What if you could stop chasing leads—and have new customers come to you instead?
Most trade businesses rely heavily on paid ads, Google, or traditional channels to keep leads flowing. But when those slow down, panic sets in.
The reality? There’s a far easier, lower-cost way to generate high-quality leads—you’re just probably not using it consistently (or at the right time).
In this episode you’ll discover:
- The three key moments in your sales process where asking for referrals actually works
- How to ask for introductions in a natural, low-pressure way that gets more yeses
- Why referrals can reduce your reliance on expensive lead generation channels
Hit play now to start generating more referrals, reduce your lead stress, and build a more predictable pipeline.
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Episode Transcript:
Ben Wright:
In this episode, we’re going to discover the three times you should always ask for referrals to reduce your sales reliance on new leads.
Intro:
Welcome to Sales Growth Made Simple, the show helping seven to eight figure trade, construction and industry sales and business leaders finally in the stress of inconsistent sales by simplifying your sales systems so your team can close more deals and grow faster
I’m your host Ben Wright and over the last 15 years, I’ve helped hundreds of trade and sales leaders grow their businesses and generate over $200 million in additional revenue by simplifying their sales processes.
Let’s Get Started
Ben Wright:
It’s rare that I meet with a trade business who isn’t chasing new leads. So in this episode today, we are going to unpack the three times that you should always be asking for referrals so that you don’t need to be consistently chasing new leads through your Google or your digital right or your very expensive traditional lead channels. As we roll into today’s episode, have a think about times in your business that may not be now but times in your business you felt you were desperately short of leads, times when you were then worried about how much forward work you could book around your forward schedule being filled, around how you keep your teams busy and then of course how your business remains profitable.
I don’t know many business leaders who haven’t had to deal with this issue multiple times across their journey. I certainly have. In fact, in any new business that I start, I’m constantly thinking about how we can build new leads and very much so fill out our pipeline moving forward.
The good news about this is that generating new leads doesn’t always have to be done through traditional channels. In my experience in the 25 years of working with salespeople, one thing that I’ve consistently seen is one area of lead generation that is almost always overlooked by businesses. It’s also almost always quite a significant source for businesses when it comes to bringing in new leads to their business.
It’s often the least expensive, it’s often very easy to action and it’s often a lot more enjoyable than going out trying to get new leads and meeting new customers for the first time. And yes, by now you absolutely know what it is because I mentioned the word at the start of this episode but it’s all about referrals. It’s all about not only making sure you’re asking for referrals but you’re doing it at the right time and you’re getting enough yeses to justify the time in it.
For me, across the tens of thousands of deals that I’ve worked with, there really are three times when I see referrals being effective to ask for. Three times, not just one but three times. I will say that the three times won’t always apply to every business, i.e. you won’t always be asking for referrals at each of these three times.
However, every business, every single business that is listening now, every single leader that’s listening now, at least one and more than likely two of these are going to apply to you at a minimum when it comes to asking for referrals. So, let’s have a look at what those three times are. Number one is a very common method particularly for those businesses that have short delivery cycles and particularly for those businesses that have quite engaging sales cycles and that’s to ask for a referral straight away when you do the deal.
So, we’re building out a pergola at the back of the house or a beautiful new extension to a house or we’re building out a nice outdoor area for a B2B business, somewhere for their staff to sit or their team to sit. We’ve just signed the deal. We have a customer that’s super happy with us and the first thing we ask is, hey, we’re a family business that is very grateful whenever we can be recommended to new customers.
Is there anyone you know that’s looking into doing this now? Whether you’re a commercial business or a residential business, a homeowner, is there anyone you know that’s looking into doing this right now that we could speak to? So, it’s at that time when you’ve just signed the deal, the customer’s happy with what you’ve done so far from a sales process point of view and it’s a nice little opportunistic moment to ask if they know anyone else. Now, the key here when we’re asking for referrals is to make sure that we’re asking if they know anyone else who’s interested. It’s not asking them to say, do you have anyone else that you could refer us to? That’s a very different and it’s a much harsher way of asking to be introduced to someone than is there anyone you know that we could talk to? Is there anyone you know that’s interested? It’s a much less confronting use of words.
Of course, the word referrals I wouldn’t put at the high end in terms of being super, super confronting but it’s a much softer, much nicer, much easier platform to ease into working potentially with someone else that they know. Is there anyone else that you know that we could perhaps talk to? Is there anyone else that you know that maybe you could introduce us to? These are very soft introduction requests and a great time to be asking that is at the point of sale. The second time is at what we’d call the retention point.
So, that’s once a customer’s dealt with you at a sales cycle point of view and they’ve seen from an operational execution point of view that what you’re doing is good work. So, if you’re building out that pergola at the back, once they’ve seen the detail that you’ve put into putting the posts up and you have four beautifully set posts concreted in, nice and sturdy, perfectly straight, the project is starting to come to life and the customer’s like, wow, I can’t wait to see this come to life. I can’t wait to see this happen.
There’s a great book out there called Retention Point by Robert Skrob, S-K-R-O-B, worth reading, Retention Point by Robert Scrobb, if you get a moment. However, the retention point’s all about that moment in time when your customers are super committed to not just what you’ve said you’re going to deliver but what you are delivering. So, if you think about your type of industry, your type of business, that moment when you’ve turned soil, when you’ve made some effective momentum forward in your project delivery, things are going well for the customer and they’re happy with the progress.
Great time to be asking for a referral, particularly if you’re out on site and you’re checking in on the project to see how things are going, the project’s going well. Again, it’s that soft question, hey, is there anyone else you know that would be really interested in speaking to us? Hey, your posts are looking good. Do you have any of your friends or your business colleagues that would be interested in learning a bit more about what we do? Is there anyone else you know that could do with a pergola that you’d love us to speak to? So, that’s the second point in time, great time to be asking for referrals.
And the third one here, this is the easiest entry point and the most obvious for a lot of businesses and that’s once the project’s done and the benefits from the project are being achieved. So, if we’re looking at the pergola example, it’s up, the posts are up, the roof’s up, it’s being used. A couple of weeks after it’s gone in, we’ve had a beautiful outdoor day and we know that could have been the perfect time that our customers out there with their friends, with their family and actually using that pergola area.
So, once the customer’s using it and they’ve seen how it can impact their life, then it’s a perfect time to also roll in and ask, is there anyone else that you think could do with a pergola? Is there anyone else you know that you might be able to introduce us to? Is there anyone else that you can think of who could do with something like this? So, we’re not using the R word, we’re not using the referral word, but we’re asking for an introduction to someone else they know. Now, there’s a whole other topic we can discuss here around how do you incentivise them? Is it worth doing so? What type of incentives do you run? But for me, the most important piece of communication I can get across today, particularly for businesses that are medium to high ticket items, right? So, if you’re in the thousands or tens of thousands of dollars, it’s often that you won’t need to incentivise people for a referral, but you simply need to ask. So, to recap for today, three times you should be asking for referrals to reduce your reliance on new leads because, of course, every time we bring in a referral, that’s one less lead we need to be generating at the other end, right? Those three times are straight away once you’ve made the sale at the retention point.
So, once they’re starting to see momentum in your project and then lastly, once the major benefits have been achieved. Okay. So, that’s it for today.
Thank you. Very grateful for your listening as always. The aim from today is you take one of those at least and you roll it into your business.
If you are not asking for referrals, please start doing it. Close rates are higher. You will absolutely need less leads into your business and it can make a huge impact on your future sales.
That’s it for today. Please keep that focus on being 1% better each and every day. It does make all the difference and we’ll see you next time.
Bye for now.