The Power of Referrals: How to Get Them and Land More Clients

Hello and welcome to the show. Today's episode is going to be a random episode where I'm rambling about all kinds of things. Well, first of all, apologies for the noise in the background. And that's because I'm not an audio booth. And to be honest, even when I'm in the house, I don't think I'm going to set up the audio booth anymore because, you know, after we moved, I don't know the stress of just trying to set up the audio booth.

Make sure you know, all the sound is completely silent and all that. Sometimes it's a hassle that just makes me not want to record, to be honest. So it's easier for me to just report the phone and then just make the recording. So today's episode is going to be a random episode and that means I'm going to be talking about all kinds of things because there's something that I went through earlier in the day that got me thinking about referrals, about prospecting and about handling age objections.

So I just going to be rambling about those sorts of things. But anyway, this is your first time of listening to the podcast. Then you probably don't know what those terms mean, so let me just go ahead and define them real quick now. Referrals is basically a referral is when somebody hooks you up, when somebody gives you the hookup. Oh, sorry, one moment. OK, sorry about that. Someone was at the door mainly. Like I said, today's going to be one of those noisy episodes.

Yeah, so I was the middle of defining what a referral is and referral just means a hookup basically. So if somebody's trying to hook you up in a business context, we call that a referral. So you're looking for customers and you tell, you know, your friend I look or guy I just started business, you know, blah, blah, blah. Can you introduce me to social? So he might be a good client for me. And the person says, no Hala, I

got you. And then they introduce you to that person that is a referral. That's a hookup. In this case, my sister-in-law is the one who made the referral because I was looking for collaborators for ATV show that I have coming up and, and let me not go into the story yet, but basically that's just what the referral is. If somebody tries to hook you up in business, it's a referral. So if I send a customer to you because you and me are cool,

it's a referral. If I'm happy with somebody's service and I send my wife to go and call that person, that's a referral. If you ask a client of yours who really likes you, you guys have been doing business for a long time. You want them to pass along other people to you to be customers as well. That is a referral. Then another word that I use was prospecting. If you're new to the show, you don't know what that means. Now.

Prospecting just means the act of thinking, or rather the strategy involved in thinking. Who is the person that might be interested in my product or my service or this thing that I'm working on who might be interested? Where do those people hang out? Where can I find them? How do I start the conversation and how do I get them on board? So that is what prospecting means. So if you are a caterer, prospecting means you wake up in the morning and you're thinking who might be interested in ordering my services to cater for their wedding, to cater for their party?

Who's looking for jello fries? Who's looking for Amala? Who's looking for continental dishes? Who's looking for XYZ? So as a caterer, you're thinking who are the people that need these services? Where do they hang out in the real world? Where do they hang out online? How can I find them? How can I start conversations with them and how can I get them to take the next step with me? So all the activity involved in that, that is called prospecting.

So like I said, my sister-in-law tried to hook me up with a possible collaborator for my TV show. So that's prospecting, you know, because I'm a consultant, I'm trying to get a show on the air. I need collaborators because this is going to be a two way interview thing. So I need to find people who might be interested and who'll be willing to put their faces on TV and see how we can use this for business development, you know, on both ends.

So that is prospecting. Then the first thing I mentioned I think is yes, age objections. Now age objections, that's OK. First of all, objection, because objection is any reason that people give for not wanting to go ahead with the business, with the agenda, with whatever. Now some objections that people can give are actually age-related and I made a couple of episodes about that because yes, not everybody starts business in their 30s or 40s or 50s.

There are some of us who start doing wrong. OK, Well not me anyway, because I started late. I started, I think I was really 30 something when I tried in the photography business. So, OK, no more like late 20s. So there's some people who some of you who start, you know, 1518 and it's a problem because some people look at you, I'm like you're an 18 year old, you know, like what do you know, like you know, those sorts of things.

So those are age objections. So some of you face it, sometimes it happens the other way around that people think you are too old. But either way, age objections, those are objections that also come up in business. So the circumstances that I face today, you know, got me thinking, I might as well come over here on the microphone and then just speak real quick about how to handle age objections because they happen for those of you who are very early in your career and sometimes those of you who are late in your career.

But in this part of the world, especially those of you who are early. And it's something I can testify to because to be honest, I do not like baby doctors at all. So if I'm sitting down there in the room and then the doctor shows up and their face is babyish and they have pimples and you know, they look like they started university at 14 and they graduated at 19 and then now they're 20 years old. I don't like that. It just makes me uncomfortable.

Yes, I know some of you say that Tavish, my dad is very prejudice and I admit yes, it is. But I'm just being honest. You know, it makes me very uncomfortable. Like I'm here, I have a serious health condition and you know, you're practically a baby. So can you please go away and let somebody more senior handle the handle this issue? But by the way, I've never said that to to anyone. I thank God I've never had any serious health concerns.

OK, there was that one time when I thought I had cancer of the, of the, how will I say it? There's one time I thought I had cancer of the Netherlands. Let me just put it that way. So I thought I had cancer of the Netherlands. And that is when this whole age thing came up because one of the consultants who was looking at my case then happened to be a baby doctor. And I won't lie, I was very uncomfortable. Like, this is a serious matter.

This is cancer of the Netherlands. Am I supposed to trust my nether regions to the hand of this baby doctor, You know, by the time they finish, if I wake up and I hear now that baby doctor, you know, accidentally took away the whole package, Like, what's going to happen now? Because I'm a young man and, you know, I need my package. I can't be going through life package list. So, yeah, that was one of those times when the age thing came up for me.

But anyway, I'm running for too long, so let me just get straight down to business. OK, First off, shout out to July. I mean, she's a listener of the show. She discovered it on Spotify. Well, he or she, I'm not really sure if July, I mean, is a boy's name any of the only, the only July Emmys I know are girls. So she discovered the show on Spotify, particularly the episode where I spoke about dominating your backyard and making sure that you do lots of local marketing because that's the way to get the business going.

Now she found the episode to be valuable. And she's one of those people who said she loves the background noise. She said that it is nice and subtle and nice to hear that. So that means I can continue like this. But yes, there are some people who have said they don't like the noise. In fact, one the time that I worked with last year in the solar space. Yeah, he he said, you know, he doesn't like the noise. But you guys just bear with me right now.

I'm trying to prioritize making sure that the episodes drop when they are supposed to drop. So eventually when I move to a bigger place, you know, construct the studio, have production staff, things like that I have, then we can make things more nice and polished. So like I said, today's episode is going to be a random episode. We're going to touch on things relating to referrals, relating to prospecting and age objections.

And that's because today I want to go and check out my sister-in-law. She works in the training institute in Abuja and and her boss, I've been thinking about having a conversation with her boss so that he can become a collaborator on the TV show that I'm working on. For those of you who've been listening to the podcast for a while, you really know that the radio show is up and running. Radio show is almost like two months old.

And then I'm currently in talks for the TV show to come online as well. And I'll let you guys know how that works. The reason why I'm pursuing radio and television is because I believe that radio and television, old media can also be used for business promotion. You can also use that to access markets. You know, I'm not one of those who believes everything gets to be social media. So social media is really, really important.

But old media still works as well. So TV and radio still works. Billboards, they still work. And I'll keep you guys updated about the progress I'm making on that front. So anyway, I got her the phone number for my sister in law's boss and I sent a WhatsApp message ahead of time. Now the reason why I did that is because people don't answer phones, especially in Nigeria, people don't answer phone numbers, you know that they don't have stored on their phones down is just normal.

And I think it's because in this part of the world, people are afraid of 419. So whenever I'm speaking in public events and I'm talking about how you use the phone to drop my business, some people say, hey, but people don't answer phones. This is the solution. And I'm going to say it here so that next time I run into one of you in person, none of you will tell me that people don't answer phones. The solution is to the solution is not OK.

People are not answering phones. I won't make phone calls. No, the solution is send a message first. The person will see the message and get a sense of who you are, what the call is about, stuff like that. It increases the odds that somebody will answer. So the answer is not no, make calls. The answer is send a text message ahead of time, an SMS or WhatsApp. And so I sent the message, but then the boss ignored. When I got to the office today,

I figured out that, you know, the boss ignored because there was 419. You know, that one is just normal. Everybody's afraid of 419 these days because these WhatsApp 49 people like they, they are masterful because I heard that there's one, we know that these scam people that do send you a message and if you make the mistake of replying that message, they will clone your number just by replying not to talk of even clicking on a link.

I don't know how this thing works. So there's now something on WhatsApp called, I think it's called 2 factor verification or something. So if you have WhatsApp and using WhatsApp for business, please please, please, please, please as soon as you're done listening to this episode, go and do your two factor authentication. Now what happens is whenever somebody tries to access your WhatsApp from someplace, the thing will now send you a message on your screen.

You will now say security check, enter 2 factor verification or something something. Is it 2 fact? Yeah, I think it's two factor verification. So the thing when I ask you to enter a password that is 6 digits long. Now some of you might think I beg is always necessary, but look I'm not ID you since I did this thing like last year, I have received that pop up. I think up to like 20 times I'm serious up to like 20 times you think has come up I'm like so somebody's trying to access my WhatsApp as in small boy like me like I never hammer.

Why are they trying to hack my stuff? In fact, that's the reason why I shut down my Facebook account. So anyway, go and set this thing up so that your WhatsApp is secure so that people can just hack your WhatsApp anyhow. What was I so the guy the answer now because that was a 419 now and by the time we showed up in the office, you know, me, my sister-in-law and him, I was just just in, you know, it turned out that I didn't mention in the text message who I got his number from.

And that was the error because if he had seen that, oh, OK, I got you on. Well, let me know. Use her real name anyway. So if we if I put that at all, what's up? I got a number from Jacinta, blah, blah, blah. You know, I'm going to boss you. This is what I want us to talk about. You know, that kind of thing. Then his man would have been calm, like, OK, OK, it's from Jacinta. And then he would have seen her in the office.

And so Jacinta, I received this text message. And should I say, yeah, sure, that's my brother. It's my Big Brother. And I said, OK, I know I had no problem. And then I'd have called him and then would have had the conversation. But because I didn't drop her name. Now, when the message came in, the guy looked at it. The guys are 419 and I told you that some of these things once you just reply like you don't go camp as in the hack your inbox.

So he just saw it and he just ignored. So the key points that we can take for these episodes and this is where referrals comes in. Now we need to learn how to work referrals in business. Lots of us get referrals. Remember I said for the purpose of this podcast, anytime you hear a referral, it just means you hook up. So if you're hooking somebody up, it's a referral. If somebody's hooking you up, it's a referral. So when it comes to working referrals, always name drop,

always use the person's name because it builds instant rapport. It builds in front instant familiarity, it builds in instant comfort with the person. So always name drop. It's like in this case, if I had sent a message and I said, hey bro, are you there? I got your number from Jacinta. I'm going to boss you concerning diseases. What time works for you? His man without being calm was like, OK, just enter, OK, just enter my staff.

Cool babe. No Allah, the person that is calling me you should be a cool. You should be a cool person too. Would also give a sense of familiarity. So OK, Justin town's brother. Oh, OK, no problem. He's mine to calm down, you know, you relax, you answer the call, you see? So always name drop when it comes to referrals. So like back to the earlier example that I said, if you're trying to draw more business, you're new, you tell your friend like a brochure, you know, I

don't have time marketer, I've started this business blah blah blah. I beg you know any any customers you know, and he gives you a couple of numbers, let's say shall go. Your friend gives you 5 numbers. As you call those people or as you message those people, the first thing you should say is I got your number from Shagun or dead by me. Something something something blah about the person say oh Shagun idiot, how we see now so fine, blah blah blah, me and him, my friends something so well, no problem.

So young man, how can I help you today? Then from there, you know, I had a business conversation. So always name drop. So if your friend gives you contacts to call, drop your friend's name. If you're hooking up somebody to try and get them a piece of business, tell them that when you call, let them know that it is a Mecca Walkiki that gave you the phone number. So when it comes to referrals, we must always name drop. If you do it instant rapport with the other person, instant familiarity with the other person, instant coming down with the other person because they will know that, OK, you come from a trusted source and this is not a four one niner.

Then another thing I want to emphasize, send a text message before the call. Make sure the text message is engaging. Make sure you state the purpose of why you might be reaching out later on. And then don't make the mistake I did name drop. And of course, confirm if the person is interested because that will let you know whether because some people look at you and say, oh, OK, thank you very much for reaching out. But actually I'm not interested or considering this, this, this at the time.

Best of luck with your endeavours. Is the person who sends that kind of message. You now know that OK, no need to call. But any you never know, there might be room in the future, but I was like any I'm just trying to say confirm me treasure. Now let's you know whether you should move ahead or not because some people will say Oh no, currently not interested, currently not looking. Best of luck with your endeavours. You do not leave that person.

Another person will say, oh OK, that sounds interesting, but don't call me before 3:00 because I'm busy. You see Now you know that OK, I'm supposed to call this person after 3:00. And if you keep doing this, then the percentage of answered calls will now go up if you have this thing of sending an SMS before time. Now, another tip is optimize your WhatsApp profile. Your profile should say who you are, what you do while you're safe to talk to, you know, blah,

blah, blah. Because there's some people that I send this message and I forget the name drop, but at least they click on my profile and then they see that, OK, OK, this guy looks like he's a reasonable somebody. And then when I call, we have the conversation and then they say, oh, by the way, how did you get my phone number? And now I say, oh, OK, I got it from Corley. I did go and say you didn't say it now. I'm so sorry.

I should have mentioned. Yeah, I forgot and then we have the conversation. But now another thing that I want to point out and the main reason that I want you guys to take from all this is see you, some of you are hard on yourself. People forget. I have this podcast, I talk about sales. I've been talking about sales and sales tactics and techniques for the last five ish years. It's been over 1050 episodes and even I from time to time I

forget to name drop when I get a referral. So people like me who do this for a living forget to apply tactics. Even you if you forget once in a while. Don't be too hard on yourself. We all forget. It's normal when you forget. Just take dressing and try your best to never forget again. That is why early on I recommend that people have a framework that is written out because if you have the framework, you make sure that you don't forget because you'll be looking at the framework and following the elements.

But I've been doing this for a while now where the frameworks are internalized. But like I said, once in a while I forget. So it's OK if you forget. Don't beat yourself up about it too much. So that's on the whole referrals thing. And OK, the angle now for prospecting is this sometimes when you're looking who might be interested in my product, for my service, this thing that I'm working on, who is a collaborator, who is a stakeholder, who is it is how can I get them on board?

How can I get them interested? How can I sell to them? Sometimes you know who the person is and sometimes only way of getting there is to use referrals is to use people close to them or to use a warm introduction. That is also a good way of prospecting because conversations are a whole lot easier when we when we add a touch of familiarity to it. So if somebody who knows you and who knows the other person is making an introduction, it might make it easier to have that business conversation.

So that is the tip for prospecting today. Just try and make it, try and make it warm. Try and see how you can introduce some mutual, some mutual connections. Like there's some people that reach out to online. I noticed that they went to OAU or something like that, and that's the way I start that conversation. Like I just, you know, like, oh, greatest effect. I agreed. You went to where you Yes, I did. When did you graduate?

Well, I graduated in 2005. Person say an embryo me, I graduated in 1981 and yes, that has happened. Excuse me, that's actually happened to me before. I noticed somebody was on where you graduate. So I entered the guy's office. I was like great affairs. Is it great? I say what year did you graduate? I said I graduated 2005 and I say I graduated in 1981. I'm sure you are not even born then and you know we laughed over it, but you can see that you know that commonality just mellow everything down a bit so that you guys can you know, you talk personal bills from rapport first before you enter into business.

So that's the angle on business. Also A1 moment. Sorry about that. Another notification, I came from my phone, just wanted to be sure it was not something that I have to deal with urgently. Let's see what else. OK, that's prospecting age objections. Now this is the reason why I now remember the age objections is because my sister-in-law, she's a young girl. She's in her 20s, twenties, 30s and I don't know sha but I don't think she's up to 32 sha and let's just say 282831.

OK, so and like I said, she's an instructor in our school. Now, when I entered the classroom, she told her students to greet me. And then, oh, they all greeted me. Oh, good afternoon, Sam, blah, blah, blah. And the first thing I noticed is there's some mature women in this class, like 40s and 50s. And so it's something I had a conversation with her. Like, like, compared to your students, like, you're younger. Has it been a problem?

She said Uncle T has been a serious problem. Yeah. I said, OK, so how did you deal with it? She just said, look, I just had to put my foot down. And there was one person in particular now she said, how can, how can you ask me to wash plates? And so you had to tell the lady that, look, I'm here, I'm your instructor. And yes, I'm younger than all of you. Some of you here are here old enough to be to be my mother. But I'm the one who has the expertise and I'm the one who has the knowledge.

So me saying that you should wash plates, it's not as if I'm trying to load it over you is because here all of us in the kitchen, there's nobody that been watching for us. When you finish and you start the business or you start working in somebody's kitchen, you will have to be cleaning up as you go. And if this is going to be a problem, if my age is going to be a problem, then it's either mommy is either you leave the class or me, I will leave the class.

And the other woman started to provoke, but then the other classmates told the woman, I look Madam, just pipe down. Let's do our business and let us leave. If it is this much of an issue, you can leave the class because this instructor, she, she's not going anywhere. And she said that that's how she has handled it. She's hard to be firm and it's something that I've spoken about over here on the podcast. Now, whenever somebody's looking at you because you're too small,

just simply restate your expertise. And then after that, confirm if the age is going to be a deal breaker because there are some people who age is a deal breaker. Like for me, back when I had the cancer of the Netherlands episode issue, I would like, I wasn't very comfortable once I saw the senior consultant or my mind calm down. OK, At least there's a grown up here in the operating room. It's not as if I wake up and see that they have, you know, they have taken away several inches.

So we have to ask the person because if it is a deal breaker, it is a deal breaker and there is nothing you can do about it. It's shocking for some of you to hear this one is not age, this one is tribe. But back when I was selling insurance, there's a lady who said that she could tell that things are not quite working out. And so she asked the guy out front that look, bro, it looks like you're not comfortable with me.

It looks like you're not comfortable with me that you know, clearly there's a problem. So like, what's the problem? And then the guy was like my sister, you're correct. The thing is I can't do business with you, both people. And she said he said, yes, I will not do business with an able person. And so she asked her, OK, no problem. So if I was to bring one of my Yoruba colleagues to you right now, does that mean you will sign this contract?

The guy said, oh, yes, if you bring a Yoruba person or sign this contract, it's OK, no problem, Sir, let me take care of that. Then she left the office. She put out the call to somebody in the office. Hey, Bio, what's up? This person I've been working on, this is the stage where if I agreed, every, every, every, everybody says he needs a Yoruba person to come in before we can sign this contract. So how far will you come in?

I beg and help me push this thing over the line. When we're done, I'll give you XXX percent bio. So, OK, no problem. So bio came in and then closed the deal and then that was that. Now, I'm not condoning that we should, I'm not suggesting that we should condone all these sorts of things, tribalism or ageism as people put it these days, tribe and age and sex and these sorts of things. I'm not trying to say we should condone that.

And you'll find that some offices have very, very, very strong policies towards this. There are some businesses that have very strong policies that look, if you are face to face with a client and this happens and this happens, just get up and leave. We want the money, but we don't want the money that bad that we have to subject you to this kind of abuse. But what I'm just trying to say is, excuse me, call it out and at least you know what it is you're supposed to do.

So this lady, she called it out and she knew that, OK, the fact that she's EBO is a problem. So excuse me now. So she now knew the next step. OK, we'll get your person from the office. So in this case, if age is a deal breaker, call it out and call the person's bluff. Because The thing is, if it's a problem now, it will always be a problem. It is better for you to call it out now. Now for the thing to now surface later and start giving you all kinds of problems.

If it's a problem now, it'll always be a problem and it's not going to go away. So we state your expertise and then call the person's bluff, ask if it is a deal breaker. So OK, sorry, I understand that you're uncomfortable, blah, blah, blah. Because yes, I'm a young surgeon. Is that going to be a problem? And the person says yes, I'll be much more comfortable if we have a senior surgeon around. So OK, no problem Sir. Let me just go and check if the head of if the head of so so so so is around.

Maybe he can come and have a conversation with you. Would that make you more comfortable or yes, that would. OK, one moment, Sir, just wait here and then you go off and you look for the senior consultant. So I'm not saying that you should condone people looking down on you as a baby doctor, but I'm not saying at least if you call out the bluff, you don't know what the next steps are. So like in my sister in So if this thing is going to be an issue, the only two options are you either leave the class or me, I will leave the class.

So what's it going to be? So for those of you who have fetching objections, I've made lots of episodes about it and you know, that's one way that you can deal with it. I think the last time I made an episode on age objections, the guy was, the guy is a realtor and he's still in uni. So at that time the guy hadn't even clocked 20 yet. So people were kind of uncomfortable talking real estate, talking millions and millions, 10s of millions,

hundreds of millions with somebody that is not even green mustache ambia. So some people are uncomfortable about that. So it's just, it's just, it's unfortunate. Well, it's just one of those things. It's just one of those things, if you're talking 10s of thousands or hundreds of thousands, maybe like catering or wedding photography and the fact that the person is a small boy won't be a problem. But then by the time you're talking about building a whole,

selling a whole office complex building and it looks like this guy just started puberty yesterday and the value of the contract is 100 M or something like that. You know, it's just normal that some people will get uncomfortable. So we state your expertise, call it out, nervous, a deal breaker. You will know what the next step is. So that's all for today's random episode. Now if you'd like to connect with me for a strategic session for a business audit or you have questions you'd like for me to answer, the number to hit me up on is 08064662140.

The country code is +234. For those of you who are not Nigerian, that's my what's up number as well. And remember, please, for those of you who use WhatsApp for business purposes, in fact, for those of you who are listening to this podcast, even if your WhatsApp is still personal purposes, I better go and do that two factor or then whatever that thing is called, one check security settings. Nothing will really, really,

really save you because yourself, you'd be surprised how sometimes when they put up that two factor thing, it's just a random check to make sure you're still in control of your phone. But you'd be surprised how many times that thing comes up, you know, meaning that people are actually trying to hack into your WhatsApp. So please protect your WhatsApp. Then you can also connect with me on LinkedIn. The name to look for is Tava Shima Aede.

I have a YouTube channel of the same name as well, Tava Shima Aede. So thank you very much for your time and your attention. I'll catch you guys at the next episode.