[E263] Relationship Building, with Matt Ward (Part 4)

Jason: Hey, welcome to part four of my conversation with Matt Ward. If you have it, make sure to check out the first three parts where we're talking about all things referral. Blackjack, relationships, sales, mechanics, we talk about everything. And this is the final portion. We're wrapping it up here. And just when you think it's over, we dive into one more thing. And I was going to make this a shorter interview, and we just kept going and going. And I think it's so valuable. So if you're in sales at any level, again, even if you're in a cubicle selling, and you don't think that referrals are part of your strategy or something that matters, I feel that you. Do you have a lot that you can do? So make sure to check out this fourth part. Enjoy. Matt: So there are a couple of ways that you can she a pet your sales. Jason: Now I know what I'm going to get you for Christmas. Matt: Yeah. So one of the best ways to jumpstart referrals in the short term, and we needed to find short term because it's still not short enough for most people. Right. is handwritten cards. They're just not done enough by enough people. And usually the reason they tell me is that they don't have time. It takes too much time. And that's not the case at all. It takes less than five minutes to write a card. It's that they don't have the address. Or they don't have the cards. Or they don't have the envelopes. Or they're not situated on their desk so that they're easily accessible. Or they don't have stamps. Solve all those problems which are super easy to solve meaning like today you go on Amazon you buy a bunch of cards You go on this to print you buy a bunch of cards. I have custom made cards I do not recommend putting your brand on the card at all and your logo, nothing like that. And you don't put your business card in the card. You just sign your name. That's it. And the minute you put your business card in there, it turns it back around on you. And this is about them, not you. So what I want people to do, if you want to jumpstart your referrals, you pick 20 contacts. Because there are 20 business days. Each business day of the next month coming up, you're going to do a single handwritten card every business day. You're going to one of those contacts each business day, and you're going to mail them a handwritten card. And so all 20 of those people will get a single card from you in that given month. And then I want you to repeat that exact same process to the same 20 people the next month. And then you're going to do it again in the third month. So you are effectively in a 90 day period. Sending three cards to each of 20 contacts. Not hard work to do. I guarantee you at the end of 90 days, the end of three months, you will receive a referral. Guaranteed. I can't guarantee what it's worth, or that you'll even close it. It might even be the wrong referral, meaning they're referring you for a service you don't offer. But these are all opportunities to have conversations and educate people on what a better referral is, and how to tee it up, and how to hand it off, and how to make sure it's safe. referral, not a lead, but you are going to get a referral. I'm currently working with a few people in a group coaching program. It's a 10 week program. We started in week one with them increasing the amount of cards they write. So if you currently are writing cards at the rate of one a day, just increase it by one, right? So we increased it. One of the people in the group is a commercial realtor. Who leases space and commercial leasing space is very difficult business right now. It's all over the map. People are upsizing, downsizing. It's just crazy. And he reached out to all of his former contacts and clients who had leased space from him in the past or talked to him in any way. And he got a hit. And then he got an entire building listed for sale. That came from just writing handwritten cards. But what happened was, let me be clear about this, he followed up on the card too, right? Every card he mailed, about 14 days later, he placed a simple phone call. Hey, just checking. What was it? No sales pitch, nothing. People return the phone call or they return an email saying, Hey, thanks for the card. I have another guy who, when COVID 19 hit, his daughter was at home out of school and he decided he was going to go through his database. His financial advisor, Edward Jones, went through his database and pulled out all the school teachers and he mailed them all cards and said, my daughter's stressed at home rate and I can only imagine if she's stressed what you're going through. So I just wanted to let you know I was thinking about you. That's all the cards said. That's it. He mailed 24, I think he said, cards out and he got responses from close to 15 of them. The people who we did it with and one of them ended up doing a 500, 000 rollover from another advisor. And you could say was it because he mailed a card? No, it never is. It's never about the one card. Yes, he built a relationship. These people were in his database. He took the time to do another touchpoint. And that touchpoint was the right timing with the right message. He had built that over a longer period of time. Maybe you don't have the database. You got to have a database somehow. You're going to have a CRM of some sort with addresses in it. And if you don't, then just start. Start somewhere. Pick five people. Ask them for their address. Look on the website. Look at their email signatures for their address. And mail them a card. Just say thanks for being a business owner. Pretty simple. Jason: One thing I've seen is that sales people worry about only being able to win if they use manipulation, tricks, tactics, and hard closes. So they end up struggling to close deals, make their quota, or earn the kind of money that they want to make. If this sounds like your current situation, or maybe you want to make more money in sales without feeling like you're selling, then my upcoming book called Selling with Authentic Persuasion will help. In it, I'm going to take you on a journey to transform from order taker to quota breaker. If you're ready to become an authentic persuader, crush your goals, and create success in your sales career, then go to jasoncutter. com. Again, that's jasoncutter. com and pre order the book today. What's great about that is anybody can use it. Any industry, any seller. Even if you're sitting in a cubicle and a call center and you're working for a company, you can do those kinds of things for yourself for, because as an employee, as a salesperson at a company, you're also the owner of your own business of your sales pipeline. And if you fail. You will lose your business, which means you will probably get fired and lose your job, but you are in control of that. And the best reps I've seen are both employees and business minded, where they're looking at their success in sales, even at a company as under their own control, right? Matt: Jason, let me speak to that employee right now, the one sitting in the cubicle. Who might be thinking I need to get approval. No, you don't. No. Take the responsibility for yourself. Go on Amazon, buy the cards. Mail the cards out. If for some reason you don't feel comfortable the way it is or how it works, then do them from home, whatever. But you have. The control of the destiny by which your path is going to be on. And if jumping through hoops to get somebody to buy cards for purchasing or give you cards that they only want branded cards or whatever. Look, I do tell people about the whole branded thing. They have 4, 000 branded cards in the closet. I'd rather you send those out and none at all. Same people that you send out cards. I'd rather you do send out cards than none at all. Most people that do send out cards. are doing it all wrong. They're not customizing it enough and it's very salesy. I just prefer you can walk into Walmart today on your way home from work and you can buy a container of blank cards, completely blank. For about 12. And then you go to the post office and you buy a book of stamps for whatever that amount of money is. And then you go home and you just start writing cards. And when you run out of stamps, you pick up more stamps and that's it. And I'm telling you right now. It is an impact, a game changer for your business. The more of this that you do, the more of the handwritten card strategy that you do, the more referrals you're going to get for sure. Jason: And keeping in mind, because I can also picture times where I've. Had been managing teams and it's consumers, right? And so the customers, consumers, you're not going to send necessarily cards to consumers because that person is now a client of the company and they've moved on, right? You're not talking to them again, but there's the other part, which is your contacts and then also potential partnerships. So who's going to send it to you? Cause again, client's going to send you one to three lifetime partners. Can I send you one to Matt: talk about that car dealer for a second? Because that's a consumer purchase, right? They're going to buy a car every four or five years, right? Or longer if they keep it after they pay it off. Where car dealers I think fall short, car sales professionals, is they can be sending a card out once a quarter, once every six months to people that purchased before. That's not hard to do. But in addition to that, you're going to be mailing cards to the finance people at the banks, right? Because some people are going there and getting pre approved before they come to you. The next person was the auto mechanic. Because you're going to have the thermostat looked at on your car and he says, listen, this thing is so old, the thermostat is just one step. You're going to need X, Y, Z. You're going to need 2, 500, 3, 500. You should just look at buying a new car. By the way, here's Jason's card. He works over at that dealer. I know him well. He'll take great care of you. So that's one way. And then you gotta look at the insurance people. So sometimes people are talking about making the changes, right? on their car situation, or they're like, Oh, I just bought this trailer. I just bought this big SUV or I bought a trailer. Now I need to upgrade my car. And then these are the verbal things they're saying to their insurance agent. And so We want to consistently be mailing cards, but moreover, we want to be meeting with these people for coffee, for virtual sessions, for zoom sessions and learning, and we want to teach these people how to ask the right questions that produce referrals. So even if the auto mechanic is fixing the thermostat, one of the questions I would teach him if I was a car sale person is to ask his customer if they're happy with their car. If they're happy with their car, then they're not a good referral. But what if they say no, then the follow up question is have you thought about getting something new and trading the same? Yeah. Oh, you need to call Matt. You need to call Jason, right? That becomes the great way, as I call it, the bird dog the referral. So you need to teach your referral sources how to ask questions that eliminate people that are not good referrals and bird dog real referral opportunities for you. Jason: I think that's great. And again, it's about looking at it a lot differently. Cause I know people who they're afraid to ask their clients or they don't have enough clients or they're worried about, it's go different. Whose customers are your customers? That's what I do a lot with my consulting is instead of asking my clients, because. They might not know other business people who want help that I provide, but the service providers, the marketers, the CRMs, the phone systems, all of those types of companies, their customers are my customers. If they're unhappy with their sales team, a lot of times they're blaming. The leads or the CRM or the phone system that I teach all of them. If you hear that they will fire you because the sales will blame you. Bring me in and then we can help all of us win together. And yeah, that's same thing. It's who has the relationship Matt: speaking to the same economic fire. Yeah. They say, so the way you find this out. Jason, as you write down all your customers, like I just say, pick the last 10 customers you have writing down on the left hand side of a piece of paper and then write down on the right hand side who referred that customer and then look at that right hand column and see what they have in common. Are they all in the same area, same zip code, same area code? Are they all involved with high school sports because you are? Do they all have the same amount of kids you have? Do they all go to the same gym you go to? What's the commonality? Are they all like pizza, like mac? What's the deal? What is the same thing that the lowest common denominator that all these people have? That's what we want to focus on because that's where our referral sources are. Once we find a referral source, so when I was in my web agency, my referral source was IT professionals, people that spoke to companies because the companies thought that the IT people would do websites and they didn't and they thought we would fix computers and we didn't. So we were natural fit. So every time I went into a networking event and somebody would say, Matt, how can I help you? Oh, great. Do you know an it guy? Everybody knew an it person. And then the other thing Jason and I did when I onboarded a client, I made sure I asked her their it guy was because when I asked her their it guy is, it's a couple of answers he's going to give me. First one's going to be it's John Doe. I've never heard of John Doe. What's John Doe's number? Great. And when I leave their office, I'm calling John Doe. Hey, John Doe, we're working with Sally, the mutual client. No, she's going to be in great hands. Don't worry about that. By the way, we should have coffee because my clients need people like you. Now I have another referral partner. If she says I don't have an IT. You're our IT. I'm like, we're not your IT. You need an IT. I got a bunch of partners that do this. You want me to connect you with one? Oh, yeah, I'd love that. Great. Here's Renee. Now, that's a bit of a lead, meaning she doesn't have a need right now, but I make the connection knowing that she needs a backup. I make it very clear to my partner, though. Jason: It's also setting that expectation, right? It's hey, this is not a referral. This is a lead. Matt: Yeah, it's in the way I do it is I say, Hey, Jason, I'm introducing you and Sally. When I met with Sally today, she indicated she didn't have an IT person. She doesn't necessarily have a need right now, but I think it's important for you to talk because she definitely needs a resource in the future when something happens. And now she's got Jason's name on her digital roll of Expo call these days. And that's the thing is all of this is when you go and talk to marketers. They say any reason you would spend money on advertising is to be top of mind, right? It's called Toma. Top of mind awareness when your potential client is ready to buy. I would argue if you show up in people's lives, if you stay in touch, if you send handwritten cards, if you ping them on LinkedIn every now and then. Send them voice messages and text messages every so often, every three, four or five months, that you will in fact be top of mind when they're ready to, willing and able to buy or refer you. That's what it's all about. Jason: That's it. Where's the best place for people to find the stuff that you're doing? If they want to continue this conversation, get more information on the referral side and what you're doing to help people or what you put out there. Matt: Sure. So my website is mattwardspeaks. com and I'm very active on LinkedIn and Facebook, and you can find me on both those. LinkedIn. com slash in slash Matt Ward speaks and Facebook. com slash Matt Ward speaks. So Matt Ward speaks on every platform. Jason: So Matt Ward speaks. That's it. There we go. Matt: Cool. Listen, Jason: thanks for being on here, brother and having this conversation about referrals because I think it's important, both the framework, the expectation, and then the quality of it and knowing how to do it in a proper way, short term, long term for anybody listening. Thanks for helping shift that in the realm of sales. Matt: Absolutely. Thanks for having me on the show. I appreciate it. Jason. Jason: That's it for another episode of the sales experience podcast. Thank you so much for listening. If you find yourself on iTunes, can you leave the show a rating and a review? It helps other sales people and sales leaders find the show and please subscribe to the show and share episodes you find valuable with anyone you know in sales. Help me on my mission of changing the way sales is done. And if you're ready to work together, go to Jason cutter. com again, that's Jason cutter.com. To find out how I can help you or your company create scalable sales success. I will see you on the next sales experience podcast episode. And keep in mind that everything in life is sales and people remember the experience you gave them.