you would call and then list it from that point down. So with whom you had the best relationships or you liked the most, or just had the most fun with, okay, I raise my hand. You can ask me as well and that’s the list. That’s your list to start. Then you’re going to reach out to those people. You could use email in your case, but in most cases I say no because the best thing is to have a conversation. And here’s why, so let’s take the spotlight from you for a minute and take it to those of us in B2B sales.
Will Barron:
Yep.
“If you’re asking for a referral, don’t ask in any digital format because it’s so personal. Remember that when someone refers us, they’re putting their reputation on the line and they’re counting on you to take care of their colleague as they would. We’re not going to refer just anyone. We’ll refer someone who can have an intelligent conversation, will share best practises, will follow through and will represent us well. So that’s why we need the conversation.” – Joanne Black · [15:21]
Joanne Black:
So if I’m asking for a referral, I say, “Don’t ask in any digital format,” because it’s so personal. I’m so glad LinkedIn took away ask for a referral. There used to be a button you could push. People would say to me, they were really pissed that somebody would ask them, right? “Just like that?” And, “What do you mean?” They just were annoyed and no, and we don’t know why.
Joanne Black:
So here’s what we need to remember that when we ask for a referral. When someone refers us, they’re putting their reputation on the line and they’re counting on you to take care of their colleague as they would. We’re not going to refer just anyone. We’ll refer someone who can have an intelligent conversation, will share best practises, will follow through and will represent us well. So that’s why we need the conversation.
Joanne Black:
So, Will, I might see, you’re connected to say Sue Kelly on LinkedIn, “Gee, Sue would be a great contact for me.” I don’t know if you know her. We accept so many invitations. So I would want to find out first if you know her and if you do how well, and then I want to talk to you about Sue when you know her, because you’ve got intel that’s not on her profile. And we can’t miss that opportunity to have that conversation for those of us in B2B sales.
Will Barron:
So there’s-
Joanne Black:
It makes sense?
Joanne’s Definition of a Referral · [17:03]
Will Barron:
It makes total sense and I don’t want to gloss over this because I feel like you just put in another step here, which is valuable in itself. Never mind that the referral of we build our list. I hate that term, but essentially we’re building a physical list in Excel, whatever we’re using. Then the step which I don’t want to gloss over is we ring our contact that we want referring to someone else and we ask them for intel on that person, even if they don’t want our referrals, for whatever reason.
Will Barron:
For me, I have this problem all the time. So I still sell the ad space on the podcast. You do multiple six figures in ad revenue every year. But all the people who sponsor the show are all competing with each other. So it’s difficult for me to get someone to refer one sales enablement company when they’re working for another sales enablement company. But I do what you suggest there and I never really thought about this as referrals, but it’s part of the process of I’ll ring Company A and be like, “Do you know this company? Do you know the people there? What are the best features? What makes you nervous about their product?” Then I’ll ring the other company and clearly Company A knows that I’m going to be getting over people on the show as well. I’m not going to be on anyone’s back or any of this, but then now I ring Company B and say, “Hey, I’ve just been speaking to one of your competitors, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Let’s talk about getting you in front of our audience because they’ve done well out of it as well.”
Will Barron:
So that’s an extra step, even though I didn’t get a direct referral from one individual to the other, I kind of did indirectly, right? I got the information, which is almost, not almost as good, but it’s still useful in the grand scheme of things versus having someone directly connect you together.
Joanne Black:
Yeah, that’s a misconception actually. But see my definition of a referral, not everybody’s mind is you receive an introduction. The person knows you and expects to hear from you. You could drop a name and I’m not denying that works from time to time and they’re not going to refer you to their competition. I get that, Will, but many times it’s not their competition.
Joanne Black:
The introduction makes all the difference because here’s what we need to do. We need to get in and to have the meeting and not wait to type for 1815 touches to reach someone. So when we get the intro, my experience has been, we always get the meeting and meeting can be a phone call. It could be video. It could be in-person. It just depends where we are.
Joanne Black:
They’ll always talk to me because they’ve been introduced by someone they know and trust. Because of that, the trust they have for that person is transferred to me and we have a totally different conversation. It’s not, “Who are you? And why are you talking to me? And what are you trying to sell me?” It’s very much how do you know so and so, and it’s like, you’re almost friends already, not quite but like that.
Joanne Black:
So that’s my definition, but they’re not going to refer you to the competition. So if you have intel about that and you drop that that’s fine. But if we’re in B2B sales and we have touched so many people during the buying process, we need to be asking every single one of them, not only to referrals to people they know outside the company, but internal referrals are just as powerful.
The Value in Asking For Internal Referrals · [20:22]
Will Barron:
I can take a guess, but why would we ask for an internal referral? We can use the example here of me working with the legends over at Salesforce, when there’s multiple budgets, multiple marketing operations, and multiple things going on what is the value in me going, “Hey, XYZ person, can you refer me to YXYZ person internally?”
Joanne Black:
Well, why wouldn’t they? I don’t understand why you wouldn’t ask if you want more business within Salesforce. If you don’t, it’s a non-issue. If you want more business and you’ve had a great experience with this person and you know other divisions, areas of Salesforce, other GOs that you want to get into ask for an introduction. That’s how it works. But I was on a quotable podcast not because I just picked up the phone, it’s because I was referred. Boom! We scheduled it. Done.
When and Where to Ask For a Business Referral · [21:15]
Will Barron:
Perfect. Okay. So there’s two things that I want to touch on both the meeting itself, what that consists of, the dynamics of that meeting being different when you come into it with hopefully trust on both sides, as you said before, Joanne, but before that you said something that made my ears prick up. And that was, there are multiple opportunities throughout the sales process to ask for a referral and typically we tend to ask for it at the end, when everyone’s happy, when the product’s installed, everyone’s plodding along and we see it as the last thing we do in the CRM before we never speak to that customer ever again. That’s most people’s stereotype of asking for a referral. So where should we be asking for the referral and is it a different ask depending on how deep we are in the sales process and then that probably links then to how deep the relationship is as well?
Joanne Black:
There’s a lot of places you can ask. I want to give you the downfalls first. Some people think, “Oh, we have to wait to ask till we sign the deal,” and then when they sign the deal, they’ll say, “Hmm, no, I think a better wait till we implement. No, then I think we better wait till we get results.” And by that time, you’re so far away from your original buyer, you’ve just lost the momentum.
“We can ask for a referral anytime during the sales process when we’ve delivered value.” – Joanne Black · [22:28]
Joanne Black:
We can ask anytime during the sales process when we’ve delivered value. Totally overused term, I’ll give you my definition. The customer or the buyer or the prospect, whatever will say, “Thank you.” You’ve given them an insight, something they never thought about, something that’s going to help them in their job. You’ve helped them avoid some pitfalls, whatever it is, they’re appreciative of the conversation and you can certainly ask then. We all know when we connect with people and sometimes we connect immediately and sometimes it takes longer. And we have to go with our gut on that one, but we can’t miss the opportunity to ask.
Questions to Use When Asking For Referrals · [23:10]
Will Barron:
What does this ask look like? If we use the scenario you just outlined then, Joanne, of we’ve just given someone this aha moments. We’ve given them some value. We’ve changed their paradigm on something and they’ve gone, “Oh,” and clearly we’ve got their attention. We can ask them anything in that kind of 15-second period when they come down from that excitement. Are we asking strategically of, “Do you know someone in this account size that does this, that XYZ that you can introduce me to?” Or, are we just being more open with it of, “Hey, is there anyone else that would enjoy or benefit from this insight that you can introduce me to? I can continue this chain of value.”
Joanne Black:
Well, I don’t know what time it is for everybody who’s listening to this, but, “If you know anyone who could benefit from my services,” okay, I’m going to be very graphic. That’s my finger down my throat line. It does nothing. First of all, it’s anyone. We don’t want anyone. And secondly, the person could say, “No”. We don’t want to ask a question when someone can say no. So it’s never anyone. I mean, can you imagine if you said anyone, Will, and you got someone who couldn’t even put a sentence together on your podcast? No.
Joanne Black:
We have a specific definition of who we’re looking for. We need to ask based on what the client has gotten from us. So whether it’s during the sales process, whether it’s at the end, whether it’s an impact they’ve had, that we articulate what the impact was on their business, and we get them to do it if we can.
Joanne Black:
Then we’ve done our research prior to asking, we can see who they’re connected to. They may have mentioned during our conversations, other people in the organisation. We have a lot of intel and so much available to us today, too much sometimes. But we’re going to ask this question, “Who,” starting with who we’re going to give them a clear description of who we’re looking for, the business reason for the intro, the challenges they may be hearing people saying, so we’re giving them clues. Then we’re going to say, “Who are one or two people you know that I should meet? Who are one or two people you can introduce me to?”
Joanne Black:
Now, you could even get more specific. If you checked out their LinkedIn profile or have other clues, you could say, “Will, I’m curious, I see you’re connected.” “Mm-hmm.” “How well do you know this person?” So it’s a conversation, but if you say, “Who are one or two people,” they can’t say no to that, but it’s being specific because it’s not anyone.
The Best Way to Ask For Introductions After Getting a Referral · [26:10]
Will Barron:
And what are we asking for? Are we asking for a phone number? Are we asking for an email address? Are we asking for, and I hate these emails, an email where that person says, “Hey, this is Will. You might enjoy his content, blah, blah, blah, blah. I’ll leave you two to it.” And then a weird abrupt introduction when I didn’t know that person I’d been introduced to. What are we asking for and how do we ask the person to facilitate the referral?
Joanne Black:
We always ask for an introduction. I mean, if we get a phone number in an email, my definition it’s cold. The person doesn’t know us and doesn’t expect to hear from us. Same, Will, just exactly like what you’ve received. You’re saying, “Huh? What? Why is this happening?”
Joanne Black:
The best thing that can happen is the person making the referral talks to the other person first and says, “I want you to talk to Will Barron and here’s why.” I mean, not because you’re a nice guy, which you are, but because you have a podcast that has fantastic tactical information for everybody in sales, whatever you want to say, and they’re going to talk to you for that reason. We need to give the business reason. That’s the best thing, if they have the conversation first.
“When getting a referral, the introduction is key, without that, the outreach is ice cold.” – Joanne Black · [27:41]
Joanne Black:
People don’t always do that today. They’ll just say, “Hey, I want to introduce you.” I’ve had that happen. But then I take it from there and fill in some of the blanks. It’s okay. Because if somebody’s made the intro, somebody you know has made the intro, there’s a reason they’ve made that introduction. So you can reach out to them and get a little more information. But the introduction is key, without that, the outreach is ice cold.
How to Prepare For the Meeting After Getting a Referral Introduction · [28:08]
Will Barron:
We’ve got the introduction. It’s a fantastic call that’s been lined up. Perhaps our customer has reached out to one of their friends in a vertical that’s applicable to us and they’re going to call us on Tuesday. They’re excited to speak to us. What do we need to do before that meeting? What do we need to do in the first 30 seconds of that meeting? It might be filling in the blanks as you mentioned then, and what is the end goal of that meeting as well for that first encounter with that individual? Because clearly we’ve been given a leg up here. We don’t want to screw it up.
Joanne Black:
No, we don’t want to screw it up. It’s really about starting to build that relationship. What I do when I get that email, the first thing I do is respond to the email and I’ll say something like, “It was great of Will Barron to introduce us.” And, “He and I talked about (fill in the blank)” and I’ll put, “Let’s schedule a time to talk,” and I’ll suggest three dates and times always in their time zone. They write back and I send the invite. Boon. We’ve got it on the calendar.
Joanne Black:
Now when we talk, then it’s very much about why you would introduce me, why you thought this person would be a good connection for me and I’ll have that conversation with a prospect, but it really starts out very much on a friendly tone. You know, “How do you know, Will?” It’s just a totally different conversation.
Joanne Black:
So what you do is you actually collapse the sales process. You collapse it because all that prospecting time with the 1815 touches, and then you’re going to get them on the phone for a short time and all of that goes away. So we get the intro. We get the meeting. One call. That’s how it happens.
Joanne Black:
Now it may not be tomorrow. It may be in a couple weeks. It might be next month. People are busy, they have vacation, all this kind of thing goes on, but that’s a conversation. Then I always ask questions. I preface it by saying that Will suggested we talk because … It’s always a reason because he shared with me that one of your challenge is getting enough leads in the pipe and getting qualified leads. Then I’ll see if that’s on target, what he or she says, and then go from there. It’s not scripted, but I do have a goal and there’s specific things I want to cover. I also look at their LinkedIn profile and I always pick up some tidbits from that that I can relate to.
Will Barron:
I love this. You summed that up perfectly then, Joanne, and I’ve never had anyone describe it like this before. So fantastic work on your end. And you’ve obviously thought about and process this but collapsing the sales process or collapsing the time from it is the best way to describe it. Because as you said, the prospecting phase, I think for most people is a bit weird. That initial relationship, you have people have their guards up, especially now with SDRs spamming people, with everyone else spamming people, with attention just being in such deficit at the moment. I don’t know how, and when that will change and whether it’s regulation or what will come in and change the email and telephone landscape from the B2B hounding the heck out of people perspective.
Will Barron:
But when you get rid of all that and you start the relationship on the footing of, “Oh, hey, Frank said that Bob said that I might be able to help you.” Then you have a friendly conversation about Frank and his drinking habit and Bob, and the fact that he’s off doing something else where he shouldn’t be doing that. You got that relationship teed up and then it almost earns you then the right to ask questions about business quicker rather than having to build up this level of rapport, level of trust.
Will Barron:
I just love that phrase collapsing the process. That’s for everyone who’s listening who wants to sell this to their sales management or sales leadership. Jot that down and bang on about that with them.
The Benefits of Tracking Your Referral Activities · [31:49]
Will Barron:
There’s one thing that we haven’t covered that I think is going to be really useful now for sales professionals and myself, as I start to think about doing more referrals in our business, because we’ve got a lot of companies that have sponsored the show that have done really well from it. And for whatever reason, can’t sponsor it this quarter, but want to do it again next quarter or vice versa.
Will Barron:
And so I need a way, Joanne, of tracking, not necessarily my relationships, because there’s a handful of them that we regularly do business with. So I know everyone individually. I can call them up anytime. So it’s not necessarily a 500 people list that I need to track when I called them, what we spoke about last, that kind of thing. But I do need a way of tracking when I’ve asked them for a referral, if I’ve asked them for a referral, whether they were open to it or not, whether I can ask them again. Is this a CRM system that we need to implement into our workflow or is there other ways to track against a metric on whether we’ve asked and whether it was successful or not?
Joanne Black:
It definitely needs to be tracked in CRM. I mean, that’s a given, but we need to do what’s easy and everybody works differently, Will, so some people prefer to track in Excel. I actually have an Excel worksheet I share with clients because it’s one page they can go to in addition to what they put in CRM. I had one client who even used green, yellow, and red about what the prospect said and whether it was a substantial prospect or not. Put it in your task list in whatever email clients you use, anything that helps.
Joanne Black:
I mean, we’re so technology savvy today but I’m going to share something with you. I remember the days when we had a three by five file box with index cards. You’re nodding, don’t tell me you remember this as well? So if I’m talking to you on the 20th of the month, no, the 20th of the month, and you say, “Call me back on the fifth of next month.” I just moved the card from here to the next month. And when I got to that date, I loved it. It was simple, but whatever is simple. I don’t believe in complicated.
Will Barron:
I’m nodding because I used to work with a chap in the last company I worked for. It’s selling medical devices and he’d worked for the company for 25 years or so. So beyond the realm of the iPhone and the calendar system and the CRM linking up in that. He would have a similar system and I didn’t believe him. I thought he was genuinely joking. So he brought it in and it was all these dates from 20 years ago and all these surgeons, and a lot of them were registrars who were now surgeons and some of them were on my patch. So it was funny to look at the note he’d made about them and the calls and the conversations he was having back in that period.
Will Barron:
The other thing that blew my mind, just as I think about this was he said he would go to the theatre. If the surgeon was available, he’d want to go and leave some kind of message. So then he’d go out of the hospital or to the front of the hospital, he’d have a bag of change. He’d be putting money in the phone, then ring up the assistant to leave a message, because there’s no mobile phones. And he said, the biggest revolution in his sales career was having a phone in the car. He said that was the game changer. And he said, the reps that had phones in their cars were so much more efficient that they just dominated over the competition over that period.
Will Barron:
So yeah, I use Excel to track some of these. I use HubSpot as a CRM on a super lower level, just so I don’t forget anyone or lose any contact details. But yeah, I think it’s probably the quickest way to listen to this show and to apply some of this this week, right?
How Many People Should You Be Targeting When Building That Initial List of People You’d Like to Ask For a Referral? · [35:36]
Will Barron:
We’ll wrap up with this, Joanne, if someone’s listening to this show right now, they want to implement this, they want to put a strategy into place, they want to ask for a referral today, how many people should be in that spreadsheet on the first round, in the first experiment of asking for referrals? Is this every customer they have, or is this the top five customers that they’ve built relationships with over the past few years?
Joanne Black:
Well, first of all, people say to me, “What should I do if I haven’t talked to somebody or a client in the past five years,” and all I say is, “Shame on you.” So that doesn’t work. You don’t just call them back and ask for a referral. It’s again, where do you have the best relationships? And it’s not, who do you think knows the most people? Where do you have the best relationships? Because remember referrals are so personal, build your list with the people the best. Best at the top, all the way down and my definition they’ll return your call.
Ways to Identify and Strengthen Referral Relationships · [36:38]
Will Barron:
And just a final thing on this because I think this could be confusing as well. When we say relationship, is this the person who spends the most money with our organisation or is this the person that they do a little bit of business with us, but they call us and we see them regularly and they live local and we bump into them at the shops. We’re always chatting about the racing or the football, the weekend, whatever we call, which one is the better relationship to ask for a referral from?
Joanne Black:
It’s a personal relationship. Who are you most connected with? Who do you feel the most comfortable speaking with? That’s how it goes. It doesn’t matter their position in the company, how much money they’ve spent. You know everybody has connections and many times we feel that our offering is so sophisticated that, “Oh, they would know anyone.” Well, we don’t know who people know. We don’t know who their next door neighbour is, who their brother-in-law is, who they went to college with. We don’t know any of that. So that’s why we need to what I call ABA: Always Be Asking.
Parting Thoughts · [37:40]
Will Barron:
Perfect. Well, we’ll wrap up the show with that, and with that, tell us where we can find out more about you, anyone who’s interest has been crazily piqued from this conversation, where they can find out more about what you do, Joanne, and everything else so the books, the website, and all that good stuff as well.
Joanne Black:
All right nomorecoldcalling.com is my website. My email is Joanne, J-O-A-N-N-E, @nomorecoldcalling.com. And because I love to speak with people, my phone number, if you’re outside of the United States is +1 415 461 8763. And I have two more suggestions. One, please follow me on Twitter @referralsales and invite me to connect with you on LinkedIn, but please send a personal message and tell me you listened to this podcast. And on my website, you can find lots of blogs, take my referral quiz. It’s your checklist for referral selling and then look at what kind of skills you need and let’s talk.
Will Barron:
Sales nation, Joanne, is a genuine leading expert in this. I wouldn’t have anyone else on the show to dive into this step on this topic. So take her up on all this and with that, Joanne, I want to thank you for joining us on the show. We’ll link to everything that we just mentioned in the show notes to this episode over at salesman.org. I want to thank you for insights and again, for joining us on The Salesman Podcast.
Joanne Black:
Thank you, Will. Great fun.
