How To Get Referrals
Caleb Roche
Devin Miller
The Inventive Journey Podcast for Entrepreneurs12/9/2021
How To Get Referrals
The Inventive Journey
Starting and growing a business is a journey. On The Inventive Journey, your host, Devin Miller walks with startups along their different journeys startups take to success (or failure). You also get to hear from featured guests, such as venture firms and angel investors, that provide insight on the paths to a successful inventive journey.
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so you can get a crm and just set that up and then use that to build out send email marketing and that gets further down the road but start to actually just collect data on each person that you're working with and use that to further conversations and start to realize how you can plant those seeds whether they enjoy a local coffee shop or they're a huge fan of their foodie or they love a nfl team or whatever that looks like finding things that they enjoy and using that data to plant those seeds is important so i think get a crm you know figure out start by adding people in their existing connections people that are new and then start to build out your crm start to learn how you can use that better and then effectively within the next year you should be able to have this kind of referral engine that you can start [Music] hey everyone this is devin miller here with another episode of the inventive journey i'm your host evan miller the serial entrepreneur has grown several startups into seven and eight figure businesses as well as the founder and ceo of miller ip law where we help startups and small businesses with their patents and trademarks if you ever need help with yours just go to strategymeeting.com we're always here to help now today we have another great guest on the podcast and this is an expert episode which is always fun because we get a dive into a variety of different areas of expertise and today is no exception so we're going to be talking a bit with caleb roche and a lot about referrals so how to grow with referrals to doing or whether or not to do average online advertising or whether you grow your business with referrals how to ask for them how to plan seeds with them how to in in line with that how to build a good customer experience and what that marketing strategy might be and a few other things i'm sure along the way as well so with that much as an introduction welcome on the podcast caleb thanks devin i appreciate you having me on absolutely so now i've just gone through just a quick uh run through of a bit of what we'll uh talk today as far as expertise but before we dive into that maybe uh share with the audience a little bit about yourself why you're an expert on the episode on this uh this area and uh why they should listen to you yeah so as you said my name is caleb roach located in edmond oklahoma just north of oklahoma city it's kind of a small town not really and i own a marketing consulting firm so we help small businesses all the way up to 100 plus million dollar organizations figure out their marketing strategy and what they need to do what makes me the subject matter expert sometimes sometimes i people ask you know what what makes you qualified to say this and previously before i worked in marketing consulting um i did product insights and consumer insights for a large major brand um where we studied kind of the what what consumers wanted from that brand in regards to product differentiation what different products they actually wanted and how to actually improve those so i have kind of a history of helping a brand improve their product line and meet what their consumers are wanting which has helped me improve my business and other people's businesses through what i learned at that that experience with that company awesome well i think that's uh definitely a great background and uh certainly a great area of expertise and i'm excited to cover it because i think you know this on the general area of referrals everybody knows it and you know deep down or maybe not even so deep down referrals are a great source i mean you hear about it on marketing all the time in that you know referrals are going to be one of the best you know the best you know first probably the very best is just repeat customers because then you know they already you already have an established relationship with them and they've and you've already worked with them before but i'd say right on the tells of that is if you can get somebody to say hey this guy does a great job or this guy is you know is worth his weight and gold type of a thing then that is a great impression to start out with and it sets you off with on the right foot to begin with and yet it's while it's invaluable and people know it it's oftentimes a hard area to figure out how to get referrals how to ask for referrals should you ask for them or should they be organic and kind of all that and i thought when we or chatted a bit before one of the main things that you guys have done to grow your business is really ban primarily on referrals so maybe walk us through a little bit of you know a quick overview and we'll dive into and have a good discussion but you know how how do you go about basing your business on referrals yeah and i mean it's one of those things like you mentioned it's it's definitely cheaper to keep existing customers and gain new customers and so you know if you can build kind of an infrastructure system around keeping you know customers as you acquire them and focus on that customer that you acquire before you're even focusing on new client acquisition is important and so what i did when i first started the company was i found people that through referrals because you know i was kind of young in business and so i didn't know do i do digital marketing channels do i as a marketing company do i just get a bunch of like random online businesses that i can market or do i focus on my local area and how i can help local small businesses and so you know to be honest with you at the very beginning it definitely wasn't a profitable model in the first year because you know a lot of referrals and a lot of building connections with people is giving more than you get and so you have to keep this mindset of when i talk to people i want to provide as much value into their life and their business as possible without expecting something in return or even hinting that i want something in return as well and so obviously in the long run you expect that roi roi to pay off but when you talk to people especially if you're expecting referrals or want to build kind of a referral base is you have to expect no one to ever refer you and when they do you have to be super excited because i've seen a lot of people i don't know if you've had this experience in your lifetime but i've worked with them and they seem excited about my business and how they can provide value to my life and then all of a sudden um they're expecting things from me or the the conversations that are happening seem kind of intentional that they're wanting something out of me and so it leaves me a bad taste in my mouth and so it's kind of a balance that you have to have on building a you know like i said a non-profitable business for a little bit on building connections meeting people where they are getting them starbucks gift cards bringing them something that they like identifying things that they can you know resonate with and kind of build that trust in that relationship and eventually start to show your expertise and skills and how you can help them and then in return that hopefully leads them to having a situation where they've identified hey i need his services or i know someone that needs his services um because as i'm sure you've seen you know you don't want to come across as this guy that i can help you out and in the long run there's some expectation down the road that you didn't realize that there was no and i think that you know that's uh i'm always slightly jaded you know you see that and it's whether it's on linkedin and people reach out and want to make connections or or they get she can email or connect up to you and say hey we just want to add value to your network and let you know and blah blah blah and you know usually the subtle underline is just hey i want to pitch you our services because we you know we think you can benefit from them which doesn't come across as genuine and just come across as hey the only reason i'm connecting with you is to get as much money from you as possible now the opposite and one other thing i wanted to circle back with that you talked or touched on was you know it is something that takes a long it's a long at least in my experience a longer lift to get there in other words if you want to start out with referrals you're not going to likely have referrals on day one right you're not going to be able to get those referrals to where they're going to just simply flood through your door on day one because one you haven't built the relationships and two it takes a while to cultivate those relationships and to plant the seeds and to you know build all that pipeline and until you do so you're not going to have those referrals so it is a longer term strategic plan and yet the issue that a lot of people have is great that's lo in the long term that works out wonderful and on the short term how do you you know how do you keep the business and floater going so that you don't go out of business while you're waiting for those referral pipeline to start to build so when you guys when you're you know because now as i understand it you guys heavily rely on referrals and that's where your lot of business was coming from when you started out how did you keep the business going as you were building those referrals yeah no absolutely it's definitely a balance because and that's where we you know within our business model we've seen a lot of agencies heavily rely on you know advertising models to gather business in which is a good thing but then they're not you know retaining customers and it's kind of a you know bring in and burn out as quick as possible get as much money and so it's definitely kind of a you have to have a multi-level plan within there and so as you're building you know as your building referral partners and people that are coming into your business you definitely have to work on lead generating outside of that as well so you have to get your at least short-term customers that are going to pay your bills and so what i had to do was we did a lot of and we still do online advertising get people in the door that we can make a you know an offer that isn't a promise but just how can we help you and build upon that like we have a free strategy session per se for our business model and so we help business owners under 500 understand what they need we don't sell them but we do at the same time and so we give them a plan of action and most business owners don't have the time or they don't want to you know expend the resources that it takes to build that plan or you know implement that plan within their business and so they can hire us to do that and so we had to build a business model around acquiring these short-term customers that have turned into long-term customers but then at the same time making sure that we're not spending too much energy on the lead generation side that we're forgetting our referral partners so it's kind of a juggling act you know you have your referral partners and you have this you've got to keep the bills paid and you've got to keep you know the lights on and so balancing how much resolution am i coming in this month how much how many of my you know leads am i generating and how much new business do i have but at the same time how much time am i actually able to spend with my referral partners because as you said it's a long-term relationship i have people that i've nurtured for a year that are just converted now and not that there is a time frame associated with that but you know here they are a year later realizing holy cow he can provide value to my business and it's helped them out down the road but it's not something that you can pressure someone into or you can't force it down their throat on this is the value i provide and so like you said it's a balancing act you've got to have the business coming in but in the long run like for our business past you know two years we've seen the referrals coming in at a you know much higher rate than we have and so now we've kind of like lowered our advertising channels always getting new business off advertising channels but we're really heavily focusing on you know putting dollars into refer like referral partners them like giving them some incentive to refer us because we've seen it be so profitable from them so now you just touched on so a couple or kind of follow-up questions to that so one is what would you say and i know i'm sure it is industry a bit different depending on the needs of services you're offering but at least for you guys when you are starting to set things up for referrals down the down the road or in the future how long was it within your business when you start before you started to see referrals start to come in i mean it was a solid six months before we actually saw a pretty good roi on everything we got in and so you know within the first six months we'd get a couple trickle in but it was still kind of scrambled on people not knowing what exactly you do or kind of a soft pass and so that's where we kind of built upon the referral model of making sure because within referrals you have to keep a couple things into account you've got to keep the referrer updated on the status of that because they want to know that when they refer you that you're taking care of the referral to making sure that they're educated on exactly what services you provide your price points all of that as much as possible and then three obviously creating that into a system where it doesn't take as much time off your hands and so for us first six months was people refer us hey do you do um you know x and it was like completely outside of marketing you know do you do like laptop setup and we're like no we are a marketing company and people associated it with marketing so it took us six months to tell people we're not an i.t company we're a marketing company and for them to actually understand that so it was about six months before we started seeing a positive roi on what we're doing and then within a year um we got about 25 of our incoming new business to be referrals and in this past year it's been about 75 so over the past three years it's it's shifted dramatically from you know a small amount of referrals to heavily now just to kind of follow that out of curiosity so what were you doing during those first six months to plant the seeds because just simply making connections you know better than nothing don't get me wrong but if all you're doing is just simply making connections with individuals but nothing more it's difficult to convert them into refer for them to really even ask for referrals and it seems like you almost have to kind of plant those seeds along the way so that when because you never know when they're going to have the referral pop-ups and when they have someone in mind that they're going to say hey you should check them out or someone asked them do you know this person so what were you doing to kind of plant those seeds or kind of prepare the people that are likely to going to give you a referral so when that opportunity comes up they're thinking of you so it's like that you put it really well put because you know it's it's not something that you can just put them on an auto trip plan and they're gonna like convert like crazy um you know there's a lot of i did a lot of handwritten thank you notes especially after meeting with people and so and i i you did a great job after the first podcast the one thing that i really appreciate about you as a host is you actually sent me a thank you card and it was handwritten and that that really made a cool thing and so you resonated in my mind and so after meeting with people sending them a handwritten thank you note with some sort of like it was great meeting you i love your business model and not just a generic like thanks for taking the time to talk really finding something that you really enjoyed about that person and then finding ways within the next six months that you can strategically bump into them or think of them you know top of mind whether that's you know um you're you're by their off their office and you've got coffee in your hands what kind of coffee do you like or hey i've got a starbucks gift card that i'm not going to use would you like one or you know asking them to go to lunch and when you go to lunch not talking about your business and asking them about the different parts of their business to where they leave that lunch and they're like we didn't talk anything about caleb and we you know i felt like i talked all the time i want to learn more about his business and so all of it is just strategic there's no malice intent behind it but getting people to feel like you really listen to them that you are there for them and you're going to provide these this consultative approach to when you you listen to their business that's going to make a huge impact so obviously industry and by industry it it changes but the biggest piece is just staying front of mind finding ways you can pop into that business owner find a way that you can call them check up on them without having your business included brings that value to where it's three months into that six months they're going to start asking about your business and caring when you know you've given giving given it's like that um is it gary vaynerchuk hook cook right jab um always provide that value and kind of bring in and that at that point where they kind of had that realization that holy cow i don't know much about his business and he knows everything about my business that's when the shift happens and that's when it's like holy cow i like this guy no and i i think that there's definitely a lot there a lot to that and i think that you know a lot of what you kind of covered is there's intentionality in other words it doesn't need to be that you simply say hey well i don't want to be salesy and i don't want to be pushy which i agree i don't think that that's the right way but it does have to be okay what are these small touch points or the small seeds i can find maybe it's just say thank you it's a bumping into them it's you know having a reason to connect up with them that isn't just simply pitching you and your services but rather is it you know feels much more genuine and kind of just builds that relationship now the one thing i'll caveat is is you know the the opposite what i've heard and as i have mentioned multiple times is for listeners on the podcast is i love to listen to podcasts and i don't just listen to like law firm podcasts i also love to listen to other ones that i think have a lot of insight and one of them was with real estate it's called the real estate marketing dude and reason i listen to them is mark real estate people have to be good at networking and marketing if they're going to stay because it's a very crowded market and one of the things that he talks a lot about is you know people do need to know what you're doing now that you have not to piss them hard but he gave kind of the example and i think he was in the bar or out to dinner with a friend and you know the friend was talking about how he just referred this you know and he wasn't obviously the guy was in real estate but referred this or this whole cells of a house over to this really hot chick and i that's his words not by it so don't take it um but you know it's kind of just going on about how he was hoping to get a date with her and it was so great and then he turned you know the guy turned his friend says i'm in real estate too and he's like oh yeah i kind of forgot about you and that kind of thing it was like he didn't you know he would have happily referred it over to a friend but because he didn't ever have a top of mind he's referring it over to someone he's hoping to get a date with rather than his friend that he would want to help out with simply because it wasn't top of mind so it seems like there is that balance where you have to have some intentionality to where you do are top of mind or that they do think of you when they need that referral and yet it's not so so you're not pitching them and hitting them up so much and trying to hard sell them to the point that they're turned off and saying well i never would want to use them what if that comes up because they drive me nuts type of thing yeah and i'm assuming you probably didn't get the date either i'm assuming so yeah they never finished that part of the story so it'll be i guess we could just choose our own adventures yeah you can choose your own point of view um so what the one thing that i've learned um and as you probably know running a very successful business a lot of this is learning and so there's no perfect approach that you'll ever figure out and so for me i learned better when i have situations because i've had situations like that happen too where people were like man i paid someone like three thousand dollars to build me a website and it was garbage and i'm like looking at that mob you know i build websites right and they're like oh i thought you just did advertising and like oh yeah so you know you learn situations like that i think it you know you don't want those like major failures all the time but i think major failures like that where you you have someone realize and you're like i was not intentional enough about telling this person my service kind of teach you like the ways okay i was a little too bearish on this like i was kind of too timid so here's how i'm going to change that and i think it's always changing things because as as you probably know like there's no perfect strategy to how to influence people or how to win people because people are so different that it's kind of an adjustment game of sometimes some people really prefer you to be more aggressive and you learn that through that relationship and some people are like if you try to sell me i will never be your friend and so you have to find like this balance of how do i tailor and adapt to each person like you said i mean it's it's one of those things that's kind of testing and changing on how do you balance you know having situations occur where people refer you and they know what you do but at the same time not having that situation like you you know you recommend like make sure that doesn't come up as often as you're getting business and it's a fine balance because some people you can tell them to you're blue in the face that i do marketing i do marketing i have people that i've known for two years and they pick up the phone like so how's it business or how's the sales consulting business and you're like we've been we've known each other for three years i can tell everything about your business and yet you can't tell me it's just some people it doesn't resonate with them you know they don't they don't have the mind space to think about you no and i completely agree and one of the things that i think that you know makes it and what we touched on is it's that kind of consistency and that's why a lot of times you know people will send out whether it's doing a podcast they'll send out newsletters and it's a very soft sell and you're trying to provide value and you're trying to provide information and a sad subtle reminder of hey i'm in this field i'm doing these services while not having to pitch the service all you're doing is sending out a newsletter every week saying hey we've got this great sale or come use our services or here's our prices absolutely nobody's going to want to pay attention because they get those you know it gets there throughout it gets clumped in with every all the other junk emails that they get but if you're saying hey we've got something that's a podcast let's just say something that provides value to you and it is helpful or we've got a newsletter that really provides information that you would be helpful to you or it's you know you provide youtube videos or you do tick tock or instagram whatever it is but you're not hard selling but you're continuing to maintain those relationships and those connections definitely i think adds a lot of value there so shifting gears just a little bit uh kind of i think along the lines of uh referrals but i think it almost sets up four referrals down the road which is kind of building a client experience in other words if the client is it doesn't have a good experience with you they're very unlikely to send a referral your way later on even if they know about you because they're saying oh that wasn't a good experience and i get that all the time as lawyer you know lawyers have most lawyers law industry in general doesn't have a stellar reputation most people don't like lawyers or they all have their own lawyer joe and they all have you know something that their lawyer's story to share and most of the time it's not favorable so it is on the one hand it's hard to overcome that bias me on the other hand if you provide that good experience it sets this stage for setting yourself apart because you stick out that much more of having a good experience and so as you're kind of building that experience in the anticipation both for referrals and for helping the client in general any tips or any thoughts or tips on that on building that client experience yeah so from my perspective you're going to make a lot of mistakes and it's always going to be something that you're optimizing that's something that we're learning still on you know there's things that you think will be a great idea or things that you try to implement and in theory it sounds like a great idea and it turns out terrible or you can't implement it so the biggest piece of building a customer experience that i've learned is executing your ideas and so an idea is only as good as you execute it and so you can come up with all these great ideas they're always in your head on how do we make a better customer experience but the biggest piece of actually having that customer experience positive is actually executing on your ideas and so something that we've kind of learned is adjusting and executing so we'll execute an idea like we've implemented you know a couple months ago we started doing monthly reports sent to our clients with everything and so instead of just calling them and saying hey here's a rundown of how it's going you're having just kind of an informal phone call we made it more formal and here's a report here's a client portal that you can view all your instant data and so we started setting those out weekly and from our team it became pretty tedious from a cost perspective and a resource standpoint and so what we did was we cut it down to monthly well of course some of our clients are getting it weekly go where's my weekly report and so for us it was identifying hey we had to adjust you know our execution because it was it was interfering with the work that we were able to provide in the level of service now once that happened that experience went better but for us we started seeing that our customer experience was going down because we were putting too much effort into this program that we didn't need for weekly because in marketing weekly versus monthly doesn't make a huge difference if they want to know more weekly they can call us and so um but we saw that our experience was lacking because we spent so much time on this weekly thing that we were we were taking away from the actual customer work and so for us it was finding out we needed to adjust on that and then execute on that and then adjust continually so we're we're changing back to bi-weekly now i'm looking at what that looks like and so it's always adjusting and identifying that your customers will always be you know there's always i think mark cuban puts it there's always someone work out working you to get your customers and so what are you doing to outwork that person and so you always have to continually look at how am i providing more value to my clients without you know unrealistic value of i'm losing money or i'm putting way too much work into this from you know nothing back but at the same time you have to think there's always a newer better company and so what are you doing to encourage that customer to stay with you to appreciate them for them being a client because there's a million other businesses just like yours that you might have a little bit of a difference but they're all basically the same and then see it's actually what are you doing to keep them in as a customer as well so always improving on the value that you provide new systems that you can implement how many times are you actually talking to your customer how much does it make sense um at the same time making sure that you know the systems and services that you provide are actually tailored around what you want because you know i've seen this i don't know if you've seen this in the law world and you've you've done an incredible job of like differentiating what business owners need but identifying products that not trying to sell products on something someone that's they don't need because i don't know if you've seen that i'm sure in the long world it might work a little bit like this but for the social media for this marketing world you know marketing firms push social media all the time and so it's like you need to be on twitter linkedin facebook instagram tick tock and even pay so much money well for a small business starting out it might be a great idea to try to go viral that might be a great strategy but in the long run paying that money to you know for someone to handle all those different channels probably isn't the best idea i mean twitter for a small business it's there unless you're a service-based industry that you need a support channel it's probably not the best channel to put all your energy and money into and so you know building products around what does this person actually need starts that experience better because then you're not trying to make up a way for that business to continue your service because they're not seeing the roi from that but in turn you're setting them up for success by putting them with the right product or service setting up the process to where as they interact with your business you're giving them the best touch points and the other piece of customer experience that i think is important is when you do make mistakes or you have a hiccup or they're not happy identifying and apologizing right away is huge for our business model we've seen that we've made a couple mistakes with some clients and instead of pushing off the burden of oh my gosh that was a tech air i don't know what happened or because you can do that within most businesses you can say oh x happened x happened we're so sorry i don't know how that happened but actually identifying that we made that mistake here's what we're doing remedy it and then this is what we're going to do to you know ensure that this doesn't happen again that's an important piece too because a lot of people like to pass the blame and that never goes well and so all those things i think really combine for an incredible customer experience and just learning because i mean i don't know if you read jim collins but jim collins has wrote several books on you know building a business that lasts and all these companies and the ones that succeed sometimes struggle or they sometimes go up and down and up and down they're always continuing to add that value that people want not just trying to push out this product or service that they're making money off of yeah i know you hit on a ton of things i think and i yeah i am a big uh lover of a lot of the the jim collins books i love the the good the great and that's a definitely an iconic book and he has a lot of other great ones out there but you know i think you hit on a lot of things along the way and the one that i always kind of take away is one i agree with you or i guess i think that building or continuing to try things out and test them is worthwhile and different now the thing that you have to be willing to understand is that not every program you put roll out is going to be a raving success not everything is going to work out perfectly and sometimes you are going to inevitably hit those errors to where it is going to i don't know create a bad user experience most time you can avoid that but it may create a sub-optimal in the sense that the new program or the system either one doesn't work as well as you thought or two has glitches or unanticipated consequences i don't think that should stop you from trying things out but i think to your point when you hit those things where it doesn't always work out perfectly or doesn't always you know work out as i is anticipated than to be a bit bird to be more transparent rather than trying to hide the ball or make up excuses to say hey this is a new program or something or system or something we're trying out and appreciate the feedback we are looking to always make it better and improve it and trying to adjust it and we apologize that this is didn't work out as it was anticipated and here's what we're doing to fix it and you know sometimes you have you know you offer them if it's a mess it up on there you know on their particular project maybe offer them discount or sometimes just enough of the hey we're sorry we're working to fix it sometimes i think it even provides a bit more of that genuineness too hey they're not perfect but that's awesome they're trying new things out and trying new programs and trying to make it better i certainly appreciate that from the customer perspective and just having a bit more of that transparency i think is definitely worthwhile well i think too you know when when it comes to you know peop that the thing businesses don't i think understand and i'm still learning to understand this as well and i have a lot of anxiety around it a lot is businesses that are purchasing your services or products they don't understand what's going on in your organization and so if you're rolling out let's say this client reporting software that we had you know they don't see the time that it takes or they're not seeing that so for their perspective they think it's just three clicks of a button and they're done and so explaining the process what went into that and the time that it takes sometimes actually works out because they're just mad because they think that you're just being lazy and in turn you're like hey we've spent 35 hours this week you know we've been up till 1am trying to figure out the code for this so we can't they don't see you staying up until 1am they just see that i'm not getting my report or i'm not getting x and so um you know i think part of it too like to go off of what you were saying was you have to explain this is what we did and you know this is what we're trying to do we're trying to build this better customer experience and this is where it went wrong or this is what happened and so explaining your perspective without being like this is not our fault it's huge because then it gives them a better perspective of oh wow okay he was spending a lot of time on this that you know sometimes that that doesn't happen but most of the times it does no i think that's absolutely and you know most times they're not going to want the excuse of this isn't working but it's more of hey this is what we're doing to make because i'm you know it's interesting to making most of time people don't necessarily understand or anticipate you make a simple good user experience takes a lot more work than to make it complicated multi-step everything else and you know the that's why when people this is simple it should be straightforward it's like no there's a lot of work to make something quote-unquote simple because usually the simple approach is taking a lot more work on the back end to give that appearance and that simplicity makes it much more difficult than a complicated thing that on the front end has a whole bunch a bunch of complexity and makes a bad user experience and so i think there's always a bit of trade-offs and we can we could talk about this for a long time and i'm sure would make it be a very fun conversation but we'll try and keep the podcast to a reasonable amount of time so as we're starting to to wrap up you know i always have one question asked at the end of each expert episode which is if you know we talked about a lot of things we talked about referrals planting seeds user experience and they all kind of go together but there's a lot of things that people could or should be probably doing as they continue to ramp up their system and continue to build out their referral network but if they could get started with just one thing today what kind of one take away that they could start to execute on what would that one thing be so if anyone's not using a crm right now customer relationship management software if they're wanting to get into you know networking groups or referrals the biggest piece that they can do is get a crm there's millions of them out there as you probably know i've spent a lot of time and don't spend too much time like just get something that you think is going to work and work off of it because i spent hours and hours probably days trying to find the perfect crm and never found it it doesn't make sense it doesn't exist there's always something that it does too much or does too little um and so find take it from my experience just find something that looks like it works figure it out don't try to add too much complexity get us your rm and start adding the people that you're meeting in there and add as much information as possible where they live where they work what they what they do for work any notes if you have a conversation add them in if the crm has a note section add a note section add whenever you have phone calls add phone calls in there what you talked about because the more data that you can get that you can have those conversations you know you you heard that their son is sick or they're they're they're going through a tough time or being there and actually remembering those conversations is huge and so you can get a crm and just set that up and then use that to build out send email marketing and that gets further down the road but start to actually just collect data on each person that you're working with and use that to further conversations and start to realize how you can plant those seeds whether they enjoy a local coffee shop or they're a huge fan of their foodie or they love a nfl team or whatever that looks like finding things that they enjoy and using that data to plant those seeds is important so i think get a crm you know figure out start by adding people in there existing connections people that are new and then start to build out your crm start to learn how you can use that better and then effectively within the next year you should be able to have this kind of referral engine that you can start working with no and i'm a big believer of crms i think that now i think they can be way over utilized and you can have so many drip campaigns and trickle campaigns and follow-ups and everything else that it can go to the opposite extreme you're saying we're going to do everything automated i'm a big you know i'm a big believer in automation but i think it has to be done right so i think your crm as far as helping with your business is going to be a great tool but it has to be one of those that are done right they're implemented you're thoughtful kind of going almost back to the user experience it should be adding to the user experience adding to your ability to help them and to provide their service to them and not just a way that feels like it's a cheap sales engine that's continuing to bother people now and i i'd like the second point of is you know getting going with something is the first step even if the crm that you pick it's not perfect you end up switching and we did that we started out with hubspot because it was the you know high end and we thought it would be everything and it was it had a lot of good things into it we just recently transitioned over to a different crm which is more specific to our needs but it was one that hey we still i've still was it was great that we used hubspot it was great that we got things up and running we learned what we liked what we didn't like what were the holes and what weren't the holes and it was just a matter of let's choose something get going build it out and then figure out if there's something we need as we continue to return to grow so i think that that's a great takeaway well people do you want to utilize your services they want to become a referral from the podcast or from anywhere else or they want to reach out to they want to be a customer they want to be a client they want to be an employee they want to be an investor they want to be your next best friend any or all of the above what's the best way to reach out to you connect with you or find out more best way if you go to our website www.ccroachconsulting it's c-r-o-c-h-e not like the bug it's pronounced like the bug but not spelled like the bug um if you go to my our website or connect me with me on linkedin my name is calebroach um find a way to either message me or connect on like a free strategy session even if you want to become like a referral partner add that in the notes and schedule 30 minutes and let's talk about how you want to work with us or how we can help your business like we talked about on podcast it's not a way for us to sell necessarily it's just a way to connect and find ways that we can help you improve your business if there's ways that we can work together that's the most important part so identifying those needs is important so go to our website schedule free strategy session or message me on linkedin i'd love to help all right well i definitely encourage everybody to reach out connect and certainly is a great expertise and something that's definitely worthwhile to leverage so with that we'll go ahead and wrap up thank you again for coming on the podcast a ton of expertise it's been fun it's been a pleasure now for all of you that are listeners if you have your own expertise to share or you have your own journey to share feel free to go to inventiveguest.com apply to be on the show we'd love to have you also make sure to like subscribe and share this podcast we want to make sure that everybody finds out about these awesome episodes and last but not least if you have any help with your patents trademarks or anything else with your business just go to strategymeeting.com grab some time with us or chat we're always happy to help thank you again caleb and wish the next leg of your journey even better than the last thanks dave have a great one [Music]
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