Diagnostic Pattern
"Referrals used to carry us and they have slowed"
The symptom is real. The cause is usually somewhere else.
Referrals used to arrive on their own and now they do not. It looks like a demand problem, so you go looking for referral tactics. It may actually be that referrals were never the engine - expansion was - and the engine stopped.
What you think it is
Referrals used to carry us and they've really slowed down.
So you launch a referral program, add an incentive, and train the team to ask at the end of every good meeting.
What it usually is
A hypothesis to test, not an indictment on you or the team.
Referrals are an output, not a tactic. In DARE to Grow it is retention through expansion: the accounts you deliberately grow tend to renew, tend to stay, and tend to refer - and that referral is what feeds back into demand and closes the loop. So a fall in referrals is usually a lagging signal that expansion stopped happening, not evidence that you need to ask more people for introductions. Asking harder at the front of the loop cannot fix a break at the back of it.
How to tell
Which customers referred you in the last year - and were they the same customers you grew? When did you last expand an account on purpose rather than because they asked?
The move
Go and look at which accounts grew and which ones referred, and see whether they are the same list. If they are, the work is expansion, not referral mechanics. Design expansion as a proactive motion with pathways and an owner, then let the referrals come back as the output they always were.
You might think you need a referral program. It may actually be that you stopped growing the customers who refer.
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