Ep #407: I Need More People Referring Me!

Stacey Brown Randall: Hey there, do you love referrals but hate asking for them? Well, then you’ve come to the right place. This is the Roadmap to Referrals podcast, and I’m your host, Stacey Brown Randall.

Every week, I break down why you don’t have to ask, pay, or be gimmicky and network all the time to generate referrals for your business.

We take a science-backed approach with our methodology, framework, and strategies. The goal is simple, to help you take control of your referrals on your terms.

This episode, along with the next two episodes, are focused on a question and a need, I would say, that I hear a lot.

Now, I hear it from clients, naturally, because it’s actually one of the things they plan to learn from me when they start working with me, but I also hear it from just about everyone else when they start talking about referrals.

I hear it from you guys who are listening to this podcast, or if you are watching this on YouTube. I hear it from the listeners of this podcast, the watchers of this podcast.

I hear it from audience members when I’m presenting, whether that’s virtual or in person. It’s just questions I get a lot.

And that question, which boils down to a single topic, is more people referring you, new people referring you. The question is always, how do I make that happen?

So that need for new or more people referring you presents itself, really, in a couple of different ways, but there just seems to be these three questions that I keep hearing repeatedly. And so I wanna take an episode each and tackle each of these three questions.

Now, it’s not the only questions I get when it comes to more people referring you or new people referring you.

We’re gonna kinda go broad with the first one because the first question I always hear is, I need more people referring me.

But then another question I always hear is, well, because I’m a big believer in you don’t train your referral sources or your referral partners to do anything, so what I’ll hear then, well, if I can’t train my referral sources or my referral partners, then what do I do? If I can’t train them on who to refer to me, then what do I do?

And then the third question I hear a lot is also, so how do I use networking then to actually get more referrals? So these are not the only questions I hear, but these are three questions I hear a lot.

And so we are gonna tackle each one of these over the three episodes, starting with this episode. So we’re gonna go a little bit more broad and we’re gonna talk about the basic refrain that I hear over and over and over again, which is, I need more people referring me.

So when we think about breaking this down, it doesn’t actually start with the what to do. I know everybody wants to jump into just tell me what to do, but that actually will not, that actually will create a ton more work for you.

You will spend so much time spinning your wheels if you just try to dive in and try to do a bunch of stuff to get more people to refer you, you will waste time, you will burn out, you will be exhausted and you will be completely turned off by the whole idea of cultivating new people to start referring you.

There is an art and a science to how I teach it. And so the idea that you would just dive in and start doing all the things is like, let’s be honest, we all know this, it’s like a recipe for exhaustion and then it won’t work.

So that’s even worse to be tired and to not have the results that you wanna show for it. So before you dive into the, what do I do? Just tell me what to do, we gotta back up a couple of steps, right?

It kind of starts this whole process of like, hey, I need more people referring me. It kind of starts a few steps earlier. And so it’s gonna be a series of questions I’m going to ask you.

I would love it if you would listen to me or if you’re watching this on YouTube, listen to me actually ask the first question, then pause the recording, right?

Pause the video, pause the podcast episode, pause it and then actually think about your answer or write down your answer, even better, right?

Pull up that notes app on your phone, pull out that piece of paper, maybe you’ve got an envelope somewhere in your car and like think about the actual answer to that question.

If any of these questions I ask are hard to answer, that’s okay, that’s normal, but you do need to think more deeply about them and spend some time, some brain power around answering them.

If any of these questions are easy to answer, then awesome, you’ll just breeze right through these questions.

But after each question that I ask, don’t just listen to me move on to the next question, pause for a minute and really think about what your answer will be.

Maybe it’ll be easier for you to listen to all the questions and then come back and listen to one each individually, whatever works best for you.

But don’t let this be one of those episodes where you hear what I say, you kind of think you have some ideas and then you actually don’t know what you really wanna do because you haven’t truly thought through the actual depth of these questions.

Now, I mean, don’t mean like depth, like you gotta spend 45 minutes on each question, you’re gonna probably know some of these answers pretty quickly, but you probably will need to think about it, that will be important, okay?\

All right, so first thing when you’re thinking about, hey, I need more people referring me, if that is you, here’s the first question I want you to ask yourself.

First question is, do you know how many clients you need this year? Now, if you offer different service offerings, right? If you have like, hey, like in my business, right?

I have a referral accelerator, I have a referrals coaching program and I have a VIP referrals experience. Those are my three main ways that I work with my clients.

That’s not the only things that I do in my business though, right? I do speaking engagements, I’m on podcast, I also have a starter course that we call Your Next Five Referrals, which is like an online starter course for people like testing the waters with me first.

So that’s not the only thing that I’m ultimately trying to bring what I would say clients in for, well, minus the podcast interviews thing that I mentioned.

But truly when you think about like, where does revenue come from into your business and what are people buying, right? What are they hiring you for? And what does that look like, right?

So if it’s consulting and also, maybe you also have a product, if it’s consulting and maybe you have an online program, a little bit like me, great.

Maybe that you offer, you’re an attorney and you work with clients in one way, but you do like four different types of legal work, right?

And so in that case, you’re bringing in clients in different areas, not just necessarily for the exact same thing.

How many clients do you need this year? Kind of having a ballpark idea of that level sets everything.

If you’re a longtime listener of this podcast and watching this on YouTube, you’ve heard me say that people will come up to me and they will say, I need like 100 people referring me.

And I’m like, okay, so that means you probably need 100 clients a year, right? Around, and they’re like, oh no, no, no, I need like 20.

And I’m like, then why do you need 100 people referring you? Or why do you need 100 referrals if you only need 20 clients in a year?

Now, if you need more than that, then of course that would make sense, but people have this, they just don’t align, right? It’s not connecting, it doesn’t align.

Like how many referrals do you need to actually, how many clients do you actually need in a year? Those numbers need to be in somewhat of an alignment, okay?

So first question is how many clients do you need this year? If you have different things that you offer, maybe break that down, right?

So if you have, like if you’re like me and you have a coaching program and an accelerator, we max out the accelerator each time I do it at 12 people. So it’s never more than 12, right?

So I know how many people I need in my referral accelerators when I do it a couple of times a year. It’s 12 each time I do it.

So think about it in that way, all right? So like, what is it for you and how many clients you need this year?

Okay, question number two. Do you know how many referrals you need this year, right? So this is always based on the number of clients, but referrals actually may not be the only way that you bring in clients.

And that’s important to remember, right? Like that’s the important thing that we wanna make sure that we understand that when you think about how many clients you need, referrals may not be the only way that you bring in those clients.

So it doesn’t mean that how you answered question one is that it’s the exact same number for question two, which is how many referrals do you need this year, okay?

And let’s also keep in mind, you never really close every single referral you receive. That very rarely happens.

Will you close every referral you receive? So this number can be bigger to account for those who will be referred but won’t become clients.

So think about question number two is how many referrals do you need this year? And yes, that number may be based on your number of clients, but referrals may not be the only way you bring in clients.

So it could be smaller, it may be larger, right? You’ve gotta figure out that number for yourself.

Okay, so let’s look at number three, question number three. Do you know who your best referral sources or referral partners are now? It may be specific people.

There may be specific people, the names that come to mind, right? So maybe specific people, or for you it may be more of a general idea of the type of folks, right?

Maybe because they’re in a certain industry, or they do something certain, or they run in a certain group, or a circle, or whatever, right?

But do you know who your best referral sources, your best referral partners are now? And this, knowing this answer, so your answer may be no, that’s a legitimate answer, right?

But here’s what I want you to understand. Knowing who your best referral partners or your best referral sources are, that actually leads me into the next question, question number four, which is really important for you to understand.

So again, question number three is, do you know right now who are your best referral sources? Who are your best referral partners right now?

And it may be, yes, it’s these five people, right? And here are their names. Or it’s, yes, I’ve got a couple of people, and they all are X, Y, Z, right? They all do X, Y, Z, like the job that they have or the type of business that they own, right? So from that perspective, do you know who they are?

And that leads us into question four, which is, do you have a profile of who is more likely to be able to refer you? If you’re writing this down, I want you to underline that part, able to refer you.

Underline it, highlight it, star it, whatever you gotta do. That piece is most important, right? Do you have a profile of who is more likely to be able to refer you?

And the able to refer you means that they actually come across your ideal client with some level of regularity, right? It’s not like they come across one ideal client once every five years. That’s not regularity.

It would probably be one, but more than likely more than that in a given time period, right? So they would come across maybe a couple or maybe dozens of your ideal clients.

That doesn’t mean necessarily they’re gonna refer all those folks to you, but they come across your ideal client with some level of regularity.

Now, every business determines that regularity a little bit different, which is all based on how you answered the first two questions.

How many clients, how many referrals do you need in a year? Okay, so understanding that level of regularity and creating a profile so you know who you’re on the lookout for.

This is where we save a ton of time. We are able to save so much time when we know actually who’s more likely to refer us, maybe because they have conversations with clients and determine issues that that client may have that I could solve.

So they send their client to me, right? So it’s thinking about who has that more level opportunity to refer you, but it’s on a more regular basis.

Now, we’re actually gonna tackle this idea of creating an ideal profile for your referral source. And it’s never like a profile for one person.

It’s a little bit more general than that, but we’re actually gonna tackle creating an ideal referral source profile in our April 20-minute teaching.

So if you are listening to this, any time in the month of April, particularly early on in the month of April, late March, early April of 2026, we are actually gonna be tackling this in our 20-minute teaching.

Now, if you’ve never been to one of our 20-minute teachings, I take one topic, it is typically a smaller topic, and I knock it out in 20 minutes. Most of the time, I come in under the 20-minute mark.

Every once in a while, I’ve been known to go over by a minute or two, but we set a timer, it’s really to keep me honest, and I teach solid for those 20 minutes, and I break it down step-by-step for what I’m teaching and what I want you to understand and know. And then we move into questions after that.

So our April 20-minute teaching is gonna be focused on me walking you through the steps of how you’re going to create your ideal referral source, your ideal referral partner profile.

So if you wanna join me, you just gotta sign up. You have to be on the list to actually get the link of all the information and all the details.

Just go to staceybrownrandall.com/teaching, staceybrownrandall.com/teaching, and you’ll be able to secure your seat to sign up for our April 20-minute teaching.

It is live, and we do a replay. Like right now, we’re offering a replay, but only if you’ve registered. And this will be how to determine your ideal referral source profile.

Okay, so I got off on that, but I just wanted to like, if you’re like number four, and question four is, do you have a profile who’s more likely to be able to refer you, and you’re like, I have no idea?

Well, don’t worry, we can solve that problem for you, okay? But if you do have a profile, good. Let’s move on to question five.

Do you know how many people you need to be referring to you? So our second question was about how many referrals you want.

The fifth question is actually about how many people do you need referring you so you can get to that number.

But the number of referrals, so question two is the number of referrals you want in a year. That question isn’t just from new people, unless you have no one referring you, right?

That number is gonna come from maybe clients that are working with you through the client experience that’ll start referring you. It’ll come from people who already refer you and they keep referring you.

And there’ll probably be some kind of piece of that number of the number of referrals you want in a year that you probably need to come from new people too, which is the point of this episode and the next two episodes, and of course our 20-minute teaching.

So do you know the number of people you need to be referring you? And that number of people always, always is going to on some level align with the number of referrals, but not one-to-one.

So it’s not like, hey, I need 50 referrals so I need 50 referral partners. I need 50 referral sources, right? The number of people is aligned to the number of referrals, but not in a one-to-one basis.

It’s like, hey, I have a group of referral sources. They all each give me three to four referrals a year. Take that group of folks, multiply it by three.

That is a carve out for those number of referrals I can anticipate. But if you have a gap, you need new people, more people referring you. But you need to know how many people that you need referring you for this to make sense.

All right, let me run through these questions real quick again as like a recap high level.

Number one, do you know how many clients you need this year?

Number two, do you know how many referrals you need to receive this year?

Number three, do you know who your best referral sources or referral partners are right now?

Number four, do you have a profile of who is more likely to be able to refer you?

And number five, do you know how many people you need to be referring you?

Why these questions first? Well, simply they form your expectations, which will help you build a plan, a roadmap of what you’re actually aiming for.

You needing more people referring you can absolutely be an issue you can solve, right? You can solve it and it can be solved, right?

You need to solve it and it can be solved. It’s actually one of the foundational strategies I teach to my clients.

But before you run off and join like a million lead groups or start attending networking events every night of the week which you may not need to do either of those, you need a plan.

And the plan is gonna start with the facts of the data of what you’re ultimately looking to get out of that plan. It starts with knowing how many new people you need to refer you.

Then, right, once we know how many, then we need to know who they are and who they are more likely to be. Who are the group of people who are more likely to refer you?

Armed with this information, you’ll be in a much better place and very ready to devise a plan to actually start cultivating people.

Cultivating new referral sources always starts first with identifying who they should be. And these five questions should help get you started on that journey.

So make sure you come back next week because we are gonna keep tackling more on this topic as we start unpacking the who should be the people who are referring you, right? And how do you get more new people referring you this year?

You can access the transcripts and the resources mentioned like signing up for the April monthly 20-minute teaching on the show notes page for this episode at staceybrownrandall.com/407. Thanks for making it to the end. Until next week, take control of your referrals and build a referable business. Bye for now.