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Are you a B2B business owner or leader who attends conferences and networking events, but struggles to translate those opportunities into meaningful connections and qualified referrals? Do you wish you could genuinely expand your professional network without feeling transactional or overwhelmed?
Welcome to Mastering Conference Networking, hosted by Catherine Brown, founder of the Good Humans Growth Network. Catherine, an accomplished entrepreneur, community facilitator, and author of How Good Humans Sell™, is here to transform the way you approach in-person events.
Move beyond collecting business cards and discover how to truly engage, create reciprocal value, and make your time at any business event incredibly productive. If you're ready to master the art of strategic networking and elevate your business development through genuine human connection, this podcast is for you.
MCN_Ep06
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[00:00:00]
Catherine Brown: Welcome back to Master Conference Networking. I'm Catherine Brown and you are listening to the second part of our referral interview series. If you missed the last episode that had so many good human stories about how we can help one another in business, be sure to go back and listen to that before this one.
Also stick around after the episode where I [00:01:00] will share a little known secret about creating long-term referral relationships.
Bryan Steele: Would you introduce yourself to everyone?
Melissa Graham: Building Trust Through Ethical Business Practices
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Melissa Graham: Yes. I'm Melissa Graham. I work with material management resources and we help our clients when they've identified material or equipment that's idle or surplus leftovers from projects or maintenance, and we broker sales to new users of those materials and equipment so that we can keep them out of the landfills.
Bryan Steele: So tell me a favorite referral story. It can be something you've given or something you've received, but really the power of referrals in your business.
Melissa Graham: One of my favorite ones is a client that we had worked with when he was at a company in California and he changed positions and found himself at a new oil and gas company.
And they had an investment recovery program where they were disposing of items and had a company that [00:02:00] just wasn't. Ethical in working with them. And he recommended us because he had worked with us in the past and just knew that we were very ethical, that we got the job done timely and that they, you could trust
Bryan Steele: us.
How's that impacted your business?
Melissa Graham: It's meant a lot. It helps us stand behind the fact that we are who we say we are, that we pride ourselves on providing ex. Service and that we value our relationships with our clients.
Bryan Steele: Awesome. Thank you so much for joining me.
You're welcome.
All right. I'm here with my next guest. Would you introduce yourself and your business to everyone?
Angie Wright: Overcoming Networking Fears with Catherine's Help
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Angie Wright: I would be glad to. So my name is Angie Wright and I have a fractional HR services organization. It's called Kenkar Services, and I deal with Fractional HR Services and I'm also an executive coach for HR professionals.
So this is a referral story about how I actually met Catherine, and it was through an amazing mentor and friend that I have by the name of Lori [00:03:00] Hall. And Lori Hall has her own business and she said, I've got someone that I want to introduce to you who is an amazing sales person and who can help your company grow.
And she introduced me to Catherine. Catherine asked. To me, what my biggest fear was, and it's a funny story, she was going to a conference with me and I said, I don't like meeting people face to face, so I always run and hide in the restroom. and she laughed and she said, we're gonna fix that this weekend.
And so through Catherine coaching me about meeting people and being comfortable in the space that I am, that weekend, I kept, she kept watching me all, all the weekend to make sure I wasn't hiding. And I met more people. Through the Texas Coaches Coalition, I met more people and were able to grow my network and the coaches around me to grow my confidence and it was pretty cool.
Francesca Kenney: From Clubhouse Connection to Business Partnership
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Francesca Kenney: So I'm Francesca Kenney, and thank you for having me. Stop by the booth. This is awesome. [00:04:00] And so I own a company. I'm the founder of a company called Green Orchid Consulting. We're located about 40 miles northwest of Chicago in a town called Schaumburg.
And most of my clients are not in Chicago, which is fantastic. And so we help smart business owners who appreciate the value of having their companies run efficiently. So we come in at the C-suite level, so like chief financial officer, chief marketing officer, we take a look at what they need. And we help them with those needs.
Mm-hmm. And what I find in working with entrepreneurs is there's three things. One, they don't understand the back office and they don't wanna understand it. Two, they understand it, but they don't have any time for it. And three, they don't understand the value that my company can come in and help them, that is affordable for their organization.
Bryan Steele: Tell me a favorite referral story. What's [00:05:00] something that's really impacted you?
Francesca Kenney: Back in the day when everybody was on Clubhouse and we still, I still run a show on Clubhouse on Wednesdays.
Bryan Steele: Are you the only one?
Francesca Kenney: I'm like the only, well, no, we have our, our fans. Right. Okay. So they, they're still there at six on Wednesdays, on Clubhouse.
It's now called Stomp and Mash podcast. And so we we're out there just having fun 'cause that's what we love to do. So the partner that I run that show with, his name is Brian Keltner and through. Clubhouse, somebody said, you have to meet Francesca. And Brian is ACEC, MO Chief marketing officer.
So Brian said she's an accountant. I don't want to meet her. Like why would I wanna meet her? And so anyhow, he's having an adult beverage, he calls me. And he's like, okay, so, so and so said we needed to meet and talk and blah, blah, blah. And so through that I started talking with him and I'm cracking jokes and he's got his adult beverage and all of a sudden I [00:06:00] said something hysterical and he's choking on his drink.
Oh no. So you know how it is right when it goes down the wrong wind pipe? Yeah. You're, you're just coughing and he's trying to compose himself and he's like, I don't want to hang up on her because she's funny. And so I said, I'm so sorry you're dying at this point. So he tells that didn't help. So he's telling everybody that when we first met, I tried to kill him.
So that's like our origin story. So through that, three years later we have, different business things that we do together. We also have a networking group that we started last year, he and I together as founders. It's called Elevators. And so I guess my story is you don't have to meet somebody in person to put together.
A new offering, a new revenue stream, a new company. You just have the right chemistry. And so here we are.
Bryan Steele: And here we are.
Niki Hankins: The Power of Strategic Tax Referrals
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Niki Hankins: Hi, [00:07:00] I'm Niki Hankins. My business is no dumb blonde accounting, and I love to clean up messes.
What, what kind of messes do you clean up?
Any kind of financial bookkeeping. People that haven't done taxes in years and years, or their spouse has been trying to help them, and it's turned into a huge nightmare.
Bryan Steele: Well, tell me a favorite referral story that you have.
Niki Hankins: So I had a client, I don't personally do taxes, I do everything else, but I don't do taxes. And so I had a client that needed a taxes preparer. I had a lady that I had met at one of my networking groups who did taxes, but also did financial planning.
Referred them to a couple different people, but told them that she was probably the best bet, you know, but let them choose. And they did choose to work with her, and she ended up being able to save them about $25,000 on their taxes. And provide both of them and their spouses, [00:08:00] retirement security, peace of mind that they would have a good retirement fund.
And so they have been like, I benefited because they were so happy with the referral and she benefited because they've been working with her for years now and it was just a really awesome experience all around.
Bryan Steele: I love it. Thank you so much.
Niki Hankins: Thank you.
Shanté Smith-Daniels: Building Trust Through Serial Referrals
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Shanté Smith-Daniels: Hi, I am Shante from SSD Consulting.
Bryan Steele: Awesome. And what do you do at A SSD? DSS, what was it?
Shanté Smith-Daniels: DSSD Consulting.
Bryan Steele: SSD Consulting. Yeah. What do you do? What sort of consulting?
Shanté Smith-Daniels: Fractional COO for small or mid-size businesses.
One of my favorite referral stories is I have a friend, he's a digital marketer. He does websites. Mm-hmm. And I refer to him a business owner that needed her website done. Lo and behold, she has become a serial entrepreneur and she has created three more websites with him.
Bryan Steele: So just the one that one connection,
Shanté Smith-Daniels: just the one has triggered a lot of income for him.
Bryan Steele: Oh, that's so awesome. So you see the impact just, just [00:09:00] offering that. Yeah. Yeah. And that that grows that relationship too.
Shanté Smith-Daniels: Yeah. That connection. Just that trusted relationship I had with him. She knew that she could trust him to deliver a good product.
Awesome. And he has repeatedly.
Bryan Steele: I love that.
Would you introduce yourself to everyone?
Matt Wolfe: Finding Success in Niche Markets
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Matt Wolfe: Yeah. My name is Matt Wolfe. I am the partner and director of Brand Strategy at Brand three Marketing. Awesome. Tell me a favorite referral story that you have. I think one of the things that really surprised me is I worked for they are custom window treatment fashion designers, and so it like, it sits adjacent to home services, but it's its own thing. It's really about creating a work of art in someone's home. It went well and then they started referring me and suddenly I like fell into this national community of window fashion designers, custom window treatment designers.
Bryan Steele: Oh, that's awesome. So like that one engagement, just that generosity opened so many doors for you.
Matt Wolfe: Yeah. And then they were referring me to the other ones. But what was really fun about it [00:10:00] is they all had a really unique story. You would think it's all the same, right? You'd think it's all curtains and blinds and, mm-hmm.
And it is what it is. But they all had a really specific take on how they do the work. They all had something that made them truly, really unique in the. In their design style and how they interact with clients. So the fun for me was like finding what really made each of these tick and, and who their real audience was.
Jeremiah Shaw: Building a $60K Contract Through Network Connections
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Jeremiah Show: I'm Jeremiah Shaw, the co-founder and CEO of Grovity leadership. We do executive coaching and team development with leaders that wear jeans and boots.
There's obviously referrals that go in and go out with our business a lot, and we have a strong referral network. But last year I was talking to somebody at the Sell Well Conference, which, which is a, another conference within the hub of the Good Human Growth Network.
And we were just talking and they said, you know what? I have a client I need to introduce you to. They're experiencing some of the problems and pain points that you can solve. Can I set that up? And I said, absolutely. You can set that up. [00:11:00] About three or four months go by. I had a couple meetings with the individual ended up having a conversation with them with my team, and that's, we are just now closing a contract with them that's gonna be bringing in $60,000 worth of revenue just in the next 12 months.
And it's looking like it's gonna be a multi-year contract. And so, so that came from one conversation and, and really grateful for just the referral network relationships and that's how it works out. You know, you feel indebted to that, but what's great about this network is on their end, they're just happy they can make the connect.
They're happy they can keep it in the circle here at, the Good Human Growth Network.
I love that. Thank you so much.
Yeah, absolutely.
Catherine Brown: I am so excited to be with you today because I love teaching about how to be a good referral receiver and giver. There's four points I wanna make with you about this topic, and this comes from years and years and years of practicing and in running the Good Humans Growth Network, which has so [00:12:00] many referral groups in it.
We regularly gather those leaders and we learn about best practices so that we can all be better givers. As I shared in the prior episode, referrals are the easiest kind of business development lead. And so we all want more of those. It really doesn't matter how big or small your company is. Everybody wants more referrals.
It's a common human trait. So the first thing I wanna talk about is you're going to have a higher probability of being able to be a good referral giver if you're actually a trusted advisor to the client. I feel like, especially among consultants, this term quote, trusted advisor. Is thrown around a lot when I'm using the term.
What I mean is that that owner of the company, vice president, director, C-level person, whoever your buyer is, they really do go [00:13:00] to you to ask your opinion about things that sometimes are even outside of the purview of the immediate thing you sell to them. I'll give you a quick example. I love when I get calls when someone says, this is gonna seem random.
Do, but I just know you'll know someone who, because that tells me I'm a trusted advisor to that person. I once had a longtime sales training client of mine who reached out and said, we have a really hard situation happening in our family, and I just know that you will know a local therapist. And I was so touched that he thought of me because it told me that in the fullest sense.
He trusted me with that information and that he knew I would know someone, because that's the sort of thing, you don't wanna open Google and just do reviews, right? You want someone to say, I know this therapist is a great therapist, so it doesn't have to be that personal, but to be a trusted advisor, you have to have the kind of relationship where you [00:14:00] hear about challenges, and you can ask about challenges that are happening in the business that are not just about the thing you sell.
So if you're a finance consultant. You happen to know that they're making new hires, right? Or if you're a supply chain software company, you know that they wanna talk about this new website initiative they have and what that's going to mean. It's that cross-departmental, okay? When you have achieved that level of trust, you get told stuff that's happening, and you could say, how is that project going?
And it's not something you're trying to sell to them, it's just about things they care about. If you cultivate this kind of relationship, you will be so much more well positioned to be able to give good referrals. You might say, well, how do I get there? Catherine, you've got to give. You have got to ask, be curious and give, and so you do everything you can to say, based on this little piece of information you told me, Mr.
[00:15:00] Client, Ms. Client, here is a podcast I thought you'd enjoy. Here's a person you might wanna follow. Do you know about this conference? Will I see you there? You have to take a chance to put yourself in front of them and show that you're a person who gives above and beyond the thing they bought from you.
When you do that over and over and over, you increase the chances that you'll really become a trusted advisor. So being a trusted advisor is awesome. It's the place we all wanna be. When you have that kind of rapport, you have access to information to be a good referral giver because you hear about things that are happening.
So that's the first thing. Practice being a trusted advisor. Now the next thing is how to be a good giver. If I had a dollar for every time someone waited for someone else to go first, I would own my own island. Everybody's waiting for someone else to prove their love and loyalty by giving a referral first to someone else.
Let's say you come back from a networking conference and there was a, you're a fractional [00:16:00] consultant and there was another fractional consultant who sells to the same industry and you took, you have two or three calls and you're looking for opportunities to refer one another. Someone has gotta go first.
Someone's gotta take the chance to see that that person will deliver and will do a good job. And I want you to think about what it would be like to be in a community where the go first attitude. Permeated. We talk about this all the time. In the Good Humans Growth Network, you cannot wait for someone else.
You want to outgive other people. And when you do that, although it will not be a one-to-one ratio, lead to lead, referral to referral, it won't be one-to-one, but the reciprocity will kick in. When you're good to other people, the laws of the universe and the law of reciprocity means that that person is going to train themself to listen for you.
Look for you. They're gonna pay more attention to you on LinkedIn. They're gonna comment on your posts, and they're gonna feel like they owe you a favor. And so being a good giver means that you are not being selfish and you are not [00:17:00] holding back. You are actively training yourself to listen on their behalf.
And you take a chance of going first, go first. That's my second point. Go first. Third, one of the ways you can increase the chances of being a good referral giver is to be very curious with the person that you want to refer. And you want to understand what does their buyer buy before they work with your friend and after they work with your friend.
So lemme give you an example. When I was doing full-time sales training a few years ago. I like to work with sales teams that were about three to 10 people in size. So these are multimillion dollar companies, but they're not huge. They're not 200 million in revenue. They're not 500 million in revenue.
Certainly not a billion in revenue, but they were, they had a director of sales. They had reps that were assigned by territory, and I might or might not be the first sales trainer that they'd [00:18:00] ever brought into a sales kickoff, and they were still relatively small companies. That size firm that has two to 10 salespeople will usually pay a good bit of money for an excellent website because when you get to that size, you're thinking about leads coming in through your site and you're thinking about automations and you're making sure that your marketing is fairly sophisticated.
So what I did to get good referrals is I met all these marketing agencies that specialize in the same industries that I liked it to trade in. And I would teach them, I would say, okay, before people buy sales training, one of the things that often happens is they implement a new site. And then they implement a new site that kicks off new processes and they have to go back and revisit their training.
So friend who's the marketing agency owner, what I want you to listen for is I want you to listen for when that owner, VP [00:19:00] sales, CRO, whatever their title was. When they make a joke and they say, well, after all of this work, I sure hope my reps can close those leads. Because if you listen, it'll happen. They will say things like that, and when that happens, your ears perk up.
And I want you to think of Catherine, and I want you to say, is that a concern? Tell me more about that. Those are the kinds of situations where someone preceded me. Usually a marketing agency preceded me as a sales trainer. The founder was the manager of the sales team. I often was positioned to be able to. Refer to a vice president of sales that was an interim or a fractional. So think about an Oreo. Okay? I was the cream in the middle and the cookie on one side was the marketing agency, and the cookie on the other side might be a fractional sales leader.
My [00:20:00] training sat in the middle. Every person listening to this has someone who precedes them and someone who comes after them. And the more you can explain this concept to other people, the more you can train them to listen for you in very natural conversations that will happen in the course of their regular doing business because they're adjacent to what you sell.
They're next to what you sell. So that's point number three. Notice who comes before and after you teach people who that is, and if you wanna be a good referral giver, ask who that is of those referral partners you want to serve.
Best Practices for Referral Follow-up
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Catherine Brown: The last point I wanna make is about good follow-up etiquette when someone gives you a referral. Now this gets to all kinds of automations, self-management, there's all kinds of ways you could screw this up. So let's talk about how important it is to do lead tracking and to think about how you're gonna [00:21:00] manage yourself in this process.
You might have worked for six to 12, to 18 to 24 months to build a relationship with someone who's giving you that qualified referral. That's a real sales lead and not a marketing lead. They're really gonna buy from someone, and you wanna be the one that gets that 50 to 90% chance of closing. Well for that to happen, you really wanna treat that referral with respect.
And treating with respect is acknowledging within 24 hours that you got the message. I travel a lot now for my business. There's many times that I have to write and say, I wanna thank you so much and let you know I see this message, and then I call out the name of the person who is the new lead for me.
And I say, I'll follow up with you directly. They don't wanna be in an email sequence forever, right? But you wanna acknowledge that you received it. You wanna do that within a day, and then you want to immediately turn around and exchange.
Calendar links or say, I'll see you at the event, or whatever, the next right thing is to [00:22:00] schedule with that referral partner. Now, most people are actually pretty decent at this part, I find. But two things that are challenging are that information does or doesn't actually make it into ACEC RM. So it might be sitting in your email, but it's not actually queued up in a way that if your new referral doesn't respond to you right away, will you remember to follow up again?
Because what if they're traveling or what if they're ill or what if they've had some kind of serious thing happen in their family, right? We don't wanna make up a reason why people don't get back to us, so we're going to probably have to follow up again. And how are you going to remember to do that? You need to think about that.
Reminder system. I like to put them in my CRM and schedule a task for 48 hours later. And literally for myself, the task says, did Joe get back to you? And then I open up that task and I go, oh yeah, that's what that was. So I really wanna see that through, even if it requires a little bit of quote chasing.
And then the second point I wanna make in addition to the [00:23:00] CRM, is that. You wanna be sure to say thank you and tell that referral partner what happened. And I confess that sometimes I forget this piece because it's it, it could be such a long tail before you actually close. And so that's another place for you to think about with the help of your virtual assistant or ACEC RM or an automation, like what could you set up for yourself so that you have some checkpoints where you remember.
Did I tell my referral partner what happened? I find I give referrals a lot. I find that people don't tell me ultimately what happened with them very often, and I'm very curious. But it creates work for me then to have to go chase that down. And I always notice when someone circles back and says, I'd love to tell you what happened for good or bad, I just wanna know.
And so this is a best practice that to me, like really separates the, the pros from the amateurs. And most of us can become more pro [00:24:00] in this respect.
Four Key Principles of Successful Referral Relationships
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Catherine Brown: So let's go over the four points again really quickly. The first is. Learn how to become a trusted advisor. If you're not today, it really matters. The second one was go first. Be a good giver. Err on generosity. Someone has to begin this referral relationship. The third was notice who comes before and after you.
When you could answer this question for other people, you train your referral partners to help you, and then you can ask the same information of them that's going to train you to listen on their behalf. And the last part is have pro level follow up with those referrals that have been given to you. Most people do a good job in the beginning with an [00:25:00] acknowledgement, but don't close the loop ultimately on what happened.
That kind of appreciation and follow up will really make you stand out.
Building Your Referral Partner Pipeline
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Catherine Brown: Thanks for listening today. I remember that I promised you one more sales secret in this area of referral giving and receiving. Some years into my selling career, I realized that when people talk about a sales pipeline, they mostly are thinking of their buyers who is going to buy their product or service, and they neglect to realize that they actually have a referral partner pipeline, that they actually ought to work equally diligently. Okay. Why is that? Well, I've observed over the years that if you have a fairly lengthy sales cycle. You can expect that it's probably going to take a while also to build trust with people who also sell to the same type of client with a fairly lengthy sales cycle, right? Because we're all busy.
There's lots of steps, there's lots of [00:26:00] people, there's lots of things happening, but that long sales cycle that you have to close without a referral is going to be made so much shorter by that referral partner. Who walks you in with a qualified referral, so even if it takes you 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 coffees, lunches, meetups at conferences, zoom calls, teams calls for you to develop a relationship where you get that referral, that referral partner pipeline is a one to many strategy.
Instead of one person closing, one company closing, and maybe telling someone else about you. If you surround yourself with a handful of referral partners who are equally committed. I would almost argue that it doesn't matter how long it takes to cultivate those, because those are relationships that can last a lifetime.
They can last as long as you wanna work, and they will think of you over and over and over again. So [00:27:00] don't neglect the referral partner pipeline as your secondary pipeline. And when you hear the term sales pipeline, don't just think of buyers. Think of both. That's one of my best practices that I've realized over the years, and I hope that that helps you.
Thanks so much for listening to Master Conference Networking. This has been so much fun. Please don't forget to give a review on the platform you listen to and we'll talk to you again. I.