Fitness Business School – Generate More Referrals

Full Transcript

Hey, Pat Rigsby here. And in this episode, I want to talk with you about how to generate more referrals. Everybody wants a referral based business, but most people just kind of rely on word of mouth and don’t do anything proactively to facilitate getting more referrals. We’re going to change that in this episode.

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All right, everybody wants referrals. Everybody wants a referral based business. Everybody loves having referrals coming to their business. And I don’t blame you, right? I mean, why wouldn’t you? Referrals come pre-sold. They come already having really leaned into social proof because whoever referred them was the social proof that that allowed them to have confidence that you could help. They come more comfortable than the average prospect, because they know somebody who is already part of your business, part of your community. They stay longer. They refer people themselves because that’s the culture that they were brought in through. So why wouldn’t we want more referrals, right? I mean, but let’s face it. Most people, they think of referrals. The way that that I would describe word of mouth, they just think that clients are out there kind of banging the drum for their business 24 hours a day, seven days a week, or at least that’s what they should be doing.

And I’ll be honest. I have a completely different perspective. I believe that clients pay us for what we do for them, and we’re not entitled to anything. And that’s the value exchange. We provide the service, the experience, the results they provide the money, the time, the commitment, and that’s the business relationship. So if they aren’t referring who’s to blame them, they lead busy lives. They’ve got their own responsibilities. They’ve got their own families. They’ve got their own careers. They’ve got plenty of other things taking up their time and attention. So what I want to do is help you see referrals, maybe through a different light and understand a couple ways, really, probably three or four ways that you can generate more referral driven business.

So what is a referral? Really? A referral is just somebody that knows likes and trusts us, introducing us to somebody else in their life. That’s it, that’s what their job is. Their job is not to sell them their jobs, not to collect a credit card or a check. Their job is not to do any of that. That’s our job. We are the business owner, but if we can get all the people in our business to introduce us to the people in their life who might be a good fit for what we do, we’re going to see growth month after month, year after year. And it’s going to be the most pleasant, enjoyable growth we can experience, because like I said, those people are coming in predisposed to being great clients.

So how can we get more of those introductions and think about that just for a second, that, that idea of a warm, positive introduction to a qualified prospect? Imagine if you’ve got a hundred clients and they introduce you to a hundred guests that actually walked through your door. I mean, if you convert half of those people to ongoing clients think about the massive growth you would see in your business, the, the change in revenue, the change in profit, the, you know, just the, the financial security that you have, the peace of mind that you gain. Let’s think about it from that angle that we want everybody in our business to basically bring us one guest throughout the course of the year. So how can we do that?

Well, the first thing that we can do is we can ask for referrals in different ways. A lot of people just they’re, they’re kind of a one trick pony, right? They, they have one referral tactic that they lean on. Continually. Maybe it’s a, a bit of an incentive. They’ll say, Hey, if you bring in somebody, I’ll give you your next month free, or I’ll give you 50% off your next month, or I’ll give you a hundred dollars or something like that. And for some people that referral incentive is enough, but for a lot of people, it’s not, I mean, everybody has a different way that motivates them to, to, to take action. And, you know, maybe they don’t feel comfortable going and asking somebody, knowing that they’re getting paid for it.

So we can do charity based referrals. We can do bring a friend days. We can have referral contests and make it fun. We can have, you know, we can have partner events. So like if you run a challenge where somebody can bring a partner to participate, so we can ask for referrals in different ways, that way we can reach the highest percentage of the people who come into our business on a daily basis and do like, what we do do trust us, do feel like what we have to offer would be a value to other people, but we need to find a way that they’re comfortable introducing us to the other people in their life. Maybe, you know, maybe it’s as simple as cycling through charity events, bring a friend events, incentive, driven things and contests throughout the course of the year. And then if you’re doing each of those things, once or twice a year, you’re going to have a number of touch points in it. You know, odds are one of them can be a trigger for the people, people coming into your business to be comfortable and confident, introducing you to somebody new. So asking in different ways, easy and obvious.

Second one, get more reviews there. The reviews that we have, like we want social proof and the beauty of social proof, whether it be a review, somebody posts on Google or on Facebook or a before and after a story, a case study. If we have that, now we can take the burden of the client actually going out and proactively going and chasing down somebody to invite them in. We’ve got this evergreen asset that we can make sure it gets in front of other people. We can share it like if somebody does it before and after a week and share it on like tag them on social media and share it to people in their lives. We can make sure more people are seeing our reviews on Facebook or on Google. But basically if we can get reviews, if we can get social proof, we now have far far more leverage. If you will, to take the relationship we have with one person and use it to help facilitate a relationship with a new person.

Now, what’s great about this is some people are not going to be comfortable giving you a before and after. They don’t want to have a before picture anywhere, anywhere visible to the world, but they may be very comfortable providing a review on Google or Facebook for you. And odds are you’ve used reviews yourself to choose a restaurant or to buy something off Amazon or to, to really make some sort of buying decision. We know how powerful reviews are. We know that we use them to help us in our own buying choices. It’s safe to say that your prospects are using reviews to choose and making their own buying decisions as well. So reviews and social proof, or a great referral tool to facilitate more introductions.

And the final thing to share, give your clients things they can just gift other people. So instead of having the pressure of asking something of someone, making them feel like they, they’re almost like a commission sales rep, they’re going to be a lot more likely to share things, whether it be a gift card or sharing a post or a video or a lead magnet on social media or giving out copies of your book, or, you know, inviting somebody in for a free, no strings attached experience, give your clients things to share. And now you’re going to get more and more introductions because you’ve taken the responsibility, the pressure off, and you’ve allowed them to just be kind to the other people they care about. You’ve allowed them to gift something valuable to the other people in their lives.

So we can ask in different ways we can generate more reviews or social proof. We can have things to share. And then I’ll give you one other one that is kind of a secret weapon that I’m amazed that more people don’t lean into. What I would tell you is when it comes to generating reviews, most people are lazy. Most people are unwilling to take the time to ask people individually. They, they want to do everything in a group or highly leveraged fashion. They announce it via mass email. They, they, they make a post in a Facebook group, something like that, instead of just having a conversation with somebody they care about and going from there. So have more of these individual conversations, use these different approaches, do it consistently, and your going to generate more referrals.

Thanks for listening. I’m giving away a bundle of my bestselling books, the ideal business formula, the fitness entrepreneur handbook in the path. All you have to do is go to patrigsby.com/podgift to get it. Also, make sure to subscribe to The Fitness Business School with Pat Rigsby so you don’t miss an episode and you get yourself on the fast track to creating your ideal business.