Why Marketing Won’t Fix Your Referral Problem | FOCB Ep 11 with Jason Sanders

If your business isn’t getting referrals…

Marketing isn’t the problem.

Leadership is.

In this episode of From Overlooked to Consistently Booked, Meaghan Chitwood wraps up the conversation with Jason Sanders by breaking down a truth most business owners miss:

You don’t fix a referral problem with more marketing.

You fix it with:

•  Better leadership 
•  Better experiences 
•  Better alignment 

WHAT YOU’LL LEARN IN THIS EPISODE:

•  Why marketing can’t overcome a poor customer experience 
•  How leadership directly impacts whether people refer you or not 
•  The hidden cost of pressure-based sales environments 
•  Why honesty creates more referrals than upselling ever will 
•  How trust inside your team translates to trust with customers 
•  The difference between networking… and finding the right referral partners 
•  How one aligned relationship can drive massive business growth 
•  Why knowing your ideal customer changes your referral strategy 

THE BIG IDEA

Referrals aren’t generated.

They’re earned.

And they’re earned through:

Leadership → Culture → Experience → Referrals

Jason’s approach removes the typical pressure:

•  No forced upsells 
•  No unnecessary appointments 
•  No quotas that compromise trust 

Instead:

•  Honest conversations 
•  Clear diagnosis 
•  Doing what’s right for the customer 

And that’s what people talk about. 

WHY MARKETING FALLS SHORT

You can increase visibility with marketing.

But visibility doesn’t create trust.

And without trust…

There are no referrals.

Because referrals happen when someone says:

“I trust them enough to send you there.”

That doesn’t come from ads.

That comes from experience.

THE POWER OF THE RIGHT PEOPLE

Jason shares how one aligned referral partner led to:

•  2–3 referrals per week 
•  Then 2–3 per day 
•  And eventually the need to hire a team 

Not because he marketed better…

But because he built the right relationship.

KNOW WHO YOU SERVE

Not everyone is your ideal customer.

Jason identified his best clients as:

•  Established homeowners 
•  In connected neighborhoods 
•  People who talk to their neighbors 

Which led him to focus on where those people already are.

Because referrals don’t happen randomly.

They happen in communities.

THE LEADERSHIP SHIFT

“It’s not my fault… but it’s my problem.”

That mindset:

•  Builds trust internally 
•  Builds loyalty externally 
•  Creates a culture of ownership 

And that’s what drives referrals.

IF THIS EPISODE RESONATES…

This is exactly what BNI North Alabama is built for.

Not more marketing.

Better relationships.

If you want to grow your business through referrals and real connections:

Visit a chapter:
 https://northern.bnialabama.com/en-US/index

FINAL TAKEAWAY

If you want more referrals…

Don’t ask:

“How do I market better?”

Ask:

“How do I become more referable?”

CONNECT & FOLLOW

•  Subscribe for more episodes of From Overlooked to Consistently Booked
•  Share this with a business owner focused on marketing but missing referrals 
•  Drop a comment: What experience are you creating for your customers right now?

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:07

I'm Megan Chitwood, and you are tuning in to From Overlooked to Consistently Booked, where we are talking today about how leadership directly translates into referrability. And again, we have Jason here with us wrapping up an amazing set of nuggets that you have delivered over the last few weeks. So I want to talk to you about how does you how do you think your leadership has really contributed to your company culture and ultimately your referability?

SPEAKER_00 0:35

And that's a really tricky question to answer. I'm just, I'm just going to start with saying if your employees trust that you have their back and they trust that you have the back of your customer too. Because things are going to go wrong on jobs sometimes, and they want to know how we're going to get it fixed. The other thing that I think is just the confidence that they go in that home and know they're not going to be in trouble if they didn't reach a certain number. One of the sayings in the HVAC industry is it's never just a capacitor. And the idea there is don't ever just sell someone a capacitor. You need to sell them a capacitor in a kitchen sink too. Well, there's some truth to it's never just a capacitor.

SPEAKER_01 1:19

So one time for me, it was the capacitor. Were they lying to me or not?

SPEAKER_00 1:23

Sometimes it is just the capacitor, you know.

SPEAKER_01 1:25

It was just the capacitor then.

SPEAKER_00 1:26

And so an employee doesn't feel this pressure to walk into the house and cook something up and put that over onto the customer. And I think that that makes us a referable company. Because, you know, when the when the customers are finished and they speak to their neighbor and the neighbor says something to them like, Boy, uh, how much did they get you for? You know, the last company that was at my house got us for X amount of money. And they say, actually, it wasn't that bad. You know, really? Well, what's their names? Who who was it that came out? You know, let me let me get their info. I think that's a big help. The other thing I think about, you know, the leadership that can make us really referable is the idea that you know, we don't have these crazy schedule quotas for the guys either. So some companies, hey, you got to run five calls a day. And uh we try even if we get busy, sometimes we are gonna run five calls a day. Sometimes we're not. It just depends on what the schedule looks like. When you have a company that puts those quotas on you no matter what, you end up in people's homes who you really probably didn't need to be in. What I mean by that is they will have the office personnel call and set appointments for things, maintenances or whatever have you, and you're there in a home trying to sell someone something whose air conditioner is just fine. And that leaves people, your customer with a little bit of a bad taste in her mouth. So if every time you deal with a customer, it's either for legitimate, you know, and the air conditioner went down, or you were there for the seasonal maintenance, not just because it was slow and we called and pushed you to get one. That conversation feels a little bit differently than, hey, I know everything's been working fine, but uh, can I interest you in this big package that we've put together? Is that customer likely to call you back or refer you to their neighbor or their daughter? It feels good when you fix a man's air conditioner and you know, six weeks later he calls you and says, Y'all fix my air conditioner, now I want to send you to my daughter's house. Yes. That's a good feeling.

SPEAKER_01 3:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 3:16

And I think that comes down to the culture of the company, which is a directly descendant of the company's leadership.

SPEAKER_01 3:22

Yeah. Um, how would you suggest someone builds their leadership skill? How do they what would they need to do to really think about it to get to where you are today?

SPEAKER_00 3:34

That's a tough question, too. Um, you know, I was in the military and I was in a leadership role for most of that time in the military. So a lot of this stuff just feels like, you know, Tuesday to me. Um, so I don't really have a good answer for how I would tell someone to build it. Other than this, remember those, you know, leaders that you've had throughout your lifetime who were effective and remember the ones who were ineffective. Pull the bits and pieces from the effective ones that you really liked and try to integrate that into how you run the thing uh the ship. And I think you'll find that things will work really well.

SPEAKER_01 4:07

Well, and I think you've also taken, you've taken what you didn't like about the HVAC industry, and I think you rolled it into and figured out what are those things, and we're not gonna have those things within our company. So, like I was that an intentional thing that you did, or was that just something that sort of happened?

SPEAKER_00 4:25

100%. Uh, you know, when I when I left to go on my own, I actually had an offer to go work for the government. It was gonna be a really cool job working on a Thad missile system. How cool is that? You know, traveling around and working on this thing. Oh man, the hoops they were trying to get me to jump through and just the the corporate feel and the stiffness of it all. Oh, you can't say that. You gotta be careful and about that. I was like, this doesn't even feel real. Like we're we're we're we're banning, you know, real interactions and we've forced ourselves into being actors all day at work. I don't want to do that. Yeah, I don't want to do that.

SPEAKER_01 5:00

Well, and the awesome thing is you're not asking anybody who works with you to do that either. You're asking them to be totally real and transparent and be you. You know, this, but this is I I love how you said I want you're an advocate for the customer as well as the employee because you're just trying to find a win-win for everyone. And if those two people win, you ultimately win as well.

SPEAKER_00 5:19

Right. You know, the company, if the company survives, um, then the company's here to help. That that's the way you know I look at it. So is this gonna kill the company? No, you know, there's no one job gonna kill this company that goes bad. And when I say, you know, I don't I don't want to give you the idea that a lot of jobs go bad, but sometimes they do. I've bought brand new air conditioners and installed them and turned them on and had a bad compressor. Oh, that's terrible when it's July, you know, and then it's even worse when you got to call the customer and say, hey, they can't get a new compressor for three weeks. We are not gonna call the customer and tell them that. We will call the distributor and say, I need another condenser, I'm coming to get it right now, and we will figure this out later. We'll figure that part out later. Yeah, that's not for them. That's not their fault. There's there's a saying that I have I always say, it's not my fault, but it's my problem. And I like that's me kind of wanting to take ownership of these problems because it's not the customer's fault either. Does it have to be their problem? I don't think it does.

SPEAKER_01 6:14

That's an interesting one. I have a high responsibility value where I feel responsible. And I use the word um because like just like what you said, like not it was my fault, but I'm responsible for making sure that it's not, it's not. And I think if every if that trickles down, how awesome is that within your company as well?

SPEAKER_00 6:33

Oh, my my I've heard my employees say to people, oh, don't worry, Jason's gonna take care of it. You know, I've heard they've had him be on the phone with me, hey, let me tell you what's going on. And I can hear the panic and the worry on the customer's, you know, voice on the other end. And my guys say, Hey, hey, let me just tell you to just be calm. I'm just telling Jason what it is. We're taking care of this. I'm just asking him what he wants me to do. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 6:56

That's amazing. That's amazing. So um you had to originally back in our first episode, talked about your story a little bit. How long did it take you from going to from you being the one one truck to where you are today?

SPEAKER_00 7:09

A little over a year. So uh went the first B and I chapter I went to was not a good fit. Uh spoke with a real estate agent there, and I thought she would probably be the, you know, my biggest referral partner. And it so happened that she asked me for a referral for her own home to get a new air conditioning system. So man, I threw her a price that should have just knocked her socks off. And she was sticker shocked. And what that told me was that she really didn't have her finger on the pulse of what HVAC cost, and therefore she's probably not as good of a referral partner as I thought she was gonna be. Yeah. The second realtor that I spoke with, he was talking to me about components. What do you charge for this? What do you charge for that? And that told me he deals with this a whole lot. So, not say anything bad about that other chapter, that was a great chapter, but for me, this was a better fit. So that was a key difference. It took him about four months to throw me the first bone, and then it began to trickle a little bit more and more and more. And by the time we were six months in, so two months from the time he threw me the first one, it was an avalanche.

SPEAKER_01 8:15

And so I So you're talking like first referral, then how many would you say, like a week or a month or were referrals were you getting at that point?

SPEAKER_00 8:23

Started off with, you know, one, and then it turned into two or three a week, and then it turned into two or three a day. Wow. And that's for for for just one guy, that was a lot. Yeah. But then we made it, we made it to the slow season and the busy season was right around the corner. So roughly a year and two months before I was like, I've got to hire some more people because I can't do it all.

SPEAKER_01 8:44

And it was what that one amazing referral partner.

SPEAKER_00 8:46

That one connection was the difference. He he was responsible for the first year for about half of my business. And he actually today is still responsible for about 20%. Because they have consent continued to throw me more and more and more.

SPEAKER_01 9:03

We talk or I talk a lot about like surrounding yourself with the right referral partners to ultimately make that happen. Um, and I know you use B and I to make to make that happen. But if you were to try to do that outside of B and I, what would you do?

SPEAKER_00 9:17

I will, I have tried it outside of B. Okay. And I've I've not had good success um with don't get mad at me, Chamber. I love y'all, but I've not had success with the Chamber of Commerce that I have had. Doing networking and things like that within it.

SPEAKER_01 9:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 9:32

Um, I I have um I tried I bought a bass boat. I thought I'll go and enjoy these fishing things and and because that seems to be a huge sponsorship area.

SPEAKER_01 9:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 9:42

Uh nope, I'm gonna sell the boat. That didn't work out. Yeah, I recently bought, I I can't believe I'm about to tell this secret, but I'm gonna tell it. I bought a Corvette. And the reason I bought the Corvette, well, I like Corvettes, but there's also a really big Corvette club here in Huntsville.

SPEAKER_01 9:58

Oh, interesting.

SPEAKER_00 9:59

And that is a great way to connect because I'm I'm not any good at golf, but here are my customers, they like Corvettes. You know, I can probably join this Corvette club. I looked very carefully at Jeep. Jeep clubs are also my customers, yeah. But uh, I just I don't know, I don't understand the Jeep culture and I don't want to fake it.

SPEAKER_01 10:16

That is great. I thought you were gonna say you were gonna get it wrapped with your company, with your company stuff, just just to join the club.

SPEAKER_00 10:23

I joined the club and I just want to be a member. You know, it's not, hey, I have a Corvette, are you gonna buy an air conditioner? That's not what it is.

SPEAKER_01 10:29

No, it's people have the same interest. I love people coming together for the same interests.

SPEAKER_00 10:33

They they you know, they and it's a big club. And you know, that may not be the case in your town, wherever you live, but here in Huntsville, our Corvette Club is almost all retired military officers, and they're they're gonna be uh your people. Yeah, they're they are our target demographic. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 10:48

So how did you identify that's my favorite target demographic? How did you identify your target customer?

SPEAKER_00 10:55

Um so we we offer financing, okay, but most of our customers don't finance. Yeah, but we do have it for people who want to do there, who want to do it. We I'm just another contractor in a sea of contractors. So how am I going to get in front of the people who want to use me as a customer? Yeah. And we thought financing was going to be the answer, and it turned out not to be. And so we just kind of went back to the old drawing board and I said, you know, my perfect customer is not a first-time home buyer because that air conditioner is probably new, you know, and probably doesn't need much. My perfect customer is someone who lives in a neighborhood that's older, who's got neighbors whose air conditioners are older. Maybe they're more involved with their neighbors than someone in a new community. And so I just noticed with, you know, working with people, the customers who more often than not I really identified well with were car guys.

SPEAKER_01 11:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 11:45

If they had a car in their garage, man, we just we just became best friends. Yeah. And the next thing you know, their neighbors calling me and they say, Oh, Rick down here gave me your number. And I was like, When I need to connect with car people, yeah. And I this would be my third Corvette. I like Corvettes, I like them a lot. The Corvette Club is strong. And I had a conversation with Chat GPT about it.

SPEAKER_01 12:04

I love it.

SPEAKER_00 12:04

And Chat GPT told me to uh avoid the Mustang crowd because most Mustang owners are not homeowners.

SPEAKER_01 12:11

Interesting.

SPEAKER_00 12:12

Told me to avoid the um European model crowd because it doesn't, it's not as well represented. And this was Chat GP talking, not me.

SPEAKER_01 12:22

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 12:22

They're a little pretentious.

unknown 12:24

I love it.

SPEAKER_00 12:25

Um it said, Jason, from what I don't know about you, I think your perfect customer is the Corvette crowd. There's a huge Corvette club right there in your town, and I think they're perfect. And as a close second, I don't urge you to consider the Jeep people. And so there you go.

SPEAKER_01 12:39

And then try it. Why not? I love that nugget. Um, I'm a I'm a big fan of using AI for that, that kind of that kind of thing. I did my annual debrief and what should I do next? And I ask it really random questions about myself all the time, and it usually nails the answer. So that is awesome that you used it to think about where it is.

SPEAKER_00 12:58

At the end of the day, I said, you know what? We'll buy the car, we'll give it a year. If it doesn't work, well, I had a Corvette for a year.

SPEAKER_01 13:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 13:03

You know, if it does work, I'll have a Corvette for even longer.

SPEAKER_01 13:06

And then you might be able to get another one and another one and another one.

SPEAKER_00 13:09

Right.

SPEAKER_01 13:09

Yeah, that is fantastic. Oh, you have just given us a month worth of amazing learning, and I appreciate it so much. Um, love your story when you told it to me about two years ago. Thank you so much, Jason. This has just been an absolute pleasure. And I learned a lot actually from the your leadership and your story that you've shared with us. Thank you so much.

SPEAKER_00 13:30

Thanks for having me. I was happy to do it.

SPEAKER_01 13:31

Thanks for tuning in. Um, I love having real conversations like this. So please subscribe to the channel if this has resonated with you ultimately. And if you are interested in learning more about BI and how it can be a resource for your business, um, visit northern.biallabama.com or bni.com if you are outside of northern Alabama.