How to follow up on a referral.

Here’s the scenario: your happy client, Jennifer, has referred you to Brian who is a great prospect. If it’s a quality referral, Brian has given permission for you to contact him. In other words, it’s a warmed up referral which means that 50% of the time it should lead to business. Clearly you don’t want to drop the ball, but you’re busy, right?

What do you do next?

1. CALL Brian.

Only email him if Jennifer has told you that that’s the best way to contact him. Emails are too easy to ignore. 

If Brian answers the phone:

(Please note: in all the sample scripts EVERY sentence is there for a very good reason, either to reduce the other person’s resistance to meeting or to make sure you don’t sound needy in any way.)

“Hi Brian, this is Matt Anderson calling from the Referral Authority. Jennifer Davies put us in touch a few days ago and said that you might be interested in a quick conversation about ways I might be able to help you/your business. Am I catching you at a good time?”

The goal here is to get an appointment on the calendar if Brian is a good prospect for you. So if you need to determine that first, you will ask a few extra questions.

Most of the time, we have to leave Brian a voice message:

“Hi Brian, this is Matt Anderson calling from the Referral Authority. Jennifer Davies forwarded your contact information to me suggesting you might be interested in a quick conversation about ways I might be able to help you/your business. She wasn’t sure if you would be interested but she did want to connect us because she has been really pleased with the results she has gotten from the work she’s done with me. The best time to catch me this week is on Thursday morning before noon or next Monday afternoon. Please let me know when would be a good time to reach you in the next 2-3 weeks.”

2. If you are currently dropping the ball following up, leave the first message yourself and indicate who will be following up instead of you until the appointment is set.

“Hi Brian, this is Matt Anderson calling from the Referral Authority. Jennifer Davies gave me your contact information and said she had talked to you recently about the work that we’ve done and that you might be interested in getting together some time. Obviously I’m not sure what your situation is and whether there’s a fit or not, but perhaps we can find a time to figure that out. You’re welcome to try calling me at (608) 843-3827. My assistant, Susie, manages my schedule, so she would be the best person to call unless you have questions for me. Please drop her a line at (608) 831-0510 or I’ll ask her to follow up with you in the next couple of weeks.”

When your assistant starts the follow up calls, here are a couple of versions making sure NEVER to sound irritated that calls are not being returned and in fact to have the tone of your voice sound like you are calling for the first time!

“Hi Brian, this is Susie Switzer calling from Matt Anderson’s office. Jennifer Davies connected the two of you a couple of weeks ago. I am following up on Matt’s behalf because Jennifer had recommended that you both at least have a conversation some time.  I was just calling to see what might work for you in the next 2-3 weeks. If you could let me know, that would be much appreciated. My number is (608) 831-0510. I hope your day’s going well and I look forward to talking to you soon.”

“HI Brian, this is Susie Switzer calling from Matt Anderson’s office. Matt asked me to drop you a line because back in April you had expressed some interest to Jennifer Davies that you might be interested in having a brief conversation with him some time about bringing in more referral business. I don’t know if you’re still interested or not and I certainly don’t want to keep calling you if you’re not (!) , but it would be great to hear from you one way or the other. Jennifer has been very pleased with the results she has gotten working with Matt and we certainly wouldn’t be following up if we thought it would likely be a waste of your time. Please let me know about putting something on the calendar or what you like us to do next – if anything! My number is (608) 831-0510. Thanks and hopefully we can connect in the near future!”

3. Create a tracking system so that at least 5 follow ups are made

The last study I read on the topic of persistence in sales said that 94% of people give up before asking 5 times for the business, yet 60% of  business is closed after we ask 5 times. It blew me away the first time I heard numbers like this. Most people call once or twice and give up if they don’t hear anything. They tell themselves something that prevents them from calling again such as ‘I’m being pushy’.

If you would like to use the referral tracking system I use, email my assistant Susie at contact@TheReferralAuthority.com and she will send you the excel spreadsheet at no charge. You don’t need to reinvent the wheel. (Any referrals you would like to send my way to managing partners, sales managers and/or producers would be appreciated of course but no pressure!)

4. Spread out your follow up calls

I can’t say there’s a magic wait time between calls. I used to almost always wait two weeks between calls but sometimes that’s a mistake as we need to strike while the iron is hot. In other instances, people aren’t ready to decide or something comes up in their life that is far more important than what we do and we have to accept that and ask them: ‘what would you like me to do next?’ or ‘when would you like me to follow back up?’

Alternatively we also need to identify the difference between important and urgent for our prospects sometimes. Many people live a lifestyle now where they see urgency and busyness everywhere and your job may be to step in and suggest that procrastination may not be wise.

5. Instill an empowering mindset about following up with prospects.

The most helpful mindset is to remind yourself that most people admire tenacity because they don’t have it!

It also helps to remind yourself that some people will hear your messages and say things to themselves along the lines of: ‘Wow. This person really wants my business. They must be pretty confident they can help me. They seem to want to work with me a lot more than the company I currently use.’

6. Honor your referral source

This is an area I still find challenging and almost everyone does a horrible job with. Thank your referral sources and keep them informed over the sometimes lengthy period it takes to get someone on the calendar and turned into a client.

This one point alone is a grossly underutilized strategy to get more referrals. When someone refers you, they are saying ‘I know, like and trust you.’ So why do we usually do such a poor job of nurturing our relationship with that person? It’s not like there’s an unending number of people telling the world about us!

Everyone likes to be appreciated (at least thanked) and sometimes rewarded. Rewards are effective when they are unexpected and personally meaningful to that individual. Last week a client on a group referral coaching call of mine said he had given a referral source a $25 gift card to Menards (DIY store). For me that would be about as exciting as getting a magazine on knitting but when I asked him why he’d chosen that store, he shared that this gift had gone down extremely well because this was the person’s favorite place to shop.

You must have a system in place for tracking referrals and referral sources. Schedule time to review this list weekly. It’s not hard to do and will produce terrific long-term benefits.

Who else matters in your professional world? Please forward this on to them and share the wealth.