Unlocking Referral Growth Potential - PODCAST TRANSCRIPT

Editor's note: The following is the transcript of a live interview with Rebecca Mayo of gFour Marketing, Anissa Westfall of Westfall Roofing and Patrick Readyhough of Redmond Roofing. You can read the interview below, listen to the podcast or watch the recording.

Megan Ellsworth: Hello everyone welcome to coffee Conversations my name is Megan Ellsworth here at Roofers coffee shop dot com and i am really excited to bring this amazing Conversation to you all today about um, referral programs marketing and um, it's brought to you by g. Four marketing. Uh thank you g. Four for swing this episode of coffee Conversations really happy to be here okay, so let's dig right in anisa if you could please introduce yourself tell us about your company and a little bit about your experience. 

Anissa Westfall: Ah, hi everyone my name is Anissa Westfall i work for Westfall roofing they Florida we service central and southwest Florida we are mostly Residential contractors do a little bit of commercial generational company locally owned and operated we are not pe backed and then last year two thousand Twenty four we did about a little bit more de fifty million en revenue. 

Megan Ellsworth:  Wow. Amazing im so glad to happy here. Um you are a marketing with so im so excited next Rebecca please introduce yourself tell us a little bit about you n. G. Four 

Rebecca Mayo: Yeah absolutely thanks Megan hi everybody I'm becca I'm our director of partnerships here at G4 marketing and very excited to talk to everybody today about the importance of having a referral program for your business. Um obviously we have a nisa and Patrick here with us today just thrilled to have you all here their firsthand experience working a program and implementing this within the business so yeah just very appreciative good to see you again Megan i know we've had some time lately so happy to be back 

Megan Ellsworth:  Yeah we becca and i did a podcast and so it's just so fun to make new friends in roofing and get to talk about marketing i love talking about marketing and referral programs so Patrick hit with who you are and a little bit about your company 

Patrick Readyhough: Hi everyone my names Pat red on pond roofing company we're in the DC area en northern Virginia pond is a Sixty year old company that i purchased in two thousand twelve after running the company for the previous owner for a couple of years and last year we do mostly Residential roofing and then siding in Windows and doors it's exteriors bulk of our businesses Residential roofing retail and last year we did just over ten and a half million we've got lots of happy customers 

Megan Ellsworth: Amazing incredible wow. We have a really great panel today so I'm excited to hear from all of you on this topic I'm gonna stop share so we just can see each other anisa I'm gonna start with you so referrals are you know often described as this golden ticket in the business world why do you think referrals are such a powerful currency and how can they truly transform a business 

Anissa Westfall:  Ya i mean i think in the marketing world there's an order of operations right y don't start off with TV right probably do something else and I'd say for us referral programs is kind of where you start it's one of those things that word of mouth is just extremely powerful remains powerful in the roofing space. Ah, last year our company combining word of mouth referrals and specifically g. Four right is what we've categorized one of our lead sources we did just roughly ten million just off that business. Wow. Yeah our our you know degree of that so we talk about a powerful currency i mean that that's that's extremely powerful 

Megan Ellsworth: Ya ya. Guau. Patrick how di how do you see referrals in referral programs transforming a business well 

Patrick Readyhough: I feel that transforms the business in a lot of ways ah, i mean depending on what kind program you you're running it can help keep your lead costs lower of course they're not referrals aren't free necessarily if you're running a referral Rewards program but for us theyre less expensive i think more importantly if you're going to say. Hey, we want a large Portion of our business to come from referrals which we last year was about thirty two percent of our business and previous customers is another forty nine percent um, if you are gonna want to you want to bring that kind of volume back through every year like as a percentage first thing is you have to be referable so as soon as you start this Conversation about referrals previous customers it forces you to think what are we doing what's our customer Journey we need to be referral before we can get referrals so forces la Transformation to you know from I'm just trying to get a roof slapp on to how can this be like the most Awesome experience ever because everybody dreads getting a roof done that 

Megan Ellsworth: Is so true i love that that little snippet there to be referable how would each of you say these referral programs ha changed through the years for your c 

Anissa Westfall: Us used to be when we had one or two a week you know a couple a month right we used to it was a Handshake and you know i run CBS really quick and go buy a bunch of gift cards and then like physically mail them out right but as your company grows you've gotta scale that and so you know programs like g four marketing o you know some of your your CRM programs right where you can systematically through ai or through some sort programing right build out a a robust customer referral program. Ah and ah now it's really just gone digital right i mean everything's digital which which is great because for tracking purposes. Ah wed find like sometimes we would send gift cards and I'd be like. Oh, i didn't get the gift card right so when you're leveraging sort of a more programmatic approach everything's digital its trackable that's the big thing you can track customers all the time saying. Oh, i didn't get that email where you sent a gift card can you send it again right so theres theres a lot of sort of that management of it but you can't expect what you don't inspect so im big on you know tracking 

Patrick Readyhough: Back back in the day when i was uh, i bought pound roofing and i was a one man band i was selling it i was ordering it i was producing it i was the accountant my program then was I'll give you a hundred dollars if you get me a a sign contract back then i hand walked everything through i go back and Collect the check from the customer i had my own survey i sat with them while they Filled it out and talked about referrals and they get gimme a referral and then it was very easy to track that and show back up and say here's your hundred bucks you know anybody else you get away from that quickly ago we did we had no program for the longest time um and then we found a way to to to Automate it and then we can get into that more later but then you know we had to ultimately make it work for our business and change it up where it was even even easier more automatic less things to track 

Anissa Westfall: I like that one man band analogy Patrick cuz you think about as a business owner right if you first start out you are that one man band and your goal over time is to start letting go of those instruments one at a time right one at a time and so something like a referral program is absolutely an Instrument that you know there are plenty of companies and softwares out there that can help 

Patrick Readyhough: Yeah 

Megan Ellsworth: En each of you both kind of touched on it's very scalable i mean when you first start out you are the one man band and you kind have your hands in every pie. Um, so you can see where all of the pies are going but 11 you are getting bigger you're scaling up you can't have your fingers in every pie anymore so ah, not only have referrals changed through the years just in general but they change with company size as well so usually their referral leads have a lower acquisition cost than paid advertising how does that efficiency contribute to a company's overall Growth strategy when they're trying to scale something like a referral program how can businesses maximize the impact of these referral marketing programs 

Anissa Westfall: Yeah mean i i manage my cost per lead. Ah, pretty closely ah, 

Megan Ellsworth: Ya 

Anissa Westfall: And there's gonna be a fine balance i think with a referral program and your marketing mix it should absolutely be considered part of your marketing mix right it's not something that you would typically do in isolation um and you know depending on your market channels are gonna work better than another channels right so por ejemplo, i have one market down in South Florida that really seems to be more of a ground game they're not so digital they're not on Google as much they're not on leads le gen companies they're much more c community word of mouth right so for certain markets. Ah, ya might kind of have to go that route or en other markets you know where's a lot more you know urban and there's a lot more population and right then you might might have to go more digital so that's one thing right kind of knowing your markets knowing your audience. 

Anissa Westfall: Ah, if i were to kind average out right like think about this so like on Google right now paid advertising I'm spending between a hundred fifty two hundred dollars a lead depending on the market depending on my my my branding and my market share in that market. Um, home advisor Angie adds about a GSA about a right so if youre Perfecting en optimizing your cost per lead on these digital channels right you can kind of compare and contrast that to referrals so think about referrals right you're paying them a hundred bucks right there's gonna be some labor involved with internal resources right so there's a little salary involved in there and then you know some of the systems put in place so when you added all up maybe it's about the same maybe it's a hundred hundred fifty dollars right cost per lead but youre gonna make up that difference en your conversions and you're gonna make up the difference in your sales because ultimately these are gonna be better leads by far so youre spending about the same much as youre spending on sea a home advisor lead your propensity to sell es much Greater 

Patrick Readyhough: Ya a i love all that anisa and you touched on something really important there towards the end where you said that um you're gonna Convert at a different rate right so if you running referral leads even if it's exact same cost you're gonna Convert it a higher rate more importantly and an nisa like I've already heard her talk about numbers like i don't have all the numbers an nia probably has data on all this stuff i 

Anissa Westfall: I am one of the instruments that's all you're one man man 

Patrick Readyhough: I do know that when we've looked at it before i can tell you that a referral a lead that comes in as a referral and then sold is more likely to become a repeat customer for us than somebody that comes in off of a you know Google search or you know PPC lsa anything else so there's a you know betters the term lifetime value better lifetime value of those customers so from a scaling standpoint thats all just kind of built into okay, do do more of this it's gonna multiply at a different rate than if you do more of this thing over heres what we've found 

Megan Ellsworth: Wow you Guys are amazing I'm learning so much if anyone out there in the audience has questions Comments please get in the chat and let us know we are open to answer anything that you have questions about so i kind of wanna talk about that that turning customers into longtime customers repeat customers so referred customers have that sixteen percent higher lifetime value the non referred ones what does that statistic tell you longterm impact of referral generation on business success like how does that keep your business going 

Patrick Readyhough: No no 

Anissa Westfall: Go first 

Patrick Readyhough: I think i mean that's the beginning of it right i think of things um, i don't think in numbers all the times right like i think in concepts and what's the right thing and stuff like that so somebody really smart over at g. Four said to me one time hey you gotta dig a moat around your business right and so that's referrals and previous customers and protecting that piece of your your market. Um, eh, you know at least your marketing mix and so that kind of speaks to what i was talking about before i mean first thing is are we referable like are we doing the best job are we supplying the best Materials the best labor and Awesome process for the customer we talk about it here as a peaceful experience everything has to be a peaceful experience for our customers our vendors our our teammates you know so we spend a lot of time on that um and then so if you're going work towards referrals in previous customers make sure you're referable make sure you let people know we're referable right so it starts with salesman sitting in the house saying like prepping people for we're gonna ask you for referrals later because we want you to be a part of our family and we want more of your people to be part of our family so prepping them for that i think g. 

Patrick Readyhough: Four has Awesome little cards that we take out you know with us to say we're gonna you know we want you to come back and we want referrals so prepping 'em for that and then you have to ask in many ways what g. Four helped us with i mean yes we've got we're asking for reviews we're asking for referrals we're asking them if they want their next project but we've got g four sending you know this Cadence of emails constantly and then that's what helps make them feel like theyre a part of team Forever part of the family so for us es far as a referral Rewards program it ends with we're gonna thank them and i think if you start talking about referral Rewards there's two pieces to it like is there a reward and are you using that as an incentive or not we started at trying to use it as an incentive and it didn't work that well for us attribution part which anissa can talk a lot about was difficult for us we didn't have the people keep tracking these things down so we move to hey if somebodys talking about us we're just going to thank them so it set up en our CRM to link our customers to whatever the new referral is NFL if the appointment sets they get thanked they get some cookies it costs us about fifteen bucks per house to do that and its and it's automated through our CRM and a company that sends the cookies and it just goes out 11 a month it just finds appointments set that have a referral attached to 'em and it sends it to that customer that referral so that's how we've gotten around to it not sure i actually answered any question me no that 

Anissa Westfall: Was great i can add on to it as well you talked a little bit about make sure you're referable right we refer to it as kind of like a sport team an offense in a Defense right your Defense is your first literally line of Defense right so youve gotta have your house of cards in order right you gotta make sure you're blocking and tackling cuz if you're not doing that you know your offense is gonna struggle so Defense first and foremost and then your offense right are some of those proactive things those hail marys those big winning you know game moments right those are the offense moments where Growing youre scaling youre kind really starting to build momentum in inertia in your marketplace so ya i mean to your point Patrick gotta get your house and then your first you know attempt your off and then id also speak to reach and frequency so a lot times business owners right they're so busy right you have a customer and you say hey man i know we did a great job and would you please refer us and yeah yeah ya but like all consumers right we're busy i got a four year old you know I'm running a business blah blah blah right I'm gonna forget i mean theres a lot times i just don't have my my to do list is this big right yeah thinking about is you know doing a referral for the for the latest trade that just did something at my house right so reaching frequency is important i think sometimes we like oh, i don wanna Bother them really es just reminders i mean you could probably remind me up to five six seven times before i get super super annoyed right i mean there's a maximum but like and a lot of times for example i just got my car service right and they did a great job and they've sent me a survey and i just haven't had time to do it right so you know you gotta think about you're not really bugging them i think there's this consumer paradigm that shifted right and people know that hey we're gonna ask and we're gonna ask a few a few times ya 

Patrick Readyhough: We do that is we use G4 years ago i was thinking you know we really should think our customers when we're done and then Brian kay who founded g. Four i heard him speaking about like yeah you gotta thank your customers and so then i talk to to them and they have they've got a program where it starts with some cookies to thank the customer but then there's a series of i don't know how many forty something touches over a couple years and it's a mixture of mail and email. Um some text messages it helps us ask for referrals ask for reviews and just reminding the customer that were there creating this this sticky relationship and it's been huge because you know when we started we were millions less so we didn't have the resources to have somebody like do all this stuff we didn't know how to build something ourselves just like yeah we paper customer they take care of it and there's an email you know talking about just touches right there's an email that goes out and i just love this it says hey Larry we are just having a meeting and your name came up i hope you're doing well and it's signed by me and the return address looks like it's for me and it goes to our info upon roofing we get so many responses to that people say. 

Patrick Readyhough: Oh man I'm glad you know glad you reached out by by the way my neighbor needs you or one guy had just finished a hundred forty thousand dollars project and it comes out like maybe six months after they close their job y dice oh, i hope you said nice things about me by the way company our family lake house needs a roof and it was like another fifty five thousand dollars sale with you know roof and gutter you know i mean it was just that touch constant you need to have something in place to constantly touch these people to ask them to remember you whether for come back o review whatever it is aises point you gotta touch 

Megan Ellsworth: I love that beca id love we have a question in the chat and I'd love for you to kind of share how you help your contractors your pros do just that like what Pat said can you kinda explain the step-by step process of how and when to ask for these referrals how do you keep the touch like what's that process look like 

Rebecca Mayo: Yeah absolutely and that's such a good question and it's super on point right now too because i feel like a lot of the Conversations I've been having people pros are telling me like they think that they have to do everything or nothing and it's like no no no. You can start small and that's perfect to what anissa and Pat were saying like consistency is important right like we wanna make sure we have something in place that we're consistently communicating and also making sure that i love what Pat said build a moat we call it build a wall or build a fence around the customer 11 we have the customer we have that lead we get the conversion we wanna make sure they're staying with us Forever like they're part of the fam we don't want them going anywhere and they will 11 they feel that appreciation they feel valued and i just wanna reiterate something to everybody listening in it's a really competitive market and i know anissa impact can speak to that right now it's competitive out there and so when we're putting a referral program in place you really are setting yourself apart from everybody else in your communities in your markets that are not prioritizing the customer experience and that's gonna go so far for conversion with referrals because people will remember that positive experience they had they're gonna remember that email that Pat mentioned that says hey how are you like we remember you we didn't just set it and forget it we remember you we want you back so a segue from original question to answer that 

Rebecca Mayo: Yeah yeah it's great just some things to consider as youre looking like to an ni operational like plan for Twenty Twenty five it's not too late to make some small changes that are gonna have a big impact on the bottom line ok back to the question when it comes to answering la question how do we help you step by set so G4 exist as think of this as like an extension of your business for your referrals programs if you don't have a program en place we can help consult you to identify what's gonna work best for you it's customizable so it really just depends on what your business looks like obviously an Nissan and pats businesses a little bit different we are equally effective for them so just no that it's customizable depending on what CRM you have that's another in my opinion huge advantage of what we're doing here cuz we can connect to your CRM so when it comes to saving time it is gonna be a little bit of like work I'm not gonna pretend like we take the lift off completely but it's worth it in the end because you're gonna see that referral converted over fifty percent and something else i like to tell people that i actually was just having a chat with somebody on my team last week is you're gonna see eighty two percent of those referrals Convert within three months so if you're getting consistent referrals coming through you're gonna see eighty two percent of them close within a three month spa so something else to consider when you're looking at your bottom line for Twenty Twenty five its custom so if you're looking for step-by-step it's kind hard to say like black and white this is what to do but that's why we're here to consult you we have hundreds of successful customers that we can like pull from and say this company is similar to you in size and scope this is what we've done for them it's Thriving and even if you're just curious where your loopholes are like where your gaps in the business are we can help you identify those cuz sometimes when you're so in it from what my network tells me like my pros that i work with when you're so in it it's hard to see the gap sometimes so having somebody come in with a second set of eyes and say hey, maybe if you turn up the heat a little bit more on like to anises point your marketing channel spent on your referral budget versus digital spend o if you just send a couple emails out 11 a quarter a newsletter saying like hey Bob we thinking about you or happy birthday or whatever it is that's a great way to just turn up the heat a little bit so that was a very long winded answer to your question it es customizable so just know that we're flexible and we can help identify that for you 

Patrick Readyhough: Go anisa 

Anissa Westfall: I can add some real Worlds to that as far as the customizable piece before we were involved with g. Four marketing we would just give a hundred bucks if someone referred us and we signed the deal and then installed and paid right so we don't actually pay out the referral until the roof is paid for the referred roof so as you can imagine i mean that could be two months later right so there's definitely gonna be some internal resources you'd have to consider for tracking purposes we used to do the hundred dollars and then g. Four came to us and they propose this fifty dollars for a qualified lead and then another fifty if they sign the deal and we install and pay so still the same amount de idea es de es folks are getting fifty bucks even if we don't sign the so can imagine that took a lot more effort and work right you to figure who do we get fifty bucks to who do we give a hundred bucks to there's still some people that you know are on the fence so theyre fifty now but they may a hundred later so that got a little tricky and then we had back to back Storms hurricanes last year the end of Twenty Twenty four and we were having neighbors like referring their entire block right it was not necessarily you know the referral efforts and so we actually had to shut it down like overnight so we haven't reinstated our incentive part of our program yet but g. 

Anissa Westfall: Four i mean the whole time they were able to literally we shut off the dollar amount that goes in that cookie package but we're still sending the cookie package that says thank you right still sending thank you still asking for reviews which reviews i would argue are probably just es mon valuable a some other things ah, yeah g. Was able to adapt and change with my business very very quickly Awesome 

Patrick Readyhoug: I can tell you would be helpful like all of our steps okay like i said before it starts with we design a great experience for the customers of course when they call in we ask how did you hear about us we get to the you know if it's a referral we're gonna record which one of our customers we're gonna link them in our CRM when our estimator when the sales rep shows up at the house and he is doing his entry and warm up and whatnot he's going to say. Hey, how did you hear about us again even though we already know and doesn't matter what they say referral Google doesn't matter he's gonna say. Oh, that's great no reason i asked because so much of our business comes from referrals and if you you know one of your neighbors told you about us id wanna know who they were so i can thank them so we're prepping them for we get referrals and i wanna know about it because i wanna thank them now we used to use the incentive program we found it cumbersome to try to track the attribution and whatnot and we did have customers calling in you know we had checks that were going on cash and then you know they were saying we just love you Guys so much we don't wanna be rewarded you know what they'll take the free cookies we send them that's a surprise later so we shifted to that we took some of the so back up when we done and they've paid their account G4 automatically picks it up okay by then they've already had somebody from my company whether it's the sales rep going back out or production supervisor or somebody in the office talk to them about a review and referrals like straight up asking them who do you know that would like to have a piece experience like you just had and then they shut up and wait for the customer to say i don know o Sally down the Street or whatever and if they've got nothing they've got nothing then we move on and then g four picks them up and sends them a box of cookies thank you for doing business with us you're Awesome you know we love referrals they get that message again and then all those emails i was talking about but some of those emails again reintroduce how important it is for us to have get referrals because you had such a great experience how do you think people are gonna find a great experience unless you tell them about us so can you please help us they get touched those ways but it's very important to start with saying we're going to ask you for referrals and you know and reward you for it but we just don't anymore we're not saying hey we're gonna give you fifty bucks for a lead if they talk about us they get a package of cookies no that's that's our steps 

Anissa Westfall: One other thing we did try so g. Four so en addition so right i just did my roof and I'm gonna refer somebody right so we're rewarding that person for referring somebody but what we also did was we gave them five hundred bucks to give to the person that going to refer right and G4 has these little credit card looking things ah with the five hundred dollars my salesmen love it they like literally they put it in their pocket they'll be walking out the door and they'll go. Oh, you know what haga one more these five hundred dollars off today so they use it as like that last pitch effort or whatever they seem to really like that as well so that something we tried Guys liked a lot 

Patrick Readyhough: We're incorporating that too it's in our in the original our initial thank you box there's a card and it's a friends and family discount card right you can keep it for yourself or you can give it to your friends and family it's five hundred bucks off and you know so fine print of protect 

Anissa Westfall: A five my Bill no a new service perfect. 

Rebecca Mayo: Oh, sorry. Megan i didn't wanna interrupt to that with the cards i will tell everybody here that is like in my opinion one of the best secret sauces at this program i mean those cards i was talking to somebody last week at an event if you Leverage them you will see like a windfall business from what I've been told i mean it's like a great way to just create that consistent influx of business and it's also like such a happy touchpoint right if you get a five hundred dollars for your next Repair for example and then here's another card you can give to your friend or family so it's just a great way to maximize the program value and it's customable again so like anissa power you can pick the ml which is also great and again back to building fence that's what we wanna do 

Patrick Readyhough: If you're interested in trying the incentive first i mean i encourage you to try that i mean it kind of depends on where your customers are coming from how you sell to customers i mean a lot of these things affect the type of customers you end up with and how they're motivated we found that our customers won't weren't motivated by hey incentivize me and that's fine and you know other companies their lead sources and their their sales process creates a different type of customer but this is the g four this is a copy of what we used to use and it would show up as a check okay, in an envelope and it says can i send you a check for five hundred bucks and it's you know signed by me and it talks about a referral Rewards program and it looks like they're getting money in the mail already and ah, so i can see how people would be really excited by that the ones who are motivated by incentive how can i get more from that that company it's a great little psychological thing 

Megan Ellsworth: Ay this is so great we have another question in the chat from Melvin i would love to know how i can implement something like that as an independent ten ninety nine for the company i work with any thoughts on that from any of you 

Anissa Westfall: I'm assuming he is a salesman 

Megan Ellsworth: I think i would assume as well 

Anissa Westfall: Yeah i mean 

Megan Ellsworth: Yes. He said yes 

Anissa Westfall: I just i would i would request you know i would just go up the flag pol to your leadership team or the owner of the company or whatever and say. Hey look i was on this this program i was on this you know webinar and they talk about this really cool program and i wanna look into it and i mean certainly g. Four can customize the whole package from you as the salesman if you want you know you still have to get with the leadership team because its ultimately the company's name and the company's information right but if your leadership is good with it i mean it can be totally customized to just to you if you wanted and and you know maybe you go in fifty percent and then you know the company goes in fifty percent or maybe you get the company to pay for the whole thing but i think if you're a one man band out there like you're like the main sales guy or something and that's something i mean i would highly why not right why not 

Patrick Readyhough: El also Melvin if you're if you're ten ninety nine salesman i guess first ask yourself would you give up fifty or a hundred bucks to have one of your customers hand you a lead that you're probably gonna close at you know what Sixty seventy percent as opposed to whatever your other closing rate might be like you're gonna ten ninety nine you can write off the expense pay it outta your own pocket just real simple create a spreadsheet in Excel keep track of every customer you sell to and make some check boxes like how many times did you reach out and just promise yourself I'm gonna I'm gonna get in front of that customer on the phone with them at least three times to ask hey who do you know they could use my services and don't le don't move to the next person or leave them alone until you've asked them three times you know and just keep referring you can keep it on your laptop and keep going back to it and calling that customer over and over that would be a really easy way to implement it at that real down at that level i mean i like what anisa said running up the flag pole see if you can get the whole company on board but you're ten ninety nine man you can you can do it 

Anissa Westfall: I think what's so great about the g four packages is that they're very personalized so all of my packages is a picture of our president it's his email address his phone number well the email address is an alias and i get them right people the tone is very conversational and personalized people legitimately think they're talking to Ryan i mean they think like i get so many replies just thanks so much for the cookies you know hey Ryan you know not too many business owners these days will reach out and thank me and i really appreciate that right i mean like it just looks and feels like it's coming from a specific human being so i mean i think you know as a single salesman it would work great yeah 

Megan Ellsworth: Yeah i love it another way to really customize your customers experience ok, so how would how do you all see these referral programs really achieve higher conversion rates and mainly customer retention so i would love Pat to kind talk about what like customer retention do you see from this referral program in anisa as well yeah 

Patrick Readyhough: So i think look im gonna sound like a a broken record if youre getting a you built a referral program because you found yourself referable its just gonna keep it's like getting a flywheel spinning and it's just gonna keep spinning and spinning and Growing but ah, i think it challenges you to ah well at least for me i take it as a personal challenge right like i know what quality contractors there are out there and i know what quality we are i know what type of experience we have and I've made it my mission to make sure that we get as many of them as possible so they don't get screwed by somebody elses how i think about it I'm the best my company is the best one to take care of them and everybody here believes that so that's important just to make sure that's part of your culture and so sore you're going about it in that way it has that flywheel spins it forces you to keep doubling down on how well are we taking care of these people because i want that referral 

Anissa Westfall: Accountability 

Patrick Readyhough: Yeah i want that referral from you so you know so i can't show up and ask you for a referral if i did a crappy job or i didn't leave you happy are you happy now yeah well who else do you know so it's like this challenge i can't can't do it unless we've delivered that right and then 11 there're hours i don't want 'em to buy from anybody else so what can i do to keep touching them and that's the after sales stuff that we do through g four and everything to keep touching 'em and trying to bring them value because hey remind them we're the best answer here i think that's that's how i look at it 

Anissa Westfall: Yeah i mean and id add to it right like can make everybody happy 

Anissa Westfall: I mean as good of a job as you can do expectations sometimes of folks are a little out there so we actually have a happy button in our CRM so accounts receivable 11 they Collect final payment we check off if they think that customer es happy or not en only those happy folks which es ninety five percent right will go to g. Four but there's a few folks that look i mean i Battle with the du attorney who was raging alcoholic by noon because he was blasting us on on Google right I'm not sending him a G4 package cookie you know like right so there's so there there's also just advice there as far as have some kind of filter right it's not just one to one because you know we're human right we mess up sometimes you know so no matter what we could do if we make it right no matter what they're still just gonna leave with you know not a a like a happy st. Customer 

Patrick Readyhough: We have a button like that too anisa you Guys are doing you know telling 'em happy happy happy we're just marking the ones that were unhappy and taking 'em out beforehand and there's there's not very many so 

Anissa Westfall: We used to call it a do not fly list we do not fly list 

Patrick Readyhough: For us it's not so much we we don't want de get that box of cookies its just that Cadence of emails don't keep ya sending them something that they're gonna wanna reply to every couple weeks and say i hate you 

Anissa Westfall: And that's what it es just tone deaf right right 

Megan Ellsworth: Absolutely ya you don't wanna get emails saying i hate you every other week but no not good for morale so I'd love to know what you Guys think on this question how does referral marketing differ from you know traditional marketing methods and what you youtube do outside of referral marketing to kind of booster that that program 

Anissa Westfall: I mean for us our website is is pretty key so we have a whole page it's not live right now but we did have a whole page dedicated to our referral program um and so you know we could Leverage that in different settings our salesman can go hey go to our website on back slash referrals right and you can kind of check that out um, ah, so i say there's a place for it in the website but i mean outside of that right i preach this all the time marketing is like an orchestra it's a Symphony and put all together it makes music right you've got your precaution section and your string section and all those individually make music but together right that's where the magic happens and so you know you gotta be you know Google reviews are the new word of mouth right so you've got to be able to focus on Google focus on Google reviews focus on your website and SEO ranking um that is your outside of referrals like that's your number one thing number one is Google your website then you've got referrals right to start continuing to grow that network and then you got your lead generation companies right doing home Angie or whatever we on top of it in the past three years. 

Anissa Westfall: Si 11 you start scaling i talk about that order of operations 11 you start scaling right now we have radio DJ ensmith we have TV we have right Sports sponsorships right so you just start adding onto that Symphony and making it Greater and Greater and Greater um, yeah i mean referrals fundamental to it alls kind the first line of Defense and then you continue to add on different tactics 

Megan Ellsworth: Ya 

Patrick Readyhough: I think it's a you have marketing sources that are you know like you're advertising and you're waiting for a response and then you have companies that are canvassing or telemarketing or you know maybe they're buying lead aggregator leads which yeah that's a response but you have to do a lot of work to to reach out and get those appointments set referrals and previous customers are you know that's a warm outreach you can go get in if all fails you can go get in front of all these customers you've already served and ask for those so when you're putting money out for like we're not into radio yet right like let's say we're running advertisements in newspapers or something you know in some direct mail you're waiting for responses for that and you're finding oh, that's not working that well you can go drive around to to your customers and get back in front of them take a any gift any excuse and say. 

Patrick Readyhough: Hey are you estoy happy with everything yeah who do you know that needs what we did who do you know that 11 a great experience like we gave you and so for companies that are you know on the smaller side or middle size and continue you know wanting to continue to scale there is a easy way where you're having to go hire a canvasing you know a whole team to go because you can make a lot stuff happen right you can just go visit your own customers send salesmen there send production supervisors send marketing director out there whoever can give that boost to keep you head in the right direction 

Anissa Westfall: Ese the success of any marketing effort is Sixty percent who you say it to Twenty percent what you say en Twenty percent how you say it right Sixty percent who you say it tú right en other words the majority factor in your success es targeting the right person right if you want like kind of that one-to-one lead gen thing right and i think what Pat is talking about going to those going directly to those people and saying do you know a friend right ah 11 you start you know scaling and Growing bigger your marketing and advertising turns more into branding right i did some math and i don't know if this is right but proved me right or wrong right probably about four percent of Tampa Bay homeowners actually need us or need a roof right something like that i mean maybe it's ten percent i don know seems high but so when you're advertising right you're sending a message to someone who doesn't need anything yet from you and there's things called alphab receptors in marketing and advertising it's kinda like when you get a new car you never notice that car until you bought it all of sudden you notice it everywhere right somebody has that need are they gonna go. 

Anissa Westfall: Ah, okay. Right but its all those times you've advertised before all your frequency your consistency in your branding that goes i need a new roof. Oh, i heard of dos Guys that's all want i heard of those Guys right so again it goes back to the order operations you start in the beginning you start in your digital atmosphere with Google you add on your referral programs you start adding Legion you start adding a little you know home magazine or different like magazines right and then you add in mass media but all these things no at the other side of the funnel es es more effort on branding you're not gonna get leads directly ah. Just a little hit on something like TV for ejemplo you're gonna see all your other channels 11 you get on TV because all a sudden your sales Guys walk in the door and they. Oh, I've seen TV people believe anything on TV right so like you already are walking in the door with you know higher credentials if you will pero anyways i digress you know point being there es an order of operations and referrals is just it's crucial in something you should start immediately 

Megan Ellsworth: Ya so we had a question in the chat from dek Hines any recommendations o ideas de cater to commercial customers en a commercial referral program 

Anissa Westfall: Ya im glad you so like we're talking a lot about business to consumer business b. C right on the commercial side your focus es B2B right you you are working with local City officials or you know business whatever right and so that type of advertising is a lot more about relationships rather than transactions right so when you're talking about relationships what better to then implement a referral program right i mean for consumers es hard to get them to refer people but en a business de business base that's how you drive right it's who you know and so if you got some robust program that's speaking like you are talking like you are but just reinforcing the relationship as long as you feel like it's going to be Organic right and it's not like hey i just talked to you last week and i got this weird email from you right so you gotta kind of have to figure out that tone in timing and sort of depends on your relationship but if you're trying to grow new accounts or grow new businesses i think that this type of program en particular with g. Four because it's so custom i mean you can totally make that work 

Patrick Readyhough: We don't do a whole lot of commercial work if we do it generally because one of our homeowners own some small building that has shingles on it it just happens to be commercial zoning i can tell you es you know as far as referrals and Rewards we have a lot of vendors i mean there's a lot of vendors out there that wanna service you know Residential roofing companies and some of them have incentive programs hey, if you refer me I'll do this for you send you two hundred fifty bucks you know different you know they got different things the ones i respond to the best are when i talk about them and whether i get whether they actually get a customer or not i all of a sudden get a box of just stuff at my shop that i wasn't even expecting so and that's just one idea if you if you're a commercial roofing salesman again kinda like we were talking to Melvin you know if you're gonna sell a two hundred fifty five hundred thousand dollars roof job and you get a Commission on that how much of that would you give to go buy something for you know the person who's gonna get your referral for a project just like that that could come up months down the road I'd start with you know something easy if if if your company won't go for hey let's sign up with g. 

Patrick Readyhough: Four because for whatever reason you you can still have your own referral Rewards program for your customers and just send them a box a sch swag or something i mean i got box of t-shirts a bunch of random sizes and a couple cups one day i forgotten then i talked about that company you know what the next opportunity i got i talked about 'em again es que reminded me they were there yeah 

Anissa Westfall: Cards right i mean que even eliminate if you got a relationship you know you have an account with you know another business i mean it could just even like peace of mind you don't have to think about it you know John's birthday you know it will do it for you so that i mean it's a good tool for just trying to you know manage even that type of personal level of relationships 

Megan Ellsworth: Yeah beca as we start to wrap up the Conversation we only have about five minutes left can you kind talk to that that commercial side with g four and how a commercial contractor could potentially use G4 to Leverage a referral program for their business 

Rebecca Mayo: Yeah absolutely and i love that this question was asked because we have so many customers a G4 that do both Residential commercial and it's equally effective and i think anisa nail on the head when she said it's all about building and developing those relationships on the commercial side so if we're doing a large commercial job we wanna make sure again similar to the Residential piece that we're leaving a really good taste in the mouth of that tra not transaction excuse me. Um, relationship essentially like we wanna make sure that we're building that relationship and nurturing it over time something we talk about a lot here energy for is like relationship marketing right that's really our and butter is what we do best and that's why people come to us because they know they need to like i said before turn heat up on that in their business so fuere looking at the commercial piece that's really my best piece of advice es make sure that you're consistently building nurturing and developing those relationships with your point of contact because you never know who they could refer you to next for a job and especially if you're in a local marketer community it's a great way to just network right like there could be other people who need work done that you may not have even met and because you had a good relationship with your point of contact there they'll talk to you they'll talk to them about you and your phone will start ringing so people 

Anissa Westfall: From who they like i mean there's just human psychological you know needs to be validated and liked and acknowledged and if you're building a relationship right i mean i think about we have a couple of Realtors that worked for over a decade and i would never twice to shop them never right and they're probably not the cheapest their commissions are straight six percent rights just that relationship and it's that level of empathy you know you know their family you know right Dynamics and business it really 

Megan Ellsworth: Es so true well thank you all so much for this great Conversation i hope everyone in the audience really took away some nuggets of wisdom i know i did um and these are these are things that you can apply to really any aspect of your business with your commercial Residential i mean roofer's coffee shop I'm taking notes um this has been really really amazing so thank you anisa thank you Pat thank you back up 

Anissa Westfall: Pleasure 

Megan Ellsworth: Pleasure to to kind of end this great Conversation with just a little one extra hit i would love to kind of have each of you round out by leaving a little message on wow why people should start a referral program en en en how they can one little tidbit on how they can do that so if you don't mind starting us out 

Anissa Westfall: I es just a no brainer for me it's an absolute no-brainer but the first step you need to do is go your leadership team or if you're the leadership team and kind of decide right how much do i wanna spend on this right how many Jobs do i need to sell to kind of get a return so right you do homework. Ah, but you know i think thinks un Investment right so think of it as not as a cost center think of it I'm gonna spend a dollar to make two back and as long as i mean i think for me the why is pretty obvious the how right is kind of your next up and you know with a company like g four marketing i mean they have it done is done set contractors are using it um, we have you know proof and and how it Works so i mean if i was starting out tomorrow as a roofing company i you know I'd say do it do it right away 

Patrick Readyhough: Yeah i mean why because referral leads are great leads and you just have to be chasing those how you know look itss about communicating what you're trying to do so you just have to keep communicating somehow start by sitting down and just mapping out what do i want it to be simple complicated doesn't matter have a plan write it down find a way to create some automations through through your CRM if you don't have a CRM keep an Excel spreadsheet you know youre doing at least ten Jobs a month you should be calling g four to let them Automate it for you if you're on the smaller side and you're doing under ten maybe maybe you're not ready for that get something going 

Anissa Westfall: Yourself right go CBS buy some cards hand it out start small and it doesn't have to be with the company to your point i mean it could be your own emails your own letters whatever as 

Patrick Readyhough: I don't care how small your roofing company is you should be connected to some sort of CRM and all of them now have a way to Automate a few emails yes no they might not all get open because maybe that CRM email thing isn't the most credible and all that stuff but you know what it's a start i mean g. Four gets opened however they're sending the emails out they get opened so that's great you know there's a place to start and just you know look make a decision to go one direction and try it tomorrow 

Anissa Westfall:  Tomorrow 

Megan Ellsworth: Amazing baca any last words 

Rebecca Mayo: Yes i a hundred percent cosign everything a nisa and patches said really there truly is a reason why referral programs are effective and i highly recommend just do something you know it doesn't have to be the whole inch at first just do something it doesn't have to be complicated if you need any consultative advice that is why we're here g. Four exists like like i said before consideras an extension of your team and that's why we're here we wanna see these businesses grow and thrive and scale ten x or more often all that to say it's a great time to consider this for your business couldnt be more enthusiastic about these programs that we have and just the relationships that we built and the best industry obviously um, but yeah thank you so much Megan for this wonderful opportunity to showcase anissa and Pat and just get excited for Twenty Twenty five and everything that all the all the opportunities that are had as far as like what you can do for your business by just making those small changes 

Megan Ellsworth: Absolutely thank you all for chatting with me today and thank you everyone in the audience for listening to these wise wise people thank you g four for sponsoring this episode and we'll see you next time on copy Conversations make sure to go to the g four marketing Directory on roofer coffee shop dot com to learn more this will be up on roofer coffee shop dot com in Twenty four hours and you can share it out and listen to it again and thank you all so much have a great day thank you bye bye.