Why Building a Business on Referrals is not a Strategy

So that's what I want to talk about and I want to share three things that you've actually got to do if you're going to actually have a strategy behind your business. Now there was a time when becoming successful in business was pretty simple. You know, you'd couple of great products with a great service and soon you'd be renowned as the go to expert in that area.

Word of mouth was extremely important and large amounts of revenue used to come in from referral business from current or or repeat clients. Unfortunately, many people who built their businesses when this was the way to become successful, they haven't necessarily learned how to do things differently.

It requires the pillar of attraction. And it requires, the pillar of activation. Let's just go through each of those. So, the first thing you've got to do, by the way, referrals are great. I'm not saying don't worry about them. we all want referrals. We want people to come in with very little effort.

So first up, let's talk about attention. You've got to dial in your positioning because getting noticed and building your positioning and being recognized, around the impact that you are making is the very thing that will start getting you noticed. Being the world's best kept secret doesn't serve anyone.

I don't care if you are great at what you do. If you're not letting other people know that, if you're not letting the world know that, if you're not letting your ideal clients see that that is what you do, then you are serving no one. Being the world's best kept secret serves no one. It's about showing up.

Attention is key. You've got to stand out. You've got to get noticed. You've got to add value out into the world. And you've got to start letting those future clients start seeing who it is that you are, what it is that you do and how you help them, why they should care about the work that you do.

I got noticed, I got positioned, but that doesn't build a business either. You've got to do this second thing, which is about attracting the right clients into your world. Getting noticed is only one thing. You've got to attract people into your world. You've got to build that database of you, build that email list, get the people in, don't rely on the social media platforms for your list.

Because if they shut down tomorrow, you're going to be absolutely buggered. You've got to create lists. You've got to have an email list. That is your biggest asset. And you've got to regularly attract those ideal clients into that list. So who are ideal clients for you? I call them the A grade clients.

I reckon there's five things that you need to ask yourself when you're starting to get curious about these A grade clients. You know, one of the questions to ask is, do you want to work with them now? Yes. And do you want to work with them into the future? You know, these A grade clients, who are they? Do you want to work with them now?

And do they actually want help? Subtle difference there, right? So many of us end up working with people that know they need help, but those people don't do the work. They're not willing to pay for it. They might be the tire kickers. They want everything for free. And that's not what we want.

We want to find The A grade clients, our A grade clients, they have to know that they need help and they actually want help. So ask yourself that. Fourth question I want you to ask yourself when you're trying to identify these A grade clients is, are they easy to find? Can you find them? And are they able to self identify?

Who are your ideal clients? Who are those A grade clients and can you self identify them? This is really hard, right? Because we all want to serve everyone. And I often hear that it depends. It depends. I go, yeah, yeah, but you can't sell it depends. You've got to get really clear on who these A grade clients are so that you can attract them.

So two things. First, we've got your positioning. You've got to attract them. You can't be the world's best kept secret. You've got to attract those. You've got to build attention, sorry, amongst your ideal clients out there in the marketplace. And secondly, you've got to make sure that you know exactly what you're saying to attract the right clients into your world, and we want them on an email list. Don't get me started. I will do a different episode around the importance of email list because, Oh my God, the amount of people that don't have lists and they're relying on social media platforms doesn't work. That's also not a strategy. So the third thing to do so that you are not building a business on referrals and putting yourself at risk on that is we've got to tighten up your offer.

This might mean that you've got to reduce your product offering. You can't be all things to all people. It's not about having a smorgasbord of product offering. It may be that you've even got to put your prices up or put your prices down or unpack what your products are. Having a whole plethora of products isn't necessarily a smart way.

And often it's because they haven't done these three things. They haven't been actively building their own positioning in the marketplace, they're not doing their own marketing. They haven't got their own marketing strategy set up, often because they're way too busy delivering on the referral clients.

So they haven't been doing their own marketing. They haven't attracted, target clients into their world. They don't have a database. And we've got to do that. We've got to nurture and attract our ideal clients into our world. And then finally, they've been offering everything as opposed to really neatening up and tightening up their offer.

I'm talking lead generation. A strategy around activation and converting those sales. Attention, attraction, and activation, and a strategy around that is a business strategy that will allow you to grow and scale that will allow you to manage the growth of your business throughout challenging times and that will allow you to dial up or down.

I'd love to hear, thinking about those three pillars. Attention, i. e. marketing and positioning. Attraction, getting ideal clients, right clients into your world. Have you got them? What are you doing with them? And then the activation piece, converting, what are you doing there? I'd love to know which one of those three pillars is the one that you need to double down on right now.

Make sure you grab a pen, make sure you write some notes, maybe listen back to this episode and make sure you do that focus finder. Because that's going to give you some really quick wins of where you need to double down to unlock your next opportunity for growth in your business. Hope you've enjoyed this week's episode and I will see you next week.