The Growth Workshop Podcast
Episode 5 Review - How To Ask For Referrals with Thomas Coles: Your Network Is Your Net Worth
Fri, 14 Jun 2024
We’re joined by successful entrepreneur, Thomas Coles, discussing how, and when to ask for referrals for developing your business. 82% of potential clients prefer seeking recommendations from their network over online searches. We talk psychological barriers, building trusted relationship with your network, and the impact this can have in creating opportunities. Who knows what opportunities currently lie in your network.
Full Episode
So, Johnny, what a great conversation we had with Thomas Coles. Such fantastic insight shared around the importance of asking for referrals and, well, I guess how it's helped him in developing some incredible businesses over his career. I'm curious, what was it that most stuck out for you from our conversation?
The beautiful thing about doing these very short, punchy episodes is that you actually get a chance to apply some of the things that our wonderful guests share with us. I think the important part is that asking for referrals is not something that necessarily is new and profound.
You know, the AI buzz at the moment, asking referrals has been around for hundreds of years, I'm sure, because people have always spoke to each other to share ideas and word of mouth around where to go next to get their problem solved. The point is, is we can talk about asking referrals for many more years, but if you don't do it, you really don't get any value from it.
The point that Thomas has made recently around effective techniques, I took that forward and rather than straightforwardly asking for referrals, I I was over in Boston with a financial service organization, helping them acquire multi-billion dollar deals. It was a fantastic couple of days over there. They're really looking to transform their approach of client engagement.
And part of that was around how to actually ask for referrals. And the important part around that was I thought, well, if I'm going to help them ask for referrals... I might as well be asking for some myself. So the way I built that opportunity up was during the training that we conducted over in Boston.
I ensured that I shared the techniques and examples of how to ask for referrals as described by making sure that we wait and look out for a thank you. And so when someone says thank you for all the advice or support they've given you and using that as a leverage point towards then asking for a referral. And because remember, most people don't ask for referrals.
That's the important message I'm making here is and actually, in fact, if you do ask for referrals, most people are willing to give them referrals. So I did ask for referrals. There was a group of 17 people. Honestly, I got one back, but one is better than none. And that one was to an 18,000 person professional service firm based in the United States.
So that individual knows the vice president of that organization really well. And I'm looking forward to an introduction by email. After that, I followed up with the individual who gave me a referral and said, well, what is the best way for us to connect? Is it via email? Is there another means? How well do you know the person? Is there anything I can share with you?
Are you happy for me even to write the introductory email? The gentleman that I trained in Boston came back and said, hey, don't worry. I'm going to go and approach this person and let you know when the best time to talk to them. So that's my experience. Thank you to Thomas for sort of prompting his effective techniques was really super helpful as well. But Matt, there's an example. I've done it.
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