We Generated 4 Million Leads (Without Google and Facebook Ads)

Added: 2026-05-19

[00:00:00]my my history over the last um decade and a bit I'm giving away my age now has has really been building companies my previous venture was a company called webfluential um still actually operating as the largest influencer marketing platform in Africa I remember paying DJ Fresh to tweet for one of my brands back in back in the day referral is generally the highest quality lead you can get when somebody's like referred to your business they almost instantly or always buy Google Ads brings you some of the lowest quality leads It can provide you a lot of leads, but the quality is not really the best.

[00:00:33]>> Businesswoman Kirsty Shaman has spent the past decade building successful businesses in the marketing and client acquisition space. Now, in this powerful podcast episode, she shares how you can grow your business in 2026 by unlocking the power of referrals.

[00:00:49]>> I think the key is as business owners is you need to start looking as at your customers as little media channels.

[00:00:55]Every customer you have is an opportunity to bring another customer.

[00:00:58]And how do you unlock that? Anything to do with finance. So like banking, insurance, financial services, like a lot of financial advisers, investment firms, anything to do with finance works well because of trust. So like when it comes to making a decision with your money, people want to make they want to trust someone. Another area it works really well is in education. Like solar, home services, roofing, plumbing. Like that's another big category that I maybe didn't anticipate but works quite well.

[00:01:24]You know, people are generating like referrals every week. I think we've generated over 4 million referrals now for our customers over the last few years. So like this thing really works.

[00:01:33]If you are running a hair salon or you are running a nail studio or something like that and you are not actively asking your customers to refer their friends, you are leaving money on the table like >> that's for sure.

[00:01:48]>> No one is coming to save us. No one is coming to give us the lives that we deserve. We only have each other.

[00:01:54]Entrepreneurs teaching entrepreneurs.

[00:01:56]Welcome to the entrepreneurs chat podcast. Subscribe and share right now.

[00:02:01]>> Welcome to the entrepreneurs chat podcast. Very very excited today. Uh we are global today. You know that's that's exactly what we are doing today. Uh just for you guys uh you know to get the wealth of experience. We're living in a virtual world. So I'm super super excited today to have uh Kirsty Sherman here. She's the founder of the referral factory and uh you know she's going to tell us her background and everything that she's been up to you know up until this point. But the one thing that I really love about having this conversation she comes with a wealth of experience in business but there's one pain point you know that I always you know see dealing with with entrepreneurs is the issue of getting clients. How do we get clients? And this is one thing that we are going to be addressing in this podcast today. And I have been personally running my business, you know, for over 10 years now. And this I'm excited to hear about this. You know, how can I get more clients?

[00:03:02]Hopefully cheaper. Uh because I I I I I use Google Ads keywords.

[00:03:09]>> That's expensive.

[00:03:09]>> And I know Chrisy has got a lot to say about that. But anyway, you know, without, you know, getting into the meat of it, Kirsty, thank you very much for for coming through. Uh, if you can just introduce yourself to the people, give us your background and, uh, yes, we can take it from there.

[00:03:29]>> Yeah. Um, cool. Hi, I'm Kirsty Shaman.

[00:03:33]Uh, as you can hear by my South African born and by my accent, born and bred in Joberg. Um, I now currently live out of the country. I live in Armenia. Uh but yeah, my my history over the last um decade and a bit, I'm giving away my age now, has has really been building companies um that help that that were all focused around growth and um you know, ways for businesses to grow and ways for businesses to acquire more customers. Um my previous venture was a company called Web Fluential. Um still actually operating as the largest influencer marketing platform in Africa.

[00:04:07]Um, and as you said, my current company is Referral Factory. And what we do is we help companies build and launch referral programs, which essentially is like an automated way to constantly ask your clients for referrals. Um, and hopefully your current customers can bring uh new customers your way. We kind of stem from end to end. So, helping you ask your customers, helping you track uh who referred who, and helping you issue rewards for the customers that like, you know, send new leads your way. Uh my history of entrepreneurship has always been in the marketing space. I've always been um yeah trying to find new ways to to help brands grow and yeah especially always been focused around people as a marketing channel. So previously it was influencers and celebrities. I remember paying DJ Fresh to tweet for one of my brands back in back in the day.

[00:04:57]um >> and now have kind of progressed to um you know more day-to-day regular people um and you know helping brands look inside their own client base and say well who could we ask for a referral because um I I don't know if you've gotten any referrals for your show maybe or or kind of any of your other ventures but a referral is generally the highest quality lead you can get when somebody's like referred to your business they almost instantly or always buy because they don't shop around. they know that if their friend already buys from you, you are trusted. Um and and really what I'm trying to focus on at the moment is just how can we help brands get these, you know, highest quality leads. Um and often this comes from a referral and um you can maybe talk a bit about your the Google ads that you run. Um I would say Google Ads is brings you some of the lowest quality leads. It can often bring you a lot of leads, but the quality is not really the best. Um yeah, so I guess we're just a different channel. I don't want to go and compete against Google.

[00:05:56]For sure. For sure. Um but I would say, you know, we're a bit different in the sense that we say, you know, we want to help companies look at like really sustainable ways to continuously drive growth and um keep kind of leads coming in the door every month. Um and we really just believe that your customers are your biggest, you know, sales channel and if you, you know, leverage them and you get them behind you, they can they could bring you your next customers. Um, and yeah, that's a lot about what Referral Factory does. And we've got all the sort of tech that automates this in the background.

[00:06:27]>> Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. No, no, that's that's that's amazing. I I think for me um I I can attest to to the to the referral sort of uh you know how powerful referrals are. But just from from at least from a from a church perspective because I am in the I I am in the in the leadership of our church.

[00:06:46]But one thing for sure I can say >> we have a lot of churches as clients of referral factory. I have to let you know it's a huge category for us.

[00:06:54]>> Wow. Wow. One thing I can attest to really is that when we do you know our assessments every month the biggest driver you know for church for example you know which is something that has a lot of trust involved in all these things. Yeah.

[00:07:08]>> We do have social media we do have all these things Google ads as well but the biggest driver remains referral. you know, my friend so and so, my friend so and so, you know, it's it's quite an interesting, you know, assessment.

[00:07:21]>> There's like a statistic we did. We did a study a while back and um I think we pulled the statistics. I can't remember now where it's from. I should have the source, but I don't. Saying that they interviewed a series of like a thousand customers of a business and what they found was 72% of people were willing to make a referral, but only 29% did. And like you think, why if they were willing to make a referral, why didn't they? And really it was just because the brands didn't push it. Like they didn't push it. They didn't reward people. Um if you get if you've if you're in a position where your business has gotten referrals or your church has gotten referrals to a degree, you totally will understand the power of that because I mean let's just, you know, be honest. If you see an ad on Facebook and an advert says, you know, there's a new church opening in your area, like you're like, "Okay, cool."

[00:08:07]But if you have a friend and your friend is going on Sunday and he's like, "Well, why don't you come with me?" And like it's so much more convincing to get somebody to act than it is just by showing them an ad. Um it's a lot harder to do. It's a lot harder to ask people to refer. It's not an easy thing to do.

[00:08:24]Um but if you can get it right as you as you've kind of seen in your sort of own results or your own kind of data from the church that like referrals hand down are the most like trusted source of leads. And often if somebody's referred to you like most of the businesses that run campaigns on referral factory if you imagine they get say like 100 leads from their referral program like on average like 60% of those leads convert into paying customers like that's an incredible conversion rate.

[00:08:54]You know if you're thinking if you're running Adwords campaigns you often are looking at maybe 5% of those leads convert into paying customers. So >> yeah, like I think we just went straight for like quality and we want to help you find the highest quality leads. There's nothing more I guess valuable or trusted than your friend saying they did something. You know, if you if you think about it now, Henry, if I said if you said to me like, "Cool, I'm looking for insurance." Like, would you feel better buying the insurance that your friend buys or buying the insurance you found on Google? like for sure you would want to buy the one your friend buys because if your friend uses them and trusts them, you know, it's it's you feel you can trust them too. I think people have lost trust in brands over the last, you know, decade or two and the rise of digital and the rise of it's, you know, it's now easier than ever to build businesses.

[00:09:43]It's easier than ever to throw up websites. It means that there's like a ton of businesses going up like every month and actually consumers just have less and less trust like that like do I trust this brand? Like are they as good as they say they are on their website and and there's only one thing that can get you through that is a referral is somebody saying like yeah you can trust them don't worry. Um, and I think that's important. And people also want to go to a church on a Sunday that they believe in, that has a good pastor, that, you know, maybe has a good band as well. And all of these things are important. And they totally will trust that their friend says the pastor is good. But they won't trust that the Facebook if a Facebook ad says our pastor is the best.

[00:10:21]I'm not believing that.

[00:10:23]So yeah, I guess it's, you know, different kind of advertising. And um, >> yeah, but but trust is really important.

[00:10:30]And I think um you only really get that from referrals.

[00:10:35]>> Wow. No, that's amazing. I can attest even to in terms of quality of referrals. You know, sometimes I have to talk to my campaign guy uh and say, "Dude, these people are talking about divorces. I'm doing labor law." You know, this this person is is is is say is asking for the job to say that I'm available for the job. And I'm like, I'm not a labor broker. I'm doing labor law.

[00:10:57]You know, so sometimes it's it's a bit of a challenge.

[00:11:00]in terms of I don't know what will be happening and I'm like but but surely the website says employment law you know why is this person you know clicking and my clicks are going my money is going and the likes and it becomes a challenge uh at the end of the day however I also wanted to just find out because I mean we are entrepreneurs here I mean with your wealth of experience I mean where where do we get it wrong like in terms of the fundamental of of marketing. Uh so a part of my business as well is is is being an influencer and and I've done campaigns for people. However, I always wish to be honest that because my goal is the campaign has to produce for you, right? It it has to work for you as the client.

[00:11:49]I also want to help you do your marketing, right? So that at least you can get some of the basics right you know inhouse as well you know rather than all the times you have to go and pay an influencer for this because it can get expensive and um people also want to >> expensive.

[00:12:08]>> Yeah. And I would say, you know, one of the reasons I kind of left the influencer space was was largely because I found there was like a little bit of a hole in the maths. Like often like the top 5% of influencers, say you had 20 influencers, just as an example, like the value would all be driven by like the top two, maybe three, and actually notoriously would get zero results from the rest. So I I I think in the influencer space something I always try and educate people on is like actually going for is looking for a lot of influencers looking like that's not actually what you should be doing. What you should be doing is looking for the right influencer for your brand and partnering with them for a long time.

[00:12:54]Like the influencer campaigns I find where it's like a pop-up campaign and this one talks about this I personally think is quite an expensive way to do marketing. Like it's expensive.

[00:13:04]Influencers aren't cheap. They don't charge a little bit of money. Um so it definitely works but I think brands could do more work on the fits and like does that person have the right audience? Is does is this person a natural organic like fit? Do they already use our product? Have they spoken about our product in the past because they actually just naturally like it. Um, I think people aren't dumb anymore and they know that something is a sponsored post now. Like it's been going on long enough that they know this. Um, and then the other thing I would say is, well, if you really want to get creative, why don't you look in your own customer base for influencers?

[00:13:38]Like rather than going to a platform or going to looking online, why don't you run an analysis? I mean, we have AI now.

[00:13:46]I'm sure you can do this with AI, which is take a list of your customers, put it into AI, like try and match them to social accounts and, you know, you can see if you can find an influencer that's you you might find you already have, you know, two or three people that are already clients of yours that have say 50k followers each. Like combined that's 150k followers and they are genuinely influencers for your product because they use it. So I think that um that yeah like uh obviously I you don't want to be biased because our product largely focuses on using your customers to refer but it's not like because it's biased it's because it's what I believe in like I really believe that there is no better person to refer your product than someone who actually paid money for it and used it and somebody who already is your customer. Like you can't fake that sort of authenticity. So, I would say, you know, influencers can definitely still work, but I would even start in the customer base with like, do we have any customers who potentially already have a social following? And then what could we do more with them? Like, could we send them a goodie bag along with the next um, you know, order that they, you know, maybe send them a goodie bag?

[00:14:54]Like, um, should we reach out to them and say, "Hey, what? Let's collab. Let's do a video together."

[00:14:59]Um, but I think I think that brands should maybe less just be looking for people who have an audience demographic and they should actually just look for people who already use their product, who already like their brand. Um, and I think that's often like more meaningful.

[00:15:13]Like it's more meaningful if somebody really uses the brand and really uses the product. Like I don't think you should be able to be an influencer for a bank unless you actually bank with him.

[00:15:23]Like that's my view.

[00:15:26]>> Wow. A lot of people will argue about this though. I have to say it's a contrarian view. Um but I I think it should be the case. Um but yes, I would say in terms of also like marketing like um a lot of brands use influencers and I think also the other thing about influencers would be like looking at size of influencers like um you often find the value could you could get more value often by using a hundred people with maybe like 5,000 followers each than you could be by using one person with 500,000 followers. So, I would also like encourage brands to look at that dynamic. It's easier to just book one person and get them to speak about your brand. It's much harder to book a hundred people with 5,000 followers, but probably you would get more traction from that because those often the people with say 500,000 followers, a lot of those followers aren't necessarily engaged. We've also used influencers at Referral Factory, but my preference is more like micro influencers, smaller guys, and then using quite a lot of them. Um, and that's that has worked quite well for us in the past. So I think that's, you know, another thing brands could potentially also look at.

[00:16:34]>> Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. And and and just just in terms of okay, like like referral, you know, you know you know setting up this referral machine, right?

[00:16:43]Uh because it's it's obviously something that everyone uh you know can do for their business because u you know people can tell you know other people that you know what um you know I had a good service with these people. So, so where do we start like um you know and and and what what are sort of like the the the keys you know to uh an effective you know you know referral you know I don't want to say campaign or system program within your business you know and maybe you can define it for us and how does it work >> cool so I would say that your starting point should really just start with like how big is your base of people you can ask to refer um something I do see where I see a referral program maybe wouldn't work for a brand and I want to really offer like good advice here is you need to have enough people to ask to refer.

[00:17:36]So like unless you maybe unless you have at least a thousand people like on your books. It could be like previous clients, leads, customers, it's okay that they're not all official customers, but if you have less than that often it's hard to get enough traction from a referral program. you need like a big enough base to ask to refer so that they can bring more customers and then those customers can bring more customers etc. So I would say like starting point is just have an honest analysis of your business. Like if you're just starting out, okay, you're starting out, you have 10 customers.

[00:18:11]Um you don't need technology like what referral factory offers. You don't need us. What you need to do is just email your 10 customers and say, "Hey, if you know anyone, please like refer them to me and I would give you." You don't need SAS. You don't need tech. I actually turn a lot of customers away at referral factory because, you know, we see someone and they're setting up their campaign and they're spending like hours building their referral program and trying to automate everything. And then we say like, well, how many customers do you have to ask to refer? And they'll say, okay, well, we have 20 customers.

[00:18:40]You don't need software to help you automate this. If you have 20 customers, just send them an email once every two months and say, "Hey, just reminder, we have a referral program. If you know anyone, email them to us and CC us and we'll give you a reward." you don't need tracking and monitoring and automated rewards. So, the first kind of piece of advice I would give is just just be honest about the size of your business and be honest about how many people you have to refer. If you're still small and you're starting out and you haven't quite gotten to the middle phase yet, don't worry with software. Don't worry with the tool and hacks. Just email your customers and say, "Hey, uh, if you refer someone, I'll give you a Woolly shopping voucher for 200 rand or something, you know, something nice."

[00:19:20]and don't and don't you don't have to put more thought into it than that.

[00:19:22]email them and say hey refer and you just manage it manually. Um that would be the starting point I would say. If you are a larger business they have thousands of customers. They can't run this manually. It's not possible. So in their case you got to build a system.

[00:19:37]You've got to generate a referral link for everybody. You got to automate tracking who refers who etc. But yeah this depends on the type of business. So if you're just starting out what I would say is keep it as absolutely simple as possible and just focus on asking.

[00:19:50]That's the key. This is what most people get wrong. They don't ask. That's how simple it is. Just ask. And asking is hard and it's a bit difficult because you're like, it's awkward to ask for a referral. But what I want to kind of tell you something that can make that easier for you is if you don't just ask someone for a referral. You rather give something to your customers and say, "Hey, you can give this to your friends." So this is kind of what we call like a give and get campaign. And let me maybe give you an example. So imagine you ask me to say like hey can I you know make make referrals um for your law firm for example. It's it's quite difficult for me to go to my friend and say hey I know this guy Henry he has a law firm like you should use him but it it's a lot easier to say well I know this guy Henry and um if you use my link when you sign up with Henry's company you'll get 10% off because I referred you. that motivates me to tell all my friends because I'm I'm I'm like first of all my social status is totally elevated like I have the ability to give a benefit to my friends and naturally I'm referring you at the same time. Step one, first determine what size you are.

[00:21:01]Should you just do this manually or do you need software? And then step two I would say is think about really what's going to motivate people to make a referral for you. And as much as your business is very important for you and you probably think about it 24 hours a day and I know how we are as entrepreneurs, we're obsessed in the shower. We're thinking about our business. Everywhere we're thinking about our business, but you know, your customers aren't. You are an afterthought to them. So you've got to really ask and you have to actually make it very clear that you have a referral program and you have to make it very clear what they will get. So as I said, my favorite structure is a give and get. saying to your customers like we say to our customers if you refer someone they'll get two months free and they'll get onboarding from our senior team. So it's like people are like telling their friends because they it's like a benefit they they're giving their friends something and then if that customer converts and becomes a paying customer down the line then I reward the person who referred them to me for with $200. I think anybody who's smart enough to set up a company and um or or you know and do their own thing or I don't even want to say smart, I want to say brave. Brave is the better word. Um >> uh sometimes I think it's we maybe not the smartest for doing our own things but we are definitely the bravest. Like um but yeah like just just just think about really what's in it for them. And if you can find that, if you can find a motivation for them, you'll be very surprised how quickly they will go and tell their friends about your business.

[00:22:30]In banking, it works particularly well because you can often trade with money.

[00:22:33]So give your in refer your friend and we'll put 50 I'm talking in dollars. I have some South African clients that I don't know for them I think it's like 100 rand or something they could put into your um so it's like if you refer a Fred that Fred would get 100 rand in their bank account and then if they stay a customer for 3 months like I would get 500 rand in my bank account or something. So you know you you you make an ecosystem that's really good for everyone which means people want to talk about it. Um a lot of people are like send an email and it's like hey please refer my business and like why why should they do that?

[00:23:05]like you want to get them excited. You know, the same way that we think so much about our creative for our Facebook ads, we should be thinking so much about the creative for our referral program. Like what do they get to give to their friend? What will they get in return?

[00:23:19]How do we like really motivate them to do this? And then really just be brave enough to send an email and ask. And if you can do that, I think you'll be very surprised how many people will actually refer your company. Um, and I think that's the thing. Just don't email them a dead offer, you know, email them and say, you know, if you can you'll be able to give your friend a free month or you'll be able to give your friend X and if they convert and become a customer of ours, you'll get Y. And it's a really good offer. Um, and you know, especially I think if you've got a business in South Africa at the moment with the price of petrol going up, everybody needs an extra 500 rand. You could How many kilometers is that with the I don't know, but I all I know is everyone I know there is complaining about the petrol price. So maybe we should just give petrol for referrals, like refer your friend and you could get a a voucher for the engine or something. But um but yeah, if you if you really make if you if you don't be selfish and you really like make it enticing. I mean like you don't just say, "Oh, give me a referral." You say, "If you refer your friends, they'll get this and and you'll get this." And like people generally get excited about it and they want to do it.

[00:24:22]If they like your business and they will get a reward and their friend can can get something, they'll be in that WhatsApp group and telling all their friends about you for sure. You just have to design it in a way that everybody can win. Like you win as the business, they win as the referer and the person they're inviting also wins because they kind of get an incentive to sign up. So I would say that that's my like kind of I guess like soft advice.

[00:24:44]If you get that part right, the rest kind of figures itself out. Like, >> and the truth is also like you can use a tool like referral factory. So, you don't have to worry about tracking anymore. You don't have to worry about rewards. Like all of that is automated in the background. The only thing you really have to worry about as the brand is how you design and structure your referral program, what you're offering as an incentive, as a reward. And then you just have to be brave enough to go and ask your customers. And if you can be brave enough to ask your customers, it's very rare that I see somebody disappointed with the results like >> wow that's amazing. Have you I know you mentioned banking uh but which other sort of businesses have have you seen uh which can really you know benefit from referrals or do you think it's every business uh that can benefit from referrals?

[00:25:31]>> No, I would say I I definitely would say it's not every type of business. Um but where this works really really well is anything to do with finance. So like banking, insurance, financial services, like a lot of financial advisers, investment firms, anything to do with finance works well because of trust. So like when it comes to making a decision with your money, people want to make they want to trust someone. They want to trust their friend really. If you so always in that space it'll work. Another area it works really well is in education. That's like another really big category for us. Um, largely just because I actually think, you know, we are humans and we tend to gravitate to people similar to us. So, I'm into like marketing and and like AI and VA coding and I have like like my friends have similar interests to me.

[00:26:22]So, it's very common that if I would do a course on something that I would also be able to refer a friend because you tend to hang out with similar people with you. So I would say education is like a huge sector and um that works really really well. Um the other category that's does very well is um like solar, home services, roofing, plumbing, like that's another big category that I maybe didn't anticipate but works quite well because um often I actually just find that the reward values for those businesses can be quite big. So, in most of the companies we have, I think Versify Solar in South Africa is one of the companies we have.

[00:27:00]I don't know what their reward is offhand, but I was looking at a solar campaign from one of our American customers this morning. And like it's a $1,000 reward. Like if you refer a friend and they buy solar from us, you would get quite a lot of money. So, they do very well because their deal sizes are very, very big. So, because their deal sizes are very big, they can give away a big reward. And because they can give away a big reward, um they get a lot of traction. Um another area that's really popular for us is like med spas, medical, beauty, etc. Again, like people will trust this the medical service that their friend has used. Um or the spa, the salon that their girlfriends have used. So that's quite a big industry. Another big one for us, weirdly, is also just been like broadband, telco, etc. And often we find it's very strange but because broadbands often go in regions you like a broadband company will try and dominate like one area and because of that you can use referrals really really well because people can refer their neighbors. So we have a lot of like internet ISPs broadbands like um uh EV charging areas etc. Anything that is like you're trying to like maximize in an area. If you're trying to maximize in one area, there's really no better way than referrals because I can just tell my neighbor about it. And that's often a lot more like efficient than um yeah, like traditional ads where you can't sort of target uh that deeply in.

[00:28:34]And then yeah, I would say like the other category as you imagine is crypto that works quite well because um largely I think because they're blocked on all other advertising fronts. So they they can't advertise on Google and they often get blocked on Meta. So maybe they don't have other marketing channels, but we see a lot of like crypto um kind of blockchain technology and especially when it comes to new coins, new tokens, like they often use referrals as a way to grow. Um especially again just goes back to if I'm into crypto, I'm probably talking to my friends about it anyway.

[00:29:05]So it's natural to place a referral in there. Um yeah and we we cater to quite a lot of industries but I would say like those are those are probably the the top that contribute to our revenue.

[00:29:17]>> Awesome. That's amazing. And and and and so you you did speak up on uh you know you know beauty you know these are things that you know we get a lot of you know individual you know entrepreneurs doing you know small to medium you know enterprises doing as well uh and and other sort of businesses.

[00:29:35]what is into construction, you know, can they sort of do this thing like referrals and stuff?

[00:29:41]>> Construction we have. Um, so where we see it work quite well is like if you talk about like there's this whole industry of like constructions and interior designers and architects etc. and they rely quite heavily on professional referrals maybe more so than customer referrals where they have a network. So say a construction company would use their referral program and then they would go to a bunch of designers, architects, interior designers, electricians for example and they would say if you send business to us we will give you you know 10 probably not 10% of the deal that would be far too big on construction but say 1% of the deal we would give you a revenue share. We would give you a kickback. So in the construction side or the building or renovating it works really well. um it often works on like professional referrals more than customer referrals.

[00:30:28]So it's like you build a referral program and you actively go ref recruit people in your business network to refer because it's you know it's very easy for an architect to refer a builder or an architect to refer an interior designer because it's like a natural fit. The customer would come to the architect and know that they would need that. So yeah, I would say in that in that category it also works quite well. And then you said another one but I forgot now. Um, oh beauty. And then beauty is quite well I would say as well like if you are running a hair salon or you are running a nail studio or something like that >> and you are not actively asking your customers to refer their friends you are leaving money on the table like >> that's for sure. Um, and also the other thing that it's weird. I I don't see a lot of these businesses adopt this and I think it's because it's like maybe a few physical steps to get there, but for example, if you have like a hair salon and you have like four chairs there, everybody should be able to scan a QR code and join your referral program while they are sitting in the chair.

[00:31:35]Think about how much we pay like Facebook to serve an ad to an audience.

[00:31:40]You here have this person in the chair.

[00:31:42]they're sitting there for like a whole hour, like sometimes more than an hour that they're staring at this wall while you do their hair. There should be a poster there that says like, "Hey, like you know, text, you know, scan this and send your friend a coupon and they'll get, you know, 10% off their next haircut or something." Like, everyone will do it just because they're there, it's cool, they can give their friend a discount. Like I often think like we pay so much for advertising space but retail like shops like shops that have people that come into the store that spend time there. They often don't do enough to like utilize that like they are retail space essentially and they've got this space and they can use it to advertise to their customers. So definitely when it comes to like salons, beauty, etc. If you're not asking for referrals, like you need to start today. You could start this manually and then move over to referral software when you're getting too many referrals that you can't kind of manage it manually anymore. But generally, I want to encourage you if you're listening to this podcast today, you own a hair salon or a beauty salon, just send a WhatsApp or send an email to, you know, a se segment of previous customers that had come in and say, "Hey, get some new business through the door and we want to reward you for helping us grow." So, how about this? If you refer someone to um you know come come and see us, they'll get 10% off their first appointment and you'll then get 10% off your next appointment too.

[00:33:05]You know, in reality for a service business for you're not like paying, you're just like cutting from your profit and you count it as a marketing cost to a degree >> and then it's up to you as the professional to do a really great job so that those people come back again and again and again. You know what I mean?

[00:33:22]You might be paying like remember I have a hair salon and I would say it's a hund you know these are wrong numbers say a,000 rand for a haircut but if you refer someone I'll give them 100 rand off their haircut and I'll give you 100 rand too. Yes you might be eating into your profit. I understand that but you know business isn't easy and it's designed that we should have marketing costs. The way that you would make money as a hair salon is really like not to get new customers all the time. It's to get new customers plus keep your existing customers. So referrals are a great way to get you those customers and give away some of your profit to get them and then make sure you do an excellent job when they arrive so that they come back and that they keep referring more people. But I think often that's what people will think. If I was a hair salon and I was charging $1,000, I would be like 200 to the referer, 200 to the person invited. Like you can give it in a cash voucher, you can give it as like a discount.

[00:34:16]Sure, you're going to eat all your profit. Like I know that, but if you do a really good job, the customer will come back. So it's the same as like running a Facebook ad. You would have paid to get that customer in your store if that makes it's not any different to that. Like you would have paid for advertising anyway. You know, the first time a customer sees you often you shouldn't be making that. You know, your advertising cost should get them through the door and then it's up to you. You got to deliver a great haircut so they come back.

[00:34:43]>> No, no, that's that's awesome. I mean, I'm just thinking about it like, you know, like, you know, my barber has never asked me to to refer a friend and and he'll give me, you know, a free haircut or or 10% off my next cut or something. I mean, they they have what they have is is that whole it's like, oh, the loyalty program, right? Five cuts, the next one is free. But but no one is thinking of you know tell your friend to come here and and I'll give you 10% off 20% off then oh I'll do you I'll give you the free cut you know whatever because because you know in a space like um this personal grooming and whatever you know it's it's always sometimes it can be your customer for life right because people are just loyal like that you know in those areas >> goes back to what I was saying earlier is put your time and your brain and your energy into how to make this good for everyone. Like, you know, you could even do something like, you know, bring your bro for a haircut or, you know, if you're going for a haircut, bring your bro at the same time and like then if you both come together, you'll get both get 10% off. You know, by nature, that's a referral. You're bringing a friend, but now you're also having like a better time because your friend's there and you can chat to him while you're getting your haircut and you make the whole experience really good and you can design for that. You can design to make it a good experience. You can, you know, really get creative with that. But I think the key is as business owners is you need to start looking as you at your customers as little media channels.

[00:36:06]Every customer you have is an opportunity to bring another customer.

[00:36:09]And how do you unlock that? M so so so with me for example in the in the legal space right like labor law per se you know for example where um I'm thinking you know do we do get referrals um what's the probabilities of getting someone a customer who knows someone else who's been dismissed uh or who's having legal problems I I guess maybe that's sometimes the mental block where we don't sort of think about it as a possibility because we are thinking what are Do they know someone? Okay, but this goes back to kind of what I was talking about before which is um if you give something if you say say you have 100 customers for example and if you give them something to give away they can give it away today.

[00:36:59]They don't need to wait. So like how referral factory actually is designed this way like every referer gets a link and that link is like a dedicated landing page which is like has an offer on it and it will say like Kirsty's introducing you to this law firm get 10% off your first consultation. Claim your coupon now or like claim your offer now.

[00:37:18]So I might not buy now but I will claim my offer now so that in future when I need your services I have a coupon I can get a discount and more importantly you just got my details as the business so you can now put me into an email nurturing campaign every month I'll get an email that promotes what you do for example. Um, so that is the thing and I would say legal by the way is a bit of a tricky one because there's I actually don't know in South Africa different countries have different legislation but referrals in the legal space is not it's like a gray area in some countries because you often can't pay you can't have like enticement of new customers. You will know the terms you're you're the lawyer in the room.

[00:38:03]Um, but yeah, I would say that if you if you think about it, designing a way like imagine all of your customers had a referral link and they could share that with their friends and their friends could accept an offer like their friends could like accept a legal consultation with you where you would do like a risk analyst analysis on their business to tell them like their potential risks of related to labor law, but then afterwards they would build trust with you and you could sell them services if that makes sense. So you would just think about it in a bit of a longer funnel. So we have like one of our like customers that gets the most referrals is like a giant roofing company in America. They sell roofs. Like I mean I don't know off the top of my head one person who needs a roof. Like it's not it's not a common thing. But they ran this campaign where it was like um refer your friend to get a free roof inspection. And what we would do is we come and we do an analysis on your roof to tell you how many years it has left, how many this. So it's like a really informative thing and you might not know that there's a problem with your roof or in 3 years you have to like replace it.

[00:39:10]But it wasn't refer your friend to buy a roof. It was refer your friend and someone will go to their house for free.

[00:39:15]They will give you a full detailed report on the structure of your roof, how many years it has left, if you have any weak points, what you could do to preserve it. Cool. Amazing. That's amazing. like let me get this checked so that I can make sure my house is safe and secure. But you know obviously while the roofing company was there like oh well you know this this does need a replacement in the next two years and you know we sell you know say got to be a salesperson as well. So in that case it worked really well because everybody wanted the roof assessment because they wanted to check how many years their roof had left. Should they sell now or should they replace the roof or because if the roof only has five years you might want to sell the house now or you know these sorts of things. So, everyone did the roof assessment, but the company then got to go build relationships with a bunch more people and some of those people ended up buying and of the people who didn't buy, they now get a mail from that company every month like with some tips on how to maintain your roof, etc. And trust me, in two years when they need to buy, they now will have a credit with this company. They will have built up trust with them over the last two years. So it can still work in industries where you are like a bit harder because you maybe don't know if someone needs solar now or a roof now or a haircut now. But in that case, what I would say is let let let your customers give something away that they can unlock now that essentially brings those people into your ecosystem and then you work to like nurture them to convert them over time.

[00:40:41]>> Wow. No, that's that's very educative and and I think what you have actually taken us through here is the difference between sales and marketing right to say yeah >> to say sometimes you know our challenge when when we struggle well in terms of marketing because we are thinking in terms of sales right to say how does this correlate to the sale now so it might not correlate to the sale now but it can correlate to the sale in the future right it can you can help you establish relationship because I think that's that's the thing with with the marketing. It's it's it's not it's it's you're not going to just connect with someone from nowhere. I mean, people people have got things they're doing.

[00:41:26]They've got other brands they're looking at. They've got their own, you know, person who's providing them services.

[00:41:31]But it's a great way to actually, you know, start getting into their world, right? To say that, hey, >> let's see if your roof has a problem for free. uh and and and it's also about conscientizing people, you know, awareness, right? Which is sometimes that's that's the issue with us as as entrepreneurs is like I'm not >> being patient. We want to skip all the the top. We're not interested in the top of the funnel. We want to go straight to the bottom where they buy >> and and and it's limiting. It's limiting as you're saying. It's just to in terms of getting these long longer term strategies and and and and and with you what what what where would you say I know we spoke about you know the the size of of your you know of of of your client base or your previous client base uh you know we spoke about service you know which is one thing you spoke about as well but but where else or even if you want a reaction service does do sort of referrals fail right you can have a great referral program but where have you seen you know these programs failing.

[00:42:35]>> Yeah. So, kind of the one point I mentioned which is you just don't actually have enough people to ask to refer you maybe too early and that's an area where I would kind of see it failing. Um and and that's just time.

[00:42:48]You need you need more time.

[00:42:51]But but generally you have to actually be quite a good business. Like if somebody comes to your house and they install a new roof for you, let's just use the roofing example. or you use a bank, but you've had like countless problems with them and you can't get through to support.

[00:43:08]Even if they ask you to refer and say they'll pay you a,000 rand, are you really going to sail your friend down the river for a,000 rand? No, you're not. So, it's kind of what I like about referral factory is like you have to be a good business. Like you you you can't cheat that if you are a bad business, you offer bad support. you offer bad service your customers and we see that a lot because then businesses go into a decline and then they're like oh let's like what do we need to get more customers like let's ask our customers to refer and I'm like well no you need to be accelerating first and naturally organically growing offering a good service you have to have a good customer satisfaction rate people have to be happy with you and then they will refer so you know something to think about is like if your business has had a lot of problems you're in a decline online because of bad service delivery.

[00:44:00]Probably not a good time to launch a referral program because people won't refer you no matter what reward you give them. If they don't really trust you will look after their friends. Um um I'm trying to think like what else makes it doesn't work is businesses that ask you to refer but don't give you any incentive. They don't give you anything to give to your friend. So if for example you are saying to all of your customers like hey go make a referral.

[00:44:33]It's much easier for them to refer if they can give their friends something.

[00:44:37]As I was saying I often will see businesses fail because they like they launch a referral program and they they email like 5,000 10,000 of their customers and they say hey we've launched a referral program. Please refer your friend and if you do you'll get $100.

[00:44:51]Like sometimes those people feel uncomfortable making a referral because they feel like now I'm a salesperson for this brand and like it's not comfortable for them to refer. So I would say like really one of the reasons we see businesses fail is because they don't put an offer in their referral program.

[00:45:07]They don't have an offer for the person invited. They don't give the referer something to give to their friend.

[00:45:12]That's a huge cause of like referral programs failing. Huge cause. And I would I would also say the other reason referral programs will fail will largely be because people don't promote them. So sometimes we see customers come into referral factory, they spend like weeks on their pages and the flow and like everything, but then they like don't then they like put a button on the footer of their website that says like refer friends and like that's all they do and people just never discover it. They they never know about the referral program. So, so it's really really important to promote your referral program really well. And what that means is like if you've got a website, people can log in. There should be a banner inside. It should be on your on your public website on your loggedin website. You should send an email once a month reminding them, hey, don't forget you can refer friends and earn rewards.

[00:46:01]If you have any customer service reps, salespeople, people talking to customers every time they put down the phone, it should be, "Hey, just don't forget we have a referral program. Should I send you a referral link? Do you know anyone you want to refer? So ask, ask ask and you will get. It's very very simple.

[00:46:20]But really where we see referral programs ask is just because people sorry where we see referral programs fail is just because people don't ask enough. They they just don't promote it enough and people don't know about it.

[00:46:32]>> I know I I don't know if you're going to have any kind words for this group of people, but you know people always like you know I'm shy. uh you know to or it's it's a bit uncomfortable now it's like we're now asking our customers you know to do this and and and all these >> and that's what I'm saying is is is it goes back to kind of what we discussed in the beginning is put all your thought into like making it uncomfortable for them like >> or sorry making it comfortable for them is the word so if I just said to you know let's use you for example Henry if I said to you please will you refer people to referral factory like could you email all your customers now and could you just tell them about referral factory you're like oh man like that's quite a big ask but if I said to you Henry like referral factory offers like amazing software to the point that like um you know people are generating like referrals every week I think we've generated over four million referrals now for our customers over the last few years so like this thing really works and and what I what I can do for you is I could say if you refer someone to us then like first of all I'll give them two months free so they don't have to pay anything okay and myself personally as the founder is like I will do their setup I will make sure that they get the best chance possible to go live wouldn't you then want to tell your friends >> and as a default if they convert I'll also give you some cash >> wouldn't you then want to tell people >> no definitely definitely it's it's you know If if you also build the confidence within me that I'm actually referring something that works as you're saying h you know that also elevates my status right to say that you know what I I'm actually in with this thing that can actually grow your business and and you can take things to the next level uh as well.

[00:48:27]>> Yeah. And I I think just just don't ask people to just become salespeople. You know what I mean? If they wanted to be sales like don't ask your customers to become salespeople. If they wanted to be professional salespeople, they they would probably do that as a job. But it's very easy to ask them to give their friends a benefit or give their friends an offer or give their friends something that their friends will really benefit from. If you can do that, I find people are pretty comfortable to share. M so so when when when one would like a business would sign up with referral factory uh what what sort of you know service would they be sort of uh getting uh in terms of you know you know setup of of the program uh and all these things.

[00:49:12]>> Yeah. So referral factory is actually a self-s served tool. We were built like largely for small businesses actually.

[00:49:17]We've ended up kind of playing more in the enterprise space. So I would say we have like two offerings and the prices are very different for both of these. We have like a low cost offering which starts around 2,000 rand a month. Um and that you like you sign up you would build you you do everything self-s serve. So you would like actually you put in your website and like AI will build your referral program. You then import all your customers. We generate referral links or referral codes for all your customers and you can then send an email from our platform to ask them for referrals. So we have a really lowcost solution which which starts around 2,000 rand a month that any kind of small business can get started to actively start asking their customers for referrals. And as I said our platform takes care of helping you ask for referrals, helping you generate links for your referral for your customers so they can refer, helping you ask for referrals automatically out of the box.

[00:50:16]We track who refers who. You don't have to worry about that. So, we will know who referred who. We also track which of those referrals convert into a sale and then we also will automatically issue the reward. So, if someone makes a referral for you, the reward will go.

[00:50:29]So, we take away a lot of the heavy lifting. You don't have to go hire a person to run your referral program. You can just use the self-s served tool. And then our plans go like kind of all the way up to about like 30 or 40,000 rand a month. And that is like largely the plan that would be inside like a corporate or a larger business. And in that case, we offer like a hybrid of a service and software. So it's still kind of the same underlying technology that you run your referral program on. You can generate links for your customers, but we do a lot more kind of setup because larger brands often need more strategic input.

[00:51:05]They need more guidance on how this can work. They want someone to hold their hand while they kind of launch because it's a really big thing to do, especially if you haven't done it as a marketer. You want to make sure everything goes correctly. Large business also have to like mitigate some compliance issues about who where the data is and who's sharing data with who.

[00:51:24]So, we also help with that. But yeah, our company really ranges from like we have small one-man band hairdressers on our like lowest plans and we kind of um you know have banks and telco networks on our kind of bigger plans and then there's obviously a few plans in between that you would like move up on as your business grows. Um but yeah, I would say the the we offer self-s serve plans so that this tool can be affordable. My dream is that every business has a referral program because I know that they'll the right businesses will grow with that. Um, I wanted to have a plan for everyone. Um, so we have self-s serve options that start really cheap and then more managed service options as the prices kind of go up and and we offer it really on a monthly subscription. So you just imagine it like you're renting your referral software and you can rent it monthto monthth and if it works for you, you'll continue to rent it and if it doesn't work for you, you can cancel at any time. We don't have like long-term lockins or anything like that. Like our goal is help our customers get referrals and if we do they'll stay our customers for life.

[00:52:26]>> Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. No thank you very much. I think uh this was very insightful I think for me uh I know for the guys who are you know on here uh different uh you know types of entrepreneurs. Uh and and I and and I think the the the point is you need to start thinking about referrals, right?

[00:52:46]How how do you get like your current customers, you know, to to actually become, you know, those billboards for you uh or those mouthpieces for you in a way that is which is which is which is fun.

[00:52:58]>> That's the thing is if you really structure it in the right way, it's not cringe. It's actually really a benefit and your customers get really excited and they often are more loyal to you.

[00:53:06]like you know in a lot of cases we've got for larger businesses they are running referral programs and issuing like loyalty points as a result and that keeps the customer more loyal and like it really can be a good ecosystem. But you know if anybody listening today also needs some advice and they're not really sure how to structure this and they want to try get more referrals and they don't know how they also can you know contact me you can find me on X Kirsty Shaman on LinkedIn. So like you know you'll be able to find me um I think we've run I don't know like I mean thousands thousands of referral programs now. So I've really learned a lot in the last kind of four years of doing this.

[00:53:44]>> So you told the people where they can find you and uh that's very very exciting. Thank you very much uh for for for coming through uh and uh thank you guys uh for tuning in. Uh please share uh this uh this uh this this podcast.

[00:53:59]Right. I'm already getting my referral game going. Uh then then you know share and uh Kirsty will be back you know with with with more you know insights.

[00:54:09]>> I also have one more thing to add a referral factory also has a referral program and we offer 40% revenue to any new business you send our way. So if you want to head over to our website, you can find our referral program. If you're excited about referrals, if you're not ready for it, maybe you could refer someone to us and you could make some money.

[00:54:27]>> Awesome. No, that's that's a great deal.

[00:54:30]No, thank you very much, Christie.

[00:54:32]>> Thanks, Henry. Great to be here.

[00:54:34]>> Awesome. Awesome. Awesome.