Secret psychology of referrals

Okay, this is Dean. And just so you don't get confused, I wanted to record another little episode to kind of tell you what's going on here. I'm at Genius Network sitting with Paul Colligan, and Paul has created this great tool for me where I can, with one click, set up the recording of a podcast just like this, where I can, kind of. A lot of times when I am out, I have ideas that I think would be really great analogies to share.

And like the other day I was at Starbucks and I was alone. Usually I'm there with people, but I was sitting there and there were a bunch of people around me and they're all in conversation. And it dawned on me, you know, this is where referrals happen. This is.

I always say that, that referrals happen as a result of conversation. And I had a visual of it. You know, if you imagine anywhere you go where people are sitting around, they're having coffee or they're having lunch and they're talking, you can imagine that at some point there's going to be a point where a conversation comes up that would be a valuable conversation that could turn into a referral for you if they're your clients. And so I always say when.

How referrals happen is three things have to take place in those conversations. They have to, first of all, notice that the conversation's about whatever it is you do, let's say real estate, they have to think about you, meaning you hold the position of that provider in their mind. And then they have to introduce you to the person that they had the conversation with and tell you that they were in conversation with somebody that's about to do whatever it is you do. So all three of those things have to fire.

And often for every referral that you get, where people call you up and say, you know, hey, I'm a friend of John, and he said that you could help me sell my house. Well, there's probably at least five more times where somebody had a conversation that was about somebody moving or buying a house or moving out of town or selling their house or buying an investment property or a vacation property, or all the things that would be kind of high probability conversations that people have. And they may have thought about you, they may have noticed that it was about real estate and thought about you. And they may have even said to their friend, oh, you should call John, or you should call Dean or whatever, you know, act, saying, encouraging them to call you.

But then they don't tell you about it right away, and you Run into them at the grocery store, you know, 90 days later and they say, hey, did my friend John ever give you a call? And you're like, no, I never heard from me. Oh man, I think they've already gone, they've already moved out of state. But I tell people about you all the time and you know, you're thinking, okay, but nobody's ever called me.

And so what we really want to do when you understand how referrals happen is we want to set up a circumstance that instructs people on what to do when they hear somebody talking about whatever it is that you do. So what we do to do that is every month we send out a. Something I call the world's most interesting postcard. It's just a, you know, really interesting one sided newsletter type of postcard that we send out.

And it has interesting facts on the front, it's easy to consume, good looking. It's the most interesting thing that will arrive in their mailbox that day. They don't have to open it, they see it right away. And then on the back we have a graphic that looks like a post it note.

And in that post it note we put a little note that has the same formula. We use a formula that says just a quick note in case you hear someone talking about and we insert a high probability conversation there. So let's say just a quick note in case you hear someone talking about buying their first home. That's it's January right now, New Year's resolutions.

That's a time when people will often make, make the resolution to buy a house. If you hear someone talking about buying their first house, give me a call or text me and I'll get you a copy of our six steps to home ownership book to give them. Now see what we've done there is that little note. We're presencing a high probability conversation.

We're thinking out in advance that in conversation in January they, they probably are very likely to hear somebody talking about this is the year they're going to buy a house. So we want to instruct them on what to do when they hear that conversation. Not just telling people to, you know, hey, don't keep us a secret or make sure you tell people about us or feel free to tell people about us. All those things are great.

But it's much more important that we actually give them the instructions on what to do. So that's the way that referrals happen. And that's the kind of thing that I'll be able to share on a podcast like this, because right now I've shared a little bit here. I can just stop this recording.

And Paul has set up this magic process where everything will automatically go from my phone right now up into itunes, and this episode will be showing up within minutes of me having the idea for it. So demonstration time. Here we go.