Cold Outreach is a Waste of Time ( What to Do Instead ), with Dave Plunkett

Welcome to Building Your Leader Brand. Today on the show, Bob is speaking with Dave Plunkett. Every time someone introduces you to someone else, they are not just kind of giving you a new contact, they are trusting you with a little bit of their reputation. And our reputations are at the core of what any of us have as business owners or individuals. And so it is vital that we keep our referrers up to date with what's going on with their reputation, essentially. Hi there, and welcome back to Building Your Leader Brand. My name is Bob Gentle, and every week I speak to incredible people who share their secrets to building, marketing, and monetizing their expertise and the mindset you need for your business to grow and thrive. If you're new to the show, take a second, sit down, do the sitting down, and if you're driving, pull over and hit the follow or subscribe button. That way I will be smiling when my numbers grow, which is literally for a podcast, the best thing. Additionally, if you're new to the show, you will love the Personal Brand Business Roadmap, 50 pages of everything you need to start, scale, or fix your expert business, 100% free as a gift from me. Visit amplifyme.agency/roadmap or hit the link in the show notes. The very last thing I'm going to ask is, I've always flown by the seat of my pants when it comes to selecting podcast guests. Not today. Today is very deliberate and intentional. I get pitched 3 or 4 times every day from people wanting to come on a podcast, and I have a vicious delete finger because I like to go out and curate my guests. But I would like to invite you, the listener. Is there a topic you want me to cover? Is there a guest that you would love me to have on the show. I challenge you to find a guest that would intimidate me. That's my absolute favourite. And if you're asking for them, I have an excuse to go and chase them down. So this week we're talking about one of my favourite hobby horses. There is a giant industry out there trying to persuade people like you and me that we need cold outreach, that we have to be running ad funnels, we have to be doing all kinds of weird and wacky things to drive business. But I've done some homework, I've done some study, and in a healthy expert business, a healthy leadership brand business, 60 to 70% of opportunity should come through people you already know. That's what good looks like. And to help me explore this, build systems around it, is Dave Plunkett, the— what do we call you? The referral junkie, something like that. Dave, welcome to the show. Well, thanks for having me. And I've got to say, as you start to do your intro piece there, I immediately started to feel triggered. The whole kind of the myth that you can't scale referrals and that actually outbound, awful AI-driven multi-email personalization at scale is a proven channel is my big bugbear. But yes, hi, I'm Dave, Collaboration Junkie. Collaboration Junkie. Yeah, first and foremost, I'm a dad of 3, Luna, Milo, and Remy, and husband to Kelly from the Southwest. I mean, I'm from Wiltshire, which is the Southwest to anyone other than people that live in the Southwest, right? But, and I'm a referral specialist, as you say. So I help people scale word of mouth in a very, you used the word intentional in your own buildup there, Bob, as well as asking for referrals to speakers. But the intentional is my favourite word. So I ask, I help people scale referrals in a really human way, a really intentional way. So essentially, I help people from whether it's getting referrals from your clients and your network. I help people remove the ick from that awkwardness and actually build some process behind that. Or the other side of what I do is partnerships, is how do you work with other organisations or individuals that can refer you consistently? And how do you find who those people are? How do you nurture them? How do you scale them? How do you actually get them working properly? That's the two sides of what I do. So you work with a lot of creative agencies and leaders of creative agencies, and I think— I know, having been in that world, referrals are outrageously important. I don't really, as somebody who's no longer in the creative industries directly, see any difference between the processes that you would apply in that kind of business to any other business. So what do you think are the key ingredients to a referral? And by that I mean referrals don't happen by accident. They can happen by accident. But if we're intentional about driving referrals and growing our business through referrals, what are the key ingredients that we need to focus on? Okay, so yes, they do happen by accident. Exactly right. Something I will always say is organic is not a strategy. It's a mixture of hope and chance, right? Organic belongs on food labels. It doesn't belong on business plans. Right. That's a line I wheel out all the time. But it's true. It's the more I practise, the better I get is what springs to mind. Yeah, absolutely. And you're also completely right about the agency model to someone else. I do do work outside of the agency space. I have two rules. Will I enjoy it and will I offer massive value when I work with someone? But it won't surprise you to know that the two sectors that I do the most amount of work in otherwise are finance, so typically accounting, CFOs, and advisory. And as much as agencies and accountants wouldn't like to think themselves similar in terms of model, they absolutely are. An accountant is an agency model business where someone builds and scales up and then employs below. The other thing that straddles all three of those spaces is they require huge amounts of trust in the sales process. People care about their money, their reputation, and their feelings, which is marketing, finance, and advice, right? So it's no wonder that they're the 3 biggest sectors, because the more amount of trust is involved, the more important referrals are always going to be. You're not gonna— it's highly unlikely, I should say, that you're going to pick up your next client through a PPC campaign or purely cold outreach. And I would argue that even if you do, it may be since something else of yours elsewhere. I think I'm a big believer in contribution rather than just attribution, that kind of that in this ROI-driven world we live in, everything's about the last click. And it's— I think it's broader than that. But to kind of come back to your point around the really key ingredients, there is a tenant that sits behind everything that I do, that is that people refer you for what you do, not what you sell, right? And business owners can get very hung up on their unique 5-point process and all this other good stuff. And I'm not knocking it, I have a framework of my own, as you know, Bob. But people refer you for the problems you solve, they refer you for how you solve those problems, And they refer you for how you make them feel, because very, very, very, very few businesses truly have a USP, unique selling proposition, right? Even your unique process and way of doing things is just a way of solving the same problem that someone else still solves. They just do it in their own way. So how is the personal interaction amongst that that really leans into it. And so the number one thing behind a good referral strategy is being comfortable with the fact that it is still a personal thing. As much as I massively bang on about putting process behind it, that process has to sit behind the scenes. Yeah, everything front of house has to feel deeply personal. And whether that's asking your clients or your network, or even with partners where you can be much more overtly process-driven The core of it is having a matching values, a match of shared end goal for the client. All this good stuff up front then allows you to build process out based on trust. And so I think the biggest thing I would recommend anyone to do is just to lean into that fact of like, and listen to your clients. What is it that they say about you that they— because they're the ones at the end of the day that potentially will be referring you. So if we just imagine— I'm going to back up. The reason I wanted to have this conversation with you is I think it was about 6, 7 months ago I had this road to Damascus moment. And I apologise if this offends anybody of a religious persuasion. Forgive me in advance. I was constantly experiencing people talking about cold outreach. And the impression you get from the cold outreach crew and the complex funnel crew is, if you're not doing this, there's something wrong with you. And I thought, am I broken? Am I not? Am I doing something wrong here? Because I look at my business and it's 70% referral minimum. So I looked at McKinsey's data, EY, PwC, because they publish really interesting information across lots of industries. And then I looked at data from HubSpot, and then I surveyed my network, and universally healthy and good and right looks like 65-70% of your business should come through your existing network. With content driving another 20, 25%. Then we've got what we might consider outreach, which is making friends, another 10, 15%, and a tiny slice of ads. Knowing this, we need to invest proportionately rather than disproportionately, which is what the industry would like us to do. And this really led me to look at what is it that drives referrals. And you've kind of hinted on a few things. One of them is relevance. Is it clear the problem you solve? Another one is recency. How recently have I experienced you? Are you long-term memory Bob or short-term memory Bob? And another one, for me, the most important one is if we think about anybody that we've referred in the last year, they had to matter to us in some way. We will not refer people who matter to us. And all of this indicates a system. And if you want to scale this, this system needs a container and it needs rules. And into that, you can then pour your authenticity and your personality, which I think is where a lot of people lean away because they want systems that will just push a button, automate it, super duper. I'll just count the money at the other end. So number one, where do you fall in the container? Side of things. I'm here, I'm really referencing a CRM that might be appropriate for somebody that's trying to do this. And then the other end, the systems that are foundational, the systems that for you are non-negotiable. Okay, so you're absolutely preaching to the converted here, obviously, about referrals being celebrated. By the way, the fact that that's— it's semi-shunned, or you're growing your business through referrals, are you going to grow up now and do some outbound? Like If you're growing through your funnels, it should be celebrated because it means you're good at what you do and you're a good person as well. Like, what's not to celebrate about that? But in terms of those containers, I think CRMs are great, but it's better to have a spreadsheet that you use than a CRM system that you don't. So the, the number one rule I would say that people often don't do is— and you touched on this— around people that you trust, you feel something about Every time someone introduces you to someone else, they are not just kind of giving you a new contact, they are trusting you with a little bit of their reputation. And our reputations are at the core of what any of us have as business owners or individuals. And so it is vital that we keep our referrers up to date with what's going on with their reputation, essentially. And so many people don't do this. They'll say thank you at the point of introduction, and then maybe if it turns into business, might say thank you and send a bottle of wine or whatever, but they'll miss out all sorts of steps in between. And if it doesn't turn into anything, not message the person at all. One of the big, big things for me is have a process by where you know the last time you've updated the referrer on what's going on. right? Whether that's a CRM or whether that's a spreadsheet, people might already have the source that it came through a phone, who did it. They might even have a column or a notes field about the next contact date. Add an extra one in of when was the last time I updated my referrer. A, it's the right thing to do, but it generates more work. I've literally just written a newsletter where under my, if you do one thing, make it this tip for the month was look at all the people that referred you in the last 6 to 8 months and then go and send them a message. Go and let them know what's happened with the thing because it's the right thing to do. But the amount of times that message generates another referral is insane. So there's things like that. The other thing as well is about around the container is I would say is understanding when to ask. So I talk about wow moments a lot, and particularly with clients, people typically ask way too late in the client journey, the customer journey. There's only one person in the relationship that decides whether you've delivered enough value to ask for a referral, and it's not you, it's the client, or even the prospect, potentially, depending on how long your sales cycles are and what your journey is. And so another thing is just being aware of where these moments of exceeding expectation I'll give an example. When I got my branding done, it was the first time I'd had proper branding done, first business of my own design. So we're going back kind of 6 years ago now when I launched the business, and I knew the brand was going to be great because I knew the agency owner. She's a friend. I've seen the work that the agency's done before. It's brilliant. However, when the first draught came back of the logo and some imagery and all this blew me away. I tell the storey all the time. It still gives me goosebumps because I can remember how great it felt. I was just amazing. 6 weeks down the line when the final assets all came through, it wasn't that it wasn't good, but all they did at that point was deliver against my heightened expectations. The real wow moment was like when I got that first draught back. And all businesses will have these wow moments and you have to be careful that you don't feel manipulative and all that good stuff. But if you know that there are various touchpoints along your customer journey when you could ask and you map these out, at least you're prepped going into it. And at least you can judge in the moment, is this the best time to ask? And if it's not, go, I'll wait till next time, right? Because we don't want to be pushy. It's supposed to be natural. But this is what I mean about having process behind the scenes. So you go into that meeting, that touchpoint going, this could happen. And if it does, I know exactly what I'm going to ask for. And how I'm going to phrase it and where I'm going to do it. And if the moment isn't right, you don't do it. But at least you've gone in prepared, which means it's much more likely to happen. And if it does happen, it's not you taking a deep breath and going, do you know, we might need your services, it'd be really good if you could introduce us, and everyone feeling really icky and awkward. And it's not sending an email once every 3 months when the pipeline gets a little bit dry. So it's about feeling more natural and it feeling part of day-to-day comms. But actually, it's because you've done all this work in advance behind the scenes. I remember as somebody who ran an agency, and this is really to emphasise what you just said, there is a stage in the customer journey where they experience a heightened state of joy and excitement and enthusiasm. That's never at the end of the process. And I can say from experience that I would say anybody in the creative industries will recognise this. By the time you come to send the invoice, you've probably— and the client will experience this— but we've been through the seven circles of hell to get to what we ended up with, which is satisfactory. It does the job. But there was a moment, probably much closer to the beginning, where they loved you. And that is the moment. And you have to honour the moment. And I think, again, to echo what you said, If you ever have to tell somebody how much something costs, the very last thing you want is for the time you have to tell them that number— if that's the first time you've ever let that number come out of your mouth, you will fumble it. And similarly, that moment of impact when you have the opportunity to say, is there anybody you'd like— you could refer me to? If you don't have a sticky note with the words on that you're going to use, you'll probably come across as a bumbling fool. If you've used a simple script, a simple line, half a dozen times, it will flow. Is there anybody in your world that needs a little Bob Gentle in their life? And they will be delighted because it felt natural for you. I love scripting specifically for these moments of impact because they take all the stress out. You know what to say. Similar, asking for a testimonial, knowing exactly the words you're going to use. Well, here's a good one actually. Well, you mentioned about, is it short-term Bob or long-term Bob, the kickoff? And actually, I should have done this as one of my 3 things really, but there we go, I'm gonna do it now anyway. Testimonial, I get asked all the time about when to ask for a testimonial, when to ask for a referral, and actually they're not mutually exclusive because when you ask for a referral in the right way, you make it easy for the other person. I think half the thing that people feel a burden around asking is that they feel they're going to be a burden on the other person. So the trick is to make it easy, then you'll feel more comfortable and they'll find it easier. So it's mutually— it's a mutual thing. And again, this fits within the container of the container piece of process, and it works really well for old contacts you might want to reignite because you can easily put some process behind it when someone You ask someone for a review, a testimonial, whatever it may be, they do it. They've had a mini wow moment because they've just remembered all the good stuff, like, about working with you. So they're in the right frame of mind and you go, oh, amazing, thanks so much, Jane, wonderful to hear those words about— we love working with you too. Listen, while I've got you, one more quick favour, and then you put in your referral request. If you can make that request linked to what they're reviewing, then even better. So actually, again, it's another bit of process where the things aren't They're not mutually exclusive. It's just— and these are the things where actually it can feel really human and normal and natural. But you've thought about this, you put a process in place to do it. My top tip for anyone that's asking for a testimonial, write this down, ask for one paragraph. And the reason I do this— so here's my script: I'm updating my website. I'd love to include some feedback from some recent clients. Would you mind writing just one paragraph about how you've experienced working with me? What they end up doing, because if you just ask them for a testimonial, they think quantity equals value. So you end up getting a page of information if you just ask for a testimonial. If you ask for one paragraph, their entire experience needs to go into one small container. So it's much more emotional, it's much more high impact. You can have that. I'm taking that one too, Bob. I love that. That's great. Works wonderfully. The testimonials end up being much, much better because this scan is emotionally rich and enthusiastic rather than informational and useful. Yeah. So referrals from clients and our network, great. Moving beyond that, actual strategic partnerships. So you're not necessarily a client. I'm not necessarily your client, but we don't compete with each other. We operate adjacently. We have similar clients. A problem a lot of people have with those initially is what's in it for them? Who the hell am I to them? And do I need to pay them? There's all kinds of gremlins come in when people start thinking about strategic partners. How do you support people with the baby steps in that? Okay, and there are a few, there are some So things always come up. I think one of the things that happens a lot— so first of all, I have a framework for partnership. DANCE is my framework. And the D at the start, which is for discovery, while it's only a fifth of the framework, is probably a third of the work I do with clients because it's so important to get right. And this is about understanding who your ideal partners are because all the other stuff that comes afterwards— A is assembly, which is the systems and the structure, and is nurturing, which is how you communicate with your partners, like from the very first call with them through onboarding, setting expectations to however. C is connexion, which is how you help your partners connect you to their audience, which people often don't do. They just shake hands and wait for the leads to come in and they don't. It's about making it easy for people. And right at the end, E is engagement, which is about how do you go and engage and find partners. But everything that comes after the D is so much easier if you're working with the right people in the first place and they understand the value you bring to them. And so that because yes, you can work adjacently and yes, you can have the same clients and it needs to be really the same clients just because you both work with garden centres. I don't know where that came from. Maybe looking at my garden, right? One could be working with massive garden centres, the other could be working with something much, much smaller, right? They need to be that your services and price points need to be aligned as well. Otherwise it's not going to work. Unless actually, unless you're working with someone who does exactly what you do but for much bigger clients and they're happy to pass leads down to you. That is a vastly, vastly overlooked partnership channel, particularly in the marketing, particularly in the marketing space, actually. But once you've got that match, it's not just about working in the same space because there is I call it the customer value chain inasmuch as a client starts with a problem or an opportunity that they want to realise or solve. And then at the other end of that, they have the solution of them living in this world where that has been solved or realised. But to get from A to B, they visit businesses typically in a reasonably linear order. So if I use marketing as an example, just because that's the world I do a lot of work in, someone could decide that they need to work with a— they want to work with bigger brands, okay? And they're working with an advisor who says, yeah, great, agreed, but your brand doesn't quite live up to that kind of where you want to be. So they go to a branding agency who does the brand. From the brand, it goes to— they then get their website sorted. Once they've got their website sorted, Well, during the website being sorted, they'll get— maybe they'll look at copywriting, maybe they'll look at video. There was a couple of things that you mentioned there about the value chain that I'd never considered. The first is people either above or below you in the value ladder, upstream, downstream people. It's such a simple concept, particularly in agency land. People just go, oh, that's why that person that I refer loads doesn't refer me, because they can't even though they want to, because they're after me. And similarly, There was a couple of things you were saying around adjacent. Again, I'd never considered that they might be adjacent to you but working at a different point in the value ladder. It means that things can't go both ways. So getting that equation right is really interesting. The dance framework, I really want to go deeper on that, but I know you have a book coming on that, so we're going to talk about that another day much more deeply. Yeah. One of the things that comes up a lot is, do I need to pay a referral partner? Okay, so I'm going to very quickly touch back on client referrals, if that's okay, Bob, because your clients do not want to join a referral programme. Okay? They just want— they just need to be asked in the right way at the right time. Unless Unless your clients are all salespeople or brokers or commission-based people, in which case they are extrinsically motivated and reward— incentivize the hell out of them. There's a brilliant book called Drive by Dan Pink, an even better TED Talk that condenses it down, where he talks about extrinsic and intrinsic motivations, right? So for your client and network referrals, launch a referral programme that's heavily incentivized at your peril. It is highly likely to have the opposite effect. With partners, however, I'm a big believer in commercialising the relationship. As long as the partnership is foundational on a strong partner value proposition, that there's matching values, there's a shared end goal for the client, all of that is embedded, then what putting some commercials behind it does is elevate it from a friendly handshake to something much more business-like. It means you're more likely to then feed the partnership through each other's businesses rather than it being founder-led. And almost all of what I do is about moving things from founder-led to brand-led. It means they're more robust. If you're ever looking to exit your business, it means it's a positive thing rather than a negative thing. And so it just— and it also shows— but it's about rewarding rather than incentivizing. I think that's the key thing here, Bob. Also, it gets called a kickback quite a lot, which I hate. It's like a bit brown paper bag, back alley, kind of sneaky. It's a cost of sales. Like, it's a cost of sale. And look, you might be in an industry where either you can't pay or people really don't want to pay, in which case don't force it on them. But you can do all sorts of things. You can pass it on to the client. You may not want to do that because of brand equity or whatever it may be. That's fine. You can have charity pots. That it goes into, which has all loads of extra benefits. I know some wonderful agencies, an accountant I worked with actually, where they're very, very community-minded. It's a largely female-based team as well. And so whenever they got working via referral, they gave a percentage via B1G1, which is like a giving platform, to fund financial education for underprivileged women in Africa, I think it was. So not only were they delivering, donating to a charity pot, but it was one that really matched the core values of their business. And so things like that still has the same effect if you're putting a worth behind those referrals and some process without it necessarily being about the money. So I'm— you don't have to force it, and it should never be the most important thing. If someone's only referring you because they think they're getting a commission, you're likely get crap, potentially get crap leads. It's a bit more like affiliate marketing kind of thing. But yeah, as long as the partnership's foundation is good, I'm a big believer in it. I think what I like about it is that it takes the pressure off, but there being direct reciprocity. Oh, cross-referral relationships, they just don't work because of the downstream upstream thing I was talking about. So I could keep going on this quite literally all day, and I think the listener would enjoy it. However, I need to respect your time. We've got 3 minutes and I need I need to get through Dave's 3 amplifiers. So for the listener at home, 3 things you can go do, read, listen to, take action on. Amplifier number 1. Amplifier number 1. You know what, actually amplifier number 1 that I've written down, I've already said, it's to get that list of people that have given you referrals in the last 6 to 8 months and let them know what's going on with them. This is just the quickest, easiest thing to do. Recommend everyone go and do that. I will be doing that tomorrow. Amplifier number 2. Go and listen to the Dan Pink TED Talk that I just mentioned about drivers, about what drives people and what motivates people. I apply it specifically to referrals and partnerships, but it'll be useful full stop in any of your work. It's absolutely fascinating how in business we don't listen to everything that the behavioural science tells us. So I've changed my number 2 based on that conversation there because everyone should go and do it. I think that's a wonderful suggestion. Again, I will be doing that tomorrow because I've got a quiet day. Amplifier number 3, going for gold. And for number 3 is something I call situational niching, and this relates to client referrals more than partners. It's think about and speak to your clients about the problems that you solve, and then try and figure out the words that your clients would use, if your prospects would use when they're in that situation, because— and then get your referrers to listen out for that. So instead of saying, who do you know that you can refer me to, you say Next time you hear someone saying this, send them my way. It changes the dynamic of the referral from something sales-led to something problem-solving-led. It completely removes the ick from the referral because it's not a sales-led conversation, and it will be an absolute game changer for most people's referral strategies. Just being awake to the triggers rather than trying to force things. It's really good advice. Dave, it's been a lot of fun. Is literally my favourite topic. Referrals have been my life for the last 30 years. I no longer am ashamed that my business is referral-led. I'm proud of it and I'm going to lean into it. I'm going to lean into it even harder today and hopefully the people at home will do the same. If people want to get closer to you, they want more Dave Plunkett in their life, how can they do that? You can find me on LinkedIn, Dave Plunkett, Collaboration Junkie. You can go to collaborationjunkie.com and I'll also send you a link if people want a free kind of excerpt of my upcoming book on partnerships, which is The Dance Framework. And it's an excerpt, the expert excerpt. Yeah, it's in its unedited format, but hopefully still useful to people. Then I'll provide a link to that as well. I would have loved to have wheedled out a book title from you yet, but you're not quite there yet. We'll have you back once we've got that locked in. Dave, it's been a lot of fun, but that does bring us to the end of another episode. If you've enjoyed this, take a second to subscribe and tell a friend. And again, if there's anyone that you'd like to introduce to the show as a guest or a topic you'd like me to cover, let me know. Similarly on LinkedIn, Bob Gentle, I'm super easy to find. Thanks again at home for listening. You've been awesome. And Dave, you have been even better. Thank you very much. Thank you for having me. Thank you for listening.