Allowing your best customers to help you expand your business with guest expert Stacey Brown Randall

Stacey Brown Randall, author of Generating Business Referrals Without Asking

Stacey Brown Randall and Bill Ringle discuss how to solve the paradox of generating business referrals without asking.

>>> Visit MyQuestforTheBest.com for complete show notes and more expert advice and inspiring stories to propel your small business growth.

Interview Insights

Top 3 Takeaways from this Interview

Stacey solves the referral paradox that we are taught: you won't get referrals unless you ask and asking directly hardly ever works.The best way to refer someone is actually via email for a very important reasonReferrals differ from introductions and lead in 2 critical ways.

Read the Show Notes from this Episode

​2:16 How Stacey’s parents insistence on reading encouraged her to love books and to eventually pursue a career in communications, teaching, and writing.

3:21 How a TV restriction allowed her to explore new avenues of life including books, play, and adventure.

4:48 “There were some big lessons I was having to learn behind the scenes about a well-run, functioning business.”

5:13 “Most people don’t create our own company because we want to create a job for ourselves, but we usually want more. We want the freedom and the responsibility to make decisions.”

5:58 “I started paying attention to how I developed business.”

6:25 “I know referrals are like a great way to bring in business, they’re like the holy grail, because everything about them is real.”

7:05 “The idea is that if you want a referral, you have to ask.”

8:34 “When you go asking for someone to give you a referral, they actually can’t, because that’s not how a referral happens. They can give you a lead, and they may or may not enjoy giving you that lead – and most of us don’t, we find it awkward.”

10:18 “Why do we listen to advice that tells us to do something that we are fundamentally not doing, and why are we keeping it going?”

10:50 “You absolutely deserve referrals. The truth is, you’re just not owed them, and there is some work you have to do.”

12:18 “The term ‘referrals’ is so overused that it’s diluted what it actual stands for and what it actually means.”

12:52 “When you think about a referral, it has two things that the other types of referrals don’t have.”

13:45 Referrals require both a personal connection and a need identify.

15:18 How referrals can make the hiring process easier.

16:52 Strategies for successful referrals: a case study, and why language used is so significant in this context.

19:35 “The myth about referrals is that our referral sources are sitting around thinking about us, and they’re not.”

20:58 “We have to recognize that typically when a referral is going to happen, it’s because there has been a triggering event, which means that a conversation has happened, and there is somebody who knows you can solve somebody’s problem.”

22:46 “I think, in general, we just go looking for the easy button in business.”

23:05 “We have to be careful about the outreach we’re going to do to our referral sources.”

25:17 “It’s so much more fun going through a referral process rather than going out and doing all that prospecting and networking and cold calling, but it’s still work.”

27:06 How to build referral touchpoints on a shoestring budget.

28:33 Lightning Round

Expert Bio 

Stacey Brown Randall a three-time entrepreneur, author of Generating Business Referrals…Without Asking, and host of the Roadmap to Grow your Business podcast. Through her programs, like Growth By Referrals and Sticky Client Experiences, she provides a roadmap to take control of your business growth.

Stacey’s quest to crack the code on how to generate referrals without asking began after her first business failed. When she started her second business – a business and productivity coaching practice – she knew keeping her pipeline full of new clients would be one of the biggest diff...