FINALLY: Get Referrals Handled in 2023—Because It's Time

Week over week I’ve been building a foundation of understanding for how referral generation can work for personal injury lawyers. Grassroots Marketing used to be the only game in town—before advertising was allowed. These days a lot of law firms are chasing unconnected strangers so hard they’ve forgotten the basics.

The first thing to know is that when you properly encourage a person, and set them up to notice, a person can bring you a lot of cases. At one time I was dissuaded from talking about “double digit referrers" because it sounded hyperbolic—to some.

What I can tell you is that clients and staff will refer, and, if you treat them right, they will do it again and sometimes accelerate.

Referrals can come in clusters—in surges.?To understand how that happens it helps to understand the reticular activation system (RAS).

There’s a lot more of everything than we have any idea—UNTIL we have a compelling reason to notice. And this is not a conscious process. It’s something the subconscious takes care of. There's a lot of incoming—billions of bits of data per second in fact—so our brain must be selective so that we are not overwhelmed.

The penny drops when you see it in the behaviour of your clients and staff. When you see a surge happen and understand why. And it’s not grounded in reciprocity but in your client making sure someone else is looked after and then receives meaningful acknowledgment (significant emotional rewards) for doing so. And when this acknowledgment makes their mind crank to a higher gear—of noticing and willingness—the cases come tumbling in.

That’s how double digit referrers happen.

Let’s cover one more compliance trigger to end the year and we’ll pick it back up on January.

I have referred to Dr. Robert Cialdini’s “Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion” as a seminal work that established six compliance triggers. They are researched and proven in countless studies. These triggers work because they are based on human psychology which does not change. Cialdini calls them “click, whirr” because they happen beneath conscious thought.

One of the six he calls ‘Commitment and Consistency”. It’s grounded in the psychological need of people to appear consistent with their commitments—especially to themselves. If a person gives a small, seemingly innocuous commitment it can open the door to a lifetime shift in behaviour.

If you are always on the hunt for “little hinges that swing big doors”, your antenna should be vibrating right now.

How The Referral Contract? can open the door to a steady influx of referrals.

First of all, the Referral Contract frames a referral as the client making sure that their friends in need will be properly looked after. This implicates the good decision they have just made by hiring you and by agreeing to look out for their friends in need.

Commitment and Consistency is where a person gives their word and then feels honor-bound to act in ways consistent with their new commitment. When you suggest a client might want to make sure their friends are looked after, they will agree to do so. Nobody ever says no.

They give their word and they mean it and that act can have far reaching consequences, especially if you know how to follow it up. In that moment something has been established which could stand.

Now you have a person who has said, in a casual exchange, that they’d be happy to help their friend in some future hypothetical scenario. What does that get you?

First off, let’s compare the worst and most common referral script in the word with the Referral Contract.

Lawyers tend to say, “…and hey Joe, if you ever come across someone who's injured and needs a personal injury lawyer….send them my way, okay?”

Translation: I did good by you, so send me a case!

The Referral Contract by contrast says—at a moment when your new client is feeling great about hiring you, now having this tricky matter handled: "…and any time you come across a person in a situation like yours, let’s make sure they're taken care of….. you'll have them call me, won't you?”

I can give you many ways to say it but it can never be grounded in an "if".

You are not asking them to give you something. You are seeing if they are the kind of person who would extend themselves to help their friend. You are asking for a small commitment—to make sure others get the protection your client is getting now and feeling so good about.

They WILL give you that commitment. There is a part of them that will look out for others in that way.

When a referral is framed as a gift to you, you’ll probably get one or none, and let’s be honest, usually none. If the referral is framed as a kind person making sure someone else is looked after, there's an opening. If that person comes to perceive and feel that the act of making sure their friends are looked after brings profound emotional rewards, their brain will be scanning 24/7/365.

What could NEVER IN A MILLION YEARS get your client’s brain scanning for opportunities to send you cases for the next year or two or more?

“If you ever come across….”. That’s why it’s the worst and most common referral script known to humankind. If is not framed in the now and the subconscious lives in the now.

You want to stay top of mind? Obviously impossible if you give it ten seconds thought. Okay, how about this: do you want to come to mind with perfect timing in the most compelling way?

Ah so, very different.

Most law firms get no referrals from almost all clients and a few single referrers here and there. Some law firms get more first time referrers and also know how to turn the single referrers into multiple case referrers.

That’s my wish for you in 2023. That you gather all these insights and take action with them, to make 2023 the year you embraced Grassroots Marketing and got your first “double digit” referrer.

Thank you for subscribing to Grassroots Marketing. I wish you and yours a wonderful Holiday Season. Happy Christmas, Merry New Year, Blessed Hanukkah, all down the line.

See you in 2023.