EPISODE 151 | Guest: Andrew Brown, president of Bridgemaker Referral Programs and co-founder of the Academy of Business Communications
B2B sales often involve big-ticket items. But big-ticket doesn’t always mean price – it can be time, resources, reputation, money and more on the line. Visix is a B2B digital signage solutions provider, so we understand the benefits and challenges that that entails.
In this episode, Andrew Brown walks us through some of the practical, actionable advice from his new book, Get Referred: How to Increase Sales Velocity, Volume and Value.
- Learn the benefits and business case for B2B referral programs
- Hear about ad hoc, value-added reseller and managed referral programs
- Understand why your employees and customers may not be your best referrers
- Explore barriers like the babysitter effect and reputation risk
- Discover B.R.I.D.G.E – a quick guide to successful referral relationships
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Get the book: Get Referred: How to Increase Sales Velocity, Volume and Value
Transcript
Derek DeWitt: You know, the business of business is to make money. And very often companies will come up with some kind of a large initiative, trying to sell some kind of a, let’s call it a “big ticket” item, or a big-ticket service, or something like that.
One of the channels that people very often neglect in these endeavors is the business to business, or B2B, referral program angle of things. My guest today is Andrew Brown, who is the president of Bridgemaker Referral Programs and co-founder of the Academy of Business Communications in Toronto, Canada. And he has just written a new book called Get Referred: How to Increase Sales Velocity, Volume and Value by Creating Enthusiastic Advocates Who Bring You the Business You Want.
Sounds like pretty interesting stuff, and we’re gonna talk about the book, what’s in it, what some of his thoughts are in this direction, and of course how it can be sort of applied, in a sideways way, to organizational communications.
Thank you for talking to me, Mr. Brown. Good to have you back on the podcast.
Andrew Brown: Oh, Derek, it’s always a thrill to be on the Digital Signage Done Right, the DSDR, podcast, and to have an opportunity to speak with you, learn from you and share insights with your enthusiastic audience. So, thank you very much for having me today.
Derek DeWitt: Well, thank you for coming on, and of course, thank you everybody out there for listening to this episode of the podcast. I remind you; you can of course subscribe if you’re so inclined, you can review us if you are so inclined, and you can follow along with a transcript of the conversation we’re about to have on the Visix website under resources and podcasts.
So, Andrew, the book is Get Referred: Increasing Sales Velocity, Volume and Value. It’s kind of a, it’s like a how to guide, basically, right? How to generate revenues in fast moving technology companies and financial institutions or professional service firms or even marketing agencies. Does that sound right?
Andrew Brown: It captures 30 years of experience having worked in every area of sales, marketing and communications that includes channel sales and resellers and strategic alliances and direct sales and inbound sales and outbound sales, and all the communications that is weaved in between there. I really wanted to create something that was practical. I have read far too many business books, particularly those that claim to help with sales and business development, that are just rife with stories and parables and analogies and very lean on how to.
So, this book is a reference book. It translates research into practical and actionable items, so that people can, within 30 minutes, already start to take steps that will actually see them increase the, as the title says, sales velocity, volume and value. So, I’m thrilled to be here to talk about the book and that you’ve shown enthusiasm.
And I know that members of your audience are going to be going, hmm, I wonder if my colleagues are using referral programs in a systematic way, because quite frankly, I mean, there is a section in the book that speaks to how referral programs tend to be rolled out right now, and it’s not necessarily systematic and unfortunately founded on some very tenuous assumptions that tend to be very, very wrong, very destructive.
And so, referral programs, and I would argue other sales development and business development processes, often suck up resources. And I did not want to see people do that. I hate waste. So, that was really the impetus. And it also was my wife saying, shut up and write the book already.
Derek DeWitt: Well, you know, she was tired of hearing about it. She’s like, look, man, I know all about this. I’m not pushing a big ticket item. Somebody out there is. They need your wisdom.
Andrew Brown: Exactly. That’s right!
Derek DeWitt: One of the things when we were communicating about this talk in advance, you mentioned that, you know, when you’re pushing a new product or a new service, especially a big one, not a small little widget, but like a, you know, hey, we’re coming out with a whole new thing (for example, an electric car is one of the things that comes to mind, hey, we’re gonna go to electric cars or hybrid cars), that you’re not just selling the product, you’re really selling a mindset.
You know, the old cliche is a good businessman could, you know, sell snow to Eskimos. It’s kind of true, because you’re selling a story, you’re selling a certain mindset, and a lot of that happens on the company end. It’s not the customer and the salesperson necessarily. It’s that the whole company is in this particular mindframe and going in a certain direction.
Andrew Brown: I don’t want to put myself out there as someone that can talk about business to consumer referral programs because as you said, there is a particular mindset when there is a big ticket, and when it’s a big ticket to consumers. I tend to focus on big tickets to other businesses. Now, there are some similarities. I would say that when there’s a big ticket item, and this certainly is one of the reasons why harnessing referral sources is so powerful, is that they deescalate risk. Organizations as entities tend to be fairly risk averse. They want to minimize it.
And so, actually in the book, I have structured it so that some can develop a referral program as a pilot project and not touch sales processes or try to actually hardwire it into the organizations. Because in order to do that, you have to take some steps so that the powers that be go, okay, you know, this is worthwhile from a business case. Whoa, I’ve got a system that I can measure. And you know what? I’ve got someone’s commitment to be held responsible for the program.
So, I speak to those, but backing it up for a moment, yes, risk and risk mitigation is a critical thing. And whether it is to consumers, there is often the message, you know, invest now so that you can avoid a pain later. For business to business, it’s often this is something that you have to do. It’s unpleasant. You’re going to have to make a purchase. But why should I choose this one? Why should I choose this vendor over another vendor? And if you harness the right referral sources, they can bring that fear, bring that concern of risk way down.
I just saw a stat the other day and it was about that business to business selling for big tickets, that trusted referral sources was the basis for 84% of that first contact. So if you’re selling a big item B2B, if you’re not using a referral source at the beginning, you’re gonna be making life very difficult for yourself.
Derek DeWitt: Right. So, what’s the general idea? Is it kind of like, hey, look, other people are using it, and they like it, and so you’re not the guinea pig. Like, you could trust, look, here’s, you know, whatever, here’s the University of Kenosha or whatever; they’re using it, and they like it, and it fits all of their needs. Well, you’re the University of Nebraska and you have very similar needs, so you’re like, you’re in good company. You’re not all by yourself out here.
Andrew Brown: Well, that is certainly association marketing, hey, someone in my industry is doing that, that’s great. And some organizations are very much in the fear of missing out, right? FOMO. Oh, they’re doing it, we’ve got to do it. But that can still get you to run in a lot of trouble if an organization does something, but it’s still not the right product or the right timing.
A trusted referral source should understand your business, should understand the pain you’re experiencing as well as your own limitations. So, they’re not going to bring you something that’s not a good solution for you. And again, I say trusted referral sources because part of the exercise is recognizing that often the people, we think are awesome referral sources aren’t so. Which is, it’s a great awakening for people.
The assumption is that an existing customer will refer you, right? They love you, they chose you, they refer you. The people that are current employees, for example, are the best people to refer. They could be. They’re among the network, they hit probably some of the right criteria. They know your organization, presumably they like you, presumably they will speak nicely to you. It doesn’t mean that they have the full set of skills that you would want to throw all your money behind, current employees as the best means to act as referral sources.
Derek DeWitt: So, you call these Managed Referral Programs, MRPs. Maybe give us a moment of how are things kind of normally done, like, you know, real quick, and then how is a Managed Referral Program, an MRP, different?
Andrew Brown: There are a couple of models right now that are very prevailing as far as referral programs go. The first one I would call Ad Hoc. It looks like this. You want a referral source, so you speak to your existing customers, and you give them an incentive. You hope that you give them enough money that they will bring something in. You leave them alone because you figure I don’t want to get in their way. You assume that they’re going to have the right skills to refer. And so again, you don’t do a lot of training when they bring something and you take it regardless of whether it’s profitable or not, because you don’t want to offend the referral source, and you don’t know if that referral source is gonna bring in something better next time. So, you cross your fingers, and you hope. That’s the Ad Hoc.
The other that’s very common is the Value-Added Reseller, where, more or less, a company will assume all their resellers have the same skills, have the same willingness and have the same opportunity to resell their product. With that kind of mentality, you see the lens, okay, we just create standard stuff, and we just give it to them, and they will find stuff and bring it to us. It does forget the fact that people that the resellers are selling to go, You’re selling me this because you get higher commission from vendor A versus from vendor B. So, you breed a very skeptical buyer, and that is the Value Added Reseller.
I’m not saying that there aren’t great Value-Added Resellers out there, but generally speaking, as a model, Value-Added Resellers, the referral pattern is that you get people on, you get a quick spike, you might even get a spike as you raise the commissions.
But in between those, those kind of raise commissions, yeah, really flatten out and you flatten out hard. And what’s more is, as your competitors are raising their commissions, you have to do the same. So, setting up a Value-Added Reseller program says, I am prepared to escalate costs year after year.
Derek DeWitt: Right! Yeah, that’s true. Because your competitors are gonna go, oh, well, if I offer you a better commission, reseller, then you’ll sell my stuff more. Pretty soon it gets outta hand.
Andrew Brown: Exactly. It’s a seesaw. It goes back and forth and back and forth and back and forth.
So, at the core of Managed Referral Programs is the recognition that, one, your best referral sources may not be your existing customer. When organizations believe that customers are their best referral sources, they forget something called the Babysitter Effect. And anyone listening right now who’s had an awesome babysitter knows that the last thing that they’re likely to do is to refer that babysitter, because that babysitter may not be available when you need them. Even if you are an amazing provider of services or big ticket products, people aren’t going to refer you because you are theirs. There’s a sense of ownership, and they don’t wanna share you.
The other reason why customers often do not refer you is because if they know the warts that you have, and those warts as an organization may not be great, let’s say onboarding, for example, if you don’t have a great customer onboarding process, then your customer’s going to say, well, if I refer someone, they’re not gonna have an awesome experience. I’m not gonna take the chance and put my reputation on the line.
So, all this is to say, if you put all your eggs in one basket, in that thinking that customers alone are your best referral sources, you’re going to be missing out.
Back to what Managed Referral Programs are. So, Managed Referral Programs are built on a very strong foundation, and the foundation is this: every referral source that you choose, and you should go through a systematic way of choosing them (and in the book, Get Referred, there are actually tools to help you go through that process and evaluate potential referral sources), but every referral source has a certain level of skill, a certain willingness and a certain opportunity to refer.
And it’s your job if you’re running a Managed Referral Program, to understand what that mix, that recipe, that cocktail of those three components are. And what makes things more interesting/more compelling/more effective/more messy is that those things change over time.
Derek DeWitt: So, the book has basically five sections. First one is kind of like, hey, here’s why current sales processes maybe aren’t enough. Which I think is always the case. No one’s perfected anything. And then talks about what these Managed Referral Programs are, more information about referral sources and then sort of a framework and tools for how to basically take the advice, this how to create an MRP and roll it out.
And then you have this thing at the end about you think it’s important to kind of hardwire this whole thing, this process, this mindset, this way of approaching things, into the organization’s day-to-day processes. Which I think is right on the money. I mean, we should, especially in these days, we should constantly be shifting and changing and growing and moving and trying out this. And if that doesn’t work, we stop that, and we try something else.
You know, I think this old idea of, you know, you build a better mousetrap and that’s the end of the story, because mice don’t really change, mice are mice. But when we’re dealing with much more complicated things than that, we’re not dealing with mice. We’re dealing with things that interact with a real world that is very dynamic and constantly changing. And so, I think it’s incumbent upon organizations to bake this into their structures.
Andrew Brown: Well, organizations have a tremendous capacity to learn. But because we’re humans and people come in and out of organizations, and individuals have their own propensity to learn, organizations are going to only be as good as the people within them, right? So, if they’re lifelong learners, and they’re the ones that want to try new things, that will keep an organization fresh.
To your point about hardwiring new programs into organizations, yes, I tend to agree that organizations should, but that also requires a certain amount of organizational learning. I took it from the standpoint of, listen, anyone can do a referral program, pilot project. And the power of a pilot project is you can actually point to it and say, Wow, it worked, or Here’s our learning. And then you can build up enough interest and desire and reduce the fear of new programs and initiatives. And then it is a lot easier to hardwire them into an organization.
So, I tend to think of it happening in stages. No one takes a hardwired approach right outta the gate, and if they do, it often fails. But if you try things, try it on for size, see if it fits, see what works, see the kinds of responsibilities, the way that you measure success, the outcomes, the resource that’s required, and you do that all in a pilot project. You can point to the pilot project and say, you know what, it didn’t meet expectations. What did we learn from it? Ah, okay, this is how we would roll it in.
And in fact, the book allows you, if you don’t want to hardwire it in, just read chapter four. And there’s a quick start guide in the book as well that points you, it provides breadcrumbs. So, if you have a particular use case, you can decide, I only wanna read chapters two and three, or two and five, or one and three. Plus, the book also has at the beginning of each section, key takeaways. So, if you’ve only got five minutes to read the book, just go through and read the key takeaways at the beginning. If you’ve got 30 minutes to read the book, you read the key takeaways and then the summaries at the end of each section. And so, you’ve read the book in 30 minutes.
A lot of people who are looking to get a program up and running recognize that they need to take things in in chunks. And that’s why this book is written in chunks deliberately, to help the reader. And I spent a lot of time actually with the layout and design folks, ’cause I wanted this… You know, when you go to a really bad website, or you’ve seen really bad digital signage and it’s difficult to navigate? You become awash with information, nothing sinks in, you don’t remember anything, it leaves you cold. I did not want that experience for the book, because too many business books, again, are very laden with stories that are pointless or trying to be illustrative, but not necessarily relatable. I wanted to create something that people would go, that’s practical; I can use that, I can use that today.
I do put in the book as well if I, sorry for prattling on about the book, two other things that might help people navigate. I say, this is how long it takes to read a chapter. And I also put in how long you have to read a chapter before you find something that is actually actionable.
Derek DeWitt: I think organizing it in such a sort of a, let’s call it a hyper-organized way, is quite interesting because many, many years ago when I was teaching English as a Foreign Language to students in Europe, I went to a teaching conference and I saw a lecture about how in the olden days, when you and I were growing up, it was important to know things. And now it’s important to know where things are. Think back, 1994, how many phone numbers did you know off the top of your head? Like a hundred, right? How many do you know now?
Andrew Brown: I find it difficult to remember my own.
Derek DeWitt: Yes, precisely.
Andrew Brown: I forgot my wife’s phone number recently. Listeners, do not forget that. Your spouse’s phone number, remember. Tattoo it in your arm if you need.
Derek DeWitt: Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. But that’s a fact because we don’t need to. That’s what all these technological tools are for, really, is they are labor saving devices. When you’re talking about these badly organized websites, I may eventually stumble upon a page on there that I go, ooh, that’s interesting. But if I neglect to bookmark that specific page, I go back to that website and I’m like I can’t find it now. I don’t know. Is this even the right website? I don’t even know, you know? And yet bookmarking itself has its own downfalls, ’cause I have so many bookmarks that I can’t get through them all, you know?
Andrew Brown: Yes. I do think that there has been a tremendous shift from responsibility of publishers and they’ve put the onus on people to find things that are relevant for them. I mean, that’s great. If you have some experience, if you know the lexicon, if you know the topic, it’s a lot easier to find what you’re looking for.
But you’ve heard the old adage, you don’t know what you don’t know. And I do think that it is publishers, book publishers, websites, navigation publishers, publishers of content within organizations, I think it is our responsibility to recognize that people learn differently, and we have to provide breadcrumbs. We need to provide guideposts; we need to support. And that’s not coddling them. We want them to be successful. That’s something else that is very central to Managed Referral Programs.
One of the other things that’s really important about Managed Referral Programs is to recognize that difference. And we talked about the skills, willingness and opportunity that we have to understand, but we have to embrace the fact that people will learn differently. In developing this program, and I’ve rolled out hundreds of Managed Referral Programs over 30 plus years, and you, you know, I hate to say it, but I will say it because it’ll be make for a beautiful little graphic if you want, the Managed Referral Programs is the closest thing I’ve ever seen, been part of, observed, studied, read about, that approaches a silver bullet for sales.
Derek DeWitt: Wow! That’s quite a claim, sir!
Andrew Brown: It is! But let me qualify that just for a moment. Because the idea of a silver bullet has a few different qualities. Silver bullet, singular, and silver bullet speed. So, silver bullet singular. If you’re going to choose one program, if you’re a B2B, if you’re selling big ticket items and you want to be successful, yes, Managed Referral Programs is going to be the best route. I have no fear in saying this. And I’ve set up infrastructures that have 30 people to do nothing but churn out content, to be SEO specific and developing content and SEM and using all the channels. Though that’s great at a particular stage of an organization’s evolution, but it is creating a machine that you never get away from.
In 2006, 2007, when digitization was in its infancy, there were 150 roughly digital marketing and sales tools. There are over 14,000 now. Yikes! And so, there is an industry that has indoctrinated, brainwashed, encouraged, supported this idea that you must develop content, and you can only market yourself. You can only make sales if you have this mammoth infrastructure. Well come back to that earlier stat that I stumbled over before, and that was that in B2B sales, a referral source is used with 84% of sales. So, if you’re selling big ticket items and you’re not using a referral source, you’re behind the eight ball.
So, where is this all taking us? Well, other tools, great! Infrastructure, great! But when it comes to mitigating risk, when it comes to leveraging someone who is seen as trusted, wise, who knows an organization, knows that the solution is right, right for them now, that’s a critical thing, right? A good referral source doesn’t bring you ideas that aren’t relevant or aren’t relevant now, because you’ve gone through a merger and acquisition or because you’re going through an expansion across the board, or because you’ve got to lay off some people, or because there’s a change in leadership. A savvy referral source knows that you don’t bring business opportunities during those messy times.
A Managed Referral Program at the core is saying, how do we make our referral sources wildly successful? How do we do that? What gaps do they have? Hmm, what resources do they have? What infrastructure do they need to make them successful at bringing us the business that we want?
Derek DeWitt: So, when you’re saying big-ticket items, you mean obviously things that are expensive, financially, money-wise. Is it only that? Or could it also be like, hey, look, this is a thing, maybe it’s not that expensive, but it’s gonna take a ton of time out of your organization in order to implement this or for whatever? Does that also count as a big ticket item?
Andrew Brown: I think that’s very astute. Big ticket, often people think in terms of the price tag, but it’s not always hard dollar cost. It is the time, as you say.
Derek DeWitt: Right. It could be work hours. Like, I gotta get trained, I gotta train other people, I gotta do this, what happens when I get sick? You know, all that.
Andrew Brown: Right. And there’s also the cost that’s involved when you’re working an organization, there is the equity that you have as a leader that you’re spending all the time. When you support an initiative and it doesn’t go well, your equity within the organization drops. That has cost you something and it takes a while for you to build up that equity again.
So, big-ticket can also relate to that because, and again, I hate to use the insurance term risk a lot, but risk is a big umbrella term for anything that can hurt the organization, hurt the groups within, or the teams or departments within, the organization or the individual within the organization. So risky, big ticket risk products, those are the ones where, you know, if you have someone carrying your water for you, you are just making your life so much easier.
And there’s so much data that says that if you leverage a referral source, you actually shorten the sales cycle dramatically. And we’ve had clients where we’ve shortened the sales cycle from 18 months to under six months. Again, choosing the right referral sources and making them wildly successful.
The volume also, when you use a referral source, the likelihood of business coming to you just catapults, I think it’s by a factor of four. So, why wouldn’t you use a smart referral source? And the value, lifetime value, when business comes in by referral sources, that business spends more and spends more over a period of time.
So, there you have it, there is a business case for it. And again, there are plenty of sources out there on the interweb that provide some real tangible. And the book also provides some basic stats, so if you’re thinking, is this something that I should be doing? Well, now you can make a business case.
Derek DeWitt: So, why did you decide to go this route?
Andrew Brown: For years, my colleague and I ran workshops on helping HR folks, internal communications folks, how to help their organizations communicate better, listen better. A couple things that are very applicable from the referral methodology and some of the assumptions to the internal communication.
So, one thing that I find is that when you work in a large organization and you’re an employee in communications, and let’s face it, that can be a thankless job; often it’s something that you do off the side of your desk, you know, you’re in marketing and something gets thrown to you, you’re in HR and something gets thrown to you, or you may have the title of corporate communications, but you have almost no budget. Often it’s not a glamorous, it’s a thankless job. It’s so critical! That’s why I love working with internal comms folks because what they do, they have a passion that’s, I find, rarely elsewhere in the organization.
As far as the referral programs and internal communications, there’s some things that I see, there’s some overlap. So, one, I found that in organizations there can be a sense of learned helplessness. And so, if you’ve got a sales hat or internal communications hat, you can find yourself thinking one of these two things. You know, it’s gonna happen anyway. What I call It-Will-Happen-Anyway-Ism. So, an unhealthy optimism where you think stuff is going to be good. It’s the cross-your-fingers-and-hope. And remember, I think it was Rick Page, he had this bestselling book called Hope is Not a Strategy. And It-Will-Happen-Anyway-Ism is one assumption that people will carry around.
The other is sort of on the negative, sort of it’s What’s the Point-Ism. Now, when it comes to generating referral business or bringing new people or communicating, the feeling that you truly can’t control the sources, the reasons. And that’s why it’s important to come up with and tap into a disciplined approach.
So, I want to put people’s minds at ease. Yes, you can systematize how to harness referrals, whether those referrals are for business development or for recruiting or for internal communications, because you know, if you use referral sources, if you think of them as people as carrying your water, they’re your champions. They’re the ones who are on the metaphorical shop floor. They’re the influencers within the organizations that can help act as both communicators and that other set of eyes. So, that sense of learned helplessness, both for the positive and the negative, I find is very common.
Another term I use, the Colombo Effect. Remember Colombo? And every murder mystery makes an assumption. They are always looking for people who have what? Motive, means and opportunity. There you understand the behavior, if you understand motive, means and opportunity, or you can identify your likely candidate, or villain or in this case, referral source.
And so, it’s really important to understand, I call it skills, willingness and opportunities, as opposed to means. But that’s also something really critical. If you’re hoping for your internal employees to act as referral sources to bring on new staff, you’re making a huge assumption about whether or not they have the skills or the opportunity to refer. It does assume sort of, birds of a feather flock together, but that’s often not the case.
The third thing I just want to talk about is, and I think the comms folks listening into this will get this certainly, the more seasoned or practiced, is that messaging is great, and there’s a lot of emphasis put on verbal and written and video messaging and then messaging tools, right? That’s great.
But it’s really about behavior. If you want communications, if you want for messages to take root, you’ve got to model, encourage, support, reward those acceptable behaviors. And that’s gotta happen throughout the organization. And you’ve gotta call out and discredit and eliminate and punish unacceptable behaviors. And when it comes to referral programs, one of the reasons why referral programs historically flatline, why they damage reputations and relationships, and don’t yield anything is because the behavior. You can have all the best systems in the world, right? But if you don’t behave in a way that is consistent and reinforces some key elements when it comes referral programs, they’re gonna fall flat.
So, there’s an acronym, I’ll just give it to you briefly in, in Get Referred, in the book, B.R.I.D.G.E. That is the acronym for the behaviors you need to elicit. And I’ll just run through very quickly.
Bear responsibility. That is, too often when referral sources don’t bring in business or don’t refer people that you want, you blame the referral source, there must be something wrong with them. No, it is your responsibility. Again, Managed Referral Programs, key point, we are there to make referral sources successful. So, bear responsibility, B for Bear responsibility.
Respect. R for Respect referral sources. Rather than looking at referral sources as mere tools to be leveraged, you need to understand what is important to them. You know, that means you have to spend time with them, and provide genuine and timely feedback, so they understand the impact their efforts are having. Again, on the sales process if you’re selling, on recruiting if that’s your objective. So R, Respect referral sources.
I, integrity. Never, never, this is unshakable, never place for a referral source in a position that is socially or professionally awkward or demeaning. Never ask them to make a claim that is less than a hundred percent true. If you do, you’re sending them the message that behaving dishonestly is acceptable and expected and potentially rewarded. So, always, always act with integrity. That’s I.
D, Discipline. Apply discipline. Every Managed Referral Program has structure, which includes clear articulation of specific goals, the actions required to take those goals, who takes responsibilities for actions, when those actions are to be executed. That discipline has to be applied. If you don’t, it starts to crumble.
G, Generous, Genuine and Gracious. Referral sources deserve your time, sincerity and kindness. So, always find opportunities to demonstrate qualities to those referral sources that you’ve chosen. And make sure you’re not treating them as you would as if it were an Ad Hoc referral program or a Value-Added Reseller program.
And finally, E, Embrace Exceptions. Each of your referral sources is unique in the skills they bring when it comes to referring you, the reasons they choose to refer you and the opportunities they have. It is your responsibility to understand these traits and accommodate them.
Once again, resist sort of that myth that underpins the channel reseller about you can only scale by standardizing. In truth, Managed Referral Programs are wonderfully scalable, because all you have to do is identify three or four referral sources who bang the ball out of the park. You don’t have to create an army. An army is expensive to maintain. An army is all about standardization. An army is all about, not only expensive cost, but trying to build an efficiency. I get that. But scaling comes from identifying something that works and replicating it smartly. So, if you have three or four awesome referral sources, why would you need 30 or 40 or 50 or 100 that are going to yield the same amount or less than three or four?
Derek DeWitt: Right. Better to have, you know, two divisions of highly trained elite soldiers than an entire army of, you know, farmers who have no training and are using sticks.
Andrew Brown: Precisely. So, that acronym, B.R.I.D.G.E, is to remind people these are the behaviors when you’re managing a program, and these are the behaviors that you have to elicit.
This is, if you will, the secret sauce. You know how all organizations talk about having a secret sauce? And a secret sauce is rarely, truly technical. It is about how something is applied. So, if you apply these behavioral principles, you will have an effective referral program, a Managed Referral Program.
Derek DeWitt: And that of course is the entire point of the book!
Andrew Brown: Precisely. And the outcome is so that it increases sales.
Derek DeWitt: The book in question is Get Referred: How to Increase Sales Velocity, Volume and Value. The author is Andrew Z. Brown. He is the president of Bridgemaker Referral Programs and the co-founder of the Academy of Business Communications.
And we’ve been talking about Managed Referral Programs, but I think it’s not a huge step to see that this touches on a lot of other topics as well that get into communications, the way that organizations are organized and structured, and dozens and dozens of other things. You know, if something is true, it’s true. That’s just how that is. It’s not usually true only in a specific context.
And of course, as I’ve mentioned before, you can follow along with a transcript on the Visix website, where you’ll find links including to the website for this book, which is www.getreferred.biz, and Mr. Brown’s email is andrewb@getreferred.biz, so you can contact him that way. And again, all this information will be in the transcript as well.
Thanks for talking to me again, Mr. Brown. As I said, always interesting.
Andrew Brown: Thanks so much, Derek. Be well.
Derek DeWitt: Thank you. And thank you everybody out there for listening.