How to Get Countless Referrals from “Virtual Lead Partners”

Employees that don’t work for you, do you have any of these? I am not talking subcontractors.
I want to share with you my three that I have employees that don’t work for me, but give me a lot of work.

I am Ron Ramsden and a DYB coach, also a painting contractor up here in beautiful New England.
Upon the ski slopes today, just finished riding one of these and I was thinking of this, and I wanted to share it.

So, employees that don’t work for us. We all belong to a lot of networking groups, we find a lot of value there, but we also have other employees, let me show you what I mean.

Well, I have an insurance agent who is not in my networking group, but this is my insurance agent I have had for 20 years.

I have so much insured with him, liabilities, the vehicles, Workman’s Comp., our houses and our Umbrella policies and he probably thinks I am insured for, I don’t even know what I am insured for.

But anyway, they don’t refer me any work, but I give them checks every single month, so I asked to talk to the owner who I knew from about 20 years ago, their agency has grown substantially since back then.

I met with him, we had a quick coffee, and then he allowed me to share to the rest of his company one breakfast.

I brought in some donuts, some coffee, and they let me introduce myself and most of them knew me because I am in there a lot anyway, but no one ever refers me.

So, I asked them if the people who come in with water complain or some water damage, or maybe some smoke damage, who do they refer to?

And they usually have a self-pro or something like that, one of the big companies, what happens if they are smaller claim? They don’t refer anybody.

I asked them if they would please refer me, or if they at least think of me and pass on my card and my information, which they have.

And in the last 6 months, we’ve received 6 different referrals from them and some of them have been substantial after we dug into the proposal a little further.

Second, my local plumber and electrician; these two guys I see at the coffee shop all the time.

As you know, some of you who have been following me, I give out pies, these guys were there, and then we struck up a conversation, I asked them… when you guys do all that damage to a wall, cutting in for pipe or electricity, who fixes it?

They said, not us… And I know you have been in the painting trays for long enough, sometimes they cut holes that aren’t needed because they are searching for something.

Well, I told these two that they could be in my club 50, I explained to them what that was, where I give them $50 for every successful job that I sold, that they referred me.

Well, guess what? About a year ago this all started happening, and I have been handing them $50 bills when I see them at the coffee, quite regularly.

They are so happy when I hand them the $50, you know, the next time they cut a hole in that wall, who are they going to hand a card to and give them all my information?

They actually now text me with the information of the client who they have just given me the information.

And then thirdly, we all want our paint rep to give us work, you know, Benjamin Moore, Sherman Williams, we think about it, when we give them all these work and they never refer us to anybody.

Well, you’ve got to understand that some of these reps have 300 painting clients underneath them, and if they find out that someone needs a house painting or something like that, they can’t always give it to 300 people.

But if you do something unique in your company, and I am going to give you an example.

We did some dry ice blasting for a customer, I never knew what dry ice blasting was, but we did some research, which was actually using power ice, dry ice and blasting it to strip paint.

Well, we shared this with him, we shared the videos with him, we took it, we sent it to him and I did some follow-up with him.

You know something? Less than 3 months later, I got called for a dry-ice blast from this rep, that they had a problem, they needed someone to take care of it, and I was the first one that they thought about.

You know, he can’t be handing out this exterior paint for every contractor he has, but if you have something unique that you can show you are a professional at doing, share that with him and he will be thinking about you the next time something comes up.

Anyways, I hope this helped? I would love for you to share some of the employees that don’t work for you. In this, please make a comment so that other people watching this video, they can see, and maybe they can add to it and they can get some great ideas.

Anyways, I am Ron Ramsden and I am a DYB coach, also a painting contractor way up here in New England and I am about ready to go back on the slopes.

If you would like to reach me, it’s ron@dybcoach.com, and you can also reach me on Facebook, send me a message and I would love to chat. Have a great day, and hire some non-employees.