What NOT to do with a Referral

Transcription:

Hello and welcome to The “S” Word Live.

My name is Renee Hribar, sales strategist, TEDx speaker and author. And my goal today is to help you, the women out there who own businesses, who need to sell their own services inside of their own business. You, the one with the application funnel, you, the one who’s selling high end branding, you, the one who’s selling one on one coaching services. You. That’s who I’m talking to. So this week, alone and dear, it’s only Wednesday. I have had countless amazing, smart women who have come to me saying I cannot close this person or this is a particular situation I’m having. Or, you know, it came in right. We thought it all went well. I ticked all the boxes, but it didn’t convert. What did I do? So this is a great opportunity for me to share this with you. So since it came up more than three times, that’s my litmus test for me to know that I need to talk about it with you. That’s what you can expect from this show every week right here. Coming to you live from my Facebook business page is fresh in the moment right now, best sales advice based on current situations that are happening now.

So hopefully what will happen is you’ll hear this scenario and you’ll say, hmm, I might have had that before, huh? I might know someone. So you don’t want to admit it here, but I am gonna share it with you. So this is the specific situation that keeps coming up. So you tell me, have you ever received a referral from someone and you were thinking, yeah, I love referrals. I know I love referrals.

Say hello as you join.

Thank you for joining me live today. You can let me know in the comments. Have you ever received a referral? If you have, how do you feel when you receive a referral?

I always say you should feel great because that says you do such great work that without incentive, others are desiring to share your brilliance with the world. So that is a good thing. So if you’ve ever received a referral, say yes in the comments, I’ve received a referral. So in this particular case, this has happened. I said multiple times this week already. So they received a referral. Shows me you’re doing amazing work. Good for you. You’re amazing. They get on a sales call. They’ve taken my sales training. So I have an amazing sales call, seekers’ training inside of my Sell Like a Mutha’ program. Typically, the people that I’m talking to regularly are people that are in my master mind, are students of mine in my program. And they said, you know, Renee, I used your your formula. We’ve practiced it before. I really feel like I delivered exactly what you said and what you would advise. I feel like I did that. OK, check. So you had a referral, so you had the know like and trust factor down.

Awesome. You had the sales conversation. Unlock. Okay, good. That’s good. And then this is what happened. This is the final bit that made me come to you today. They say I sent the proposal.

And then crickets.

So has that ever happened to you, you had a referral, you feel like you had a great call, you sent over a proposal and then nothing.

So has that ever happened to you? So this week that’s happened so often that here are the questions I want you to ask yourself as you’re evaluating what you can do to A, recover the sale and B, avoid this situation in the future because, P.S. this is completely avoidable with really a few simple shifts. So here are the questions I want you to ask yourself. So this is the first question. When you’ve connected with the referral, did you assume that they had looked you up? I don’t want you to assume that. I want you to assume that they don’t know you at all.

Today, even I received a friend request from someone and I received a friend request regularly on different platforms and social channels. And I typically leaf through them. This particular person, we had over 100 hundred friends in common. I thought, well, goodness, this person’s right. I’ve looked her up. I thought, well, she’s a really interesting person. I would like to be friends with her. I’m glad that she requested my friendship. I clicked accept and then I message her saying, “Hey, thank you for the friend request.” That was it. Literally a one sentence.

And she’s like, “Hi, What do you do?” I’m like, “What!?” You friend requested me.

Don’t assume that just because they were connected to you that your friend said, hey, this is a great person for(…). Do not assume that they looked you up.

So that’s the first question. Did you assume that they looked you up? The second thing is during the call, did you maybe ask all the questions you needed to ask? So I say this a lot. Good salespeople have a good pitch. Right, they’re real solid on what they do. And this is what I do. And this is why it’s great. And here the results. But they might walk into what I call cobwebs because they didn’t ask the right question. So ask yourself this, Did I ask all the questions?

Did I really use the call to discover and uncover how this potential client, even though they were referral, was looking at the problem and how they explained the problem?

So there’s really like three questions in there that I’ve just given you. You’re welcome.

Again, this is what I do. This is what I’ve been doing for 26 years. Thousands, I would say hundreds of thousands of hours of this exact space, me and a customer, me training someone to talk to a customer.

So if there’s a if there was a SWAT team for hand to hand conversations, I’d be captain. Right? Like, my brother is in Special Forces and he specializes in hand-to-hand combat.

I’m like I specialize in hand-to-hand conversations. So the last piece of this, the last question I want you to ask yourself, if I sent the proposal and I get crickets, my question that I want you to ask yourself is did I set a deadline?

Now, people can say, well, I mean, I’m available, right? I mean, I’m available. This offer’s not going anywhere, is it? I mean, are you going to live forever? Are you immortal? Because none of us are. I mean, maybe you are. I’m not. So ultimately, all of my offers have a deadline.

So that being said, I want to put a deadline up because I want it to be fair to them and to me. If that person comes back to me next week, I might have filled the spot that that person was meant to fill. And then it’s not fair to them because I won’t be able to help them or here’s some other questions. Here’s some bonus questions I want to ask you. Did you think that this person might not be able to afford your service? That’s a big, big one that came up a lot, not just today, but over time, but specifically today. This morning, in fact, I had a conversation which is well, I don’t mean I charge a lot. I don’t know if this person can be able to afford it. Here’s the real story. That person didn’t buy from that person. However, they did go and buy a program from someone else who wasn’t afraid to put a deadline on it, do their due diligence. And guess what? They charged him three times as much. So at the end of the day, is anyone wrong or right? Here are the questions, though, that I want you to ask yourself.

If you’re experiencing this scenario where you had a referral, you feel like you had a good connection on the call, you send a proposal and you got crickets. I want you to go back through this broadcast and listen maybe a couple of times, take notes, send me a message, ask some questions. If you’re a student in one of my programs or if you’re in my mastermind or we work together in some other capacity, I’m going to encourage you to send me a Vox, because I definitely want to make sure that you’re not continuing to suffer from the common cold of these sales situations. So I am so delighted that I get to come to you live every single week right here, right from my Facebook business page, and it gets the chance to get broadcast. And syndicated across all platforms, whether you’re listening to me here today live or whether you’re listening to me on the replay, thank you for your time. I appreciate you. And let’s continue the conversation by clicking the link. And I will see you soon.