Derek Morgan on why your best leads are already in your network - and the 9-step system that gets them moving.
GROWTH PILLAR: Networking & Community
WHO THIS IS FOR: SMB owners / Solopreneurs / Corporate escapees / Leaders building systems
WHAT THEY'LL GAIN: A practical way to spot referral partners hiding in their own contacts, a value-first approach to partnerships, and a system to stop losing leads in a messy CRM
Most business owners think they need more leads. What they actually have is a focus problem — warm relationships sitting untouched while they chase cold outreach and paid ads.
Derek Morgan is a fractional business development specialist and co-founder of ReferU2, a referral marketing and partner management platform built for small and mid-sized businesses. He's also the creator of the Referral Marketing Formula, a nine-step system that helps entrepreneurs, coaches, and consultants generate high-quality leads through strategic referral partnerships — no ad spend, no cold outreach.
In this conversation, Derek shares the story of a stalled introduction that sat idle in a CRM for two years — until two coffee meetings turned it into $11.2 million in contracted business. He breaks down how to find your ideal referral partners, build a real value exchange instead of leading with commission, and set up simple systems so nothing falls through the cracks.
Key topics covered:
Connect with Derek: LinkedIn | Website | YouTube | Instagram
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Next Steps
Bernie (00:22)
question to the audience. What if your next 10 clients were already sitting in your network and you just hadn't asked the right way?
That feeling of spinning your wheels, spending money on ads, grinding through cold outreach, and still not seeing the leads you need. That's exactly what our guest today will set out to fix. He built a system around one idea. The best leads you'll ever get are the ones that someone already has, and they send you. Let me introduce them. Derek Morgan spent years watching business owners do the hard way and
What should be the easy way? Chasing cold leads, running expensive ads, and ignoring the warm relationships already sitting in front of them. He's a fractional business development specialist based in Brisbane, Australia, and co-founder and CEO of Refer U2. And refer U2 is R E F R, then the letter U, and then the number two, a referral marketing and partner management platform built for small and mid-sized businesses.
He's also the creator of Referral Marketing Formula, a step-by-step system that helps entrepreneurs, coaches, and consultants generate high-quality leads through strategic referral partnerships. No ad spend, no cold outreach. Derek has spoken on stages, webinars, and podcasts and worked with countless product and service businesses across a wide range of industries. His approach is simple and practical. Figure out where the leverage is and do more of that. He calls it return on effort. I call it effect.
Plain Smart. You'll find Derek at refer you to dot com and referralmarketing ideas.com. absolute pleasure. Welcome. you're the opposite end of the world from where we're here in Canada and Australia, but good morning or good evening, depending where you're sitting.
Yeah, do you have a favorite quote or saying, sir?
Derek (02:03)
Yeah, it's at the moment for twenty twenty six my my motto's been do more of less, basically meaning focus on the things that are really going to have leverage for you. At the moment everybody's so busy being busy that they're not focused on the things that are really effective. So yeah, do more of less.
Bernie (02:23)
What's the moment you realize most businesses were leaving the referrals you know, on the table? Like, you know, leaving leaving the cash and then leaving the room. Like what what drew your attention to that?
Derek (02:34)
I was working with a startup technology company who was collaborating with some larger tech businesses. And one of the one of the people in my network was a a consultant. So I introduced the enterprise technology company to the consultants, sat seven people around a boardroom, everybody agreed it was a match made in heaven, that they should collaborate together. And then so I left them to their own devices.
Two years later, I actually went to work directly in that technology company and their multi-million dollar CRM. I found the consultant and there was donuts. Nobody had done anything with that consultant. So I went and had two coffee meetings with him. And within the next six months, that technology business wrote $11.2 million worth of contracted business. So that lead had sat in this very fancy CRM for
two years at you know a rough rough opportunity cost of about forty four million dollars in missed business.
Bernie (03:32)
Mm-hmm.
Derek (03:32)
So that that's that's when I realized, you know, and that business admitted that they had a problem building pipeline. And you know, it it was really a focus issue rather than an opportunity issue. So those opportunity costs are sitting within people's CRMs and they're not seeing them because they can't measure them.
Bernie (03:50)
So is it is it a size matters? Because I know if you're if you're managing people, there's there's a certain number of people typically that a person can manage. And after that it becomes, there's a disconnect, right? Is it the same? Is would it hold true then for your your contacts? Or would you approach it, you develop a list of connections, not necessarily customers,
cross connections and then you have to kind of circle back and touch base with them. Is is that the kind of the approach that you're you're looking at?
Derek (04:19)
Yeah, well having having a systemized approach of creating visibility around the right connections and then having a a system and a a value proposition to referral partners that keeps you engaged because effective referrals come from consistent engagement. And you know, it doesn't that was a multi-million dollar deal for a large business, but the same principles and issues apply to
solo founder led sales and small sales teams. and it I'm really talking in the context of B2B businesses and it really doesn't matter about the size and the deal size of the business. It's all principles and strategy based. It's all relevant. I think where where all businesses fall over is even if they've got
complex technology, they don't have the the action habits of leveraging that technology because they haven't systemized their approach or they've systemized their approach, but a system only works if you follow the system. But but most SMBs and SMEs, their sales teams, they are they are limited in resources and time and training and and management. So therefore they're
They're throwing out into the marketplace to to hunt their own deals, to manage their own accounts and to then nurture those client bases, it's it's a lot of work. So when you start to talk about networking leads and referrals, if you don't have a system, things just fall through the cracks. They get buried in email, they get buried in LinkedIn messages, SMS, WhatsApp, whatever. and then businesses are out there doing a lot of networking and they're in
you know, three, four, five different networking events, all of which have a different system or process if it's really structured and in person, or a relatively organic process if it's online. So then again, there's no systems or processes that cover the cover the gambit of all of their networking activity. So that they just get this one view of everything that's going on with the people that they're collaborating with. yeah, so that's
That's what we see as the big missed opportunity cost. People, businesses have all these connections. They have these great clients, but they're running around looking for their next deal instead of taking on a partnership collaboration mindset and thinking about how do they work more effectively with the people that they're already close to and have a relationship with instead of chasing the next cold net new deal. So, but hey.
That's what the marketing industry and that's what the marketplace has been focusing on for the last ten years and now is doubled down on with AI pushing it. So I guess it's it's it's not your fault as a business owner if you're out there chasing cold leads because that's what everyone's telling you to do and focus on.
Bernie (07:00)
I I get what you're saying. So like a cold lead takes more effort to to make that the connection because two things have to happen. First you gotta find the right cold lead that that's interested. And then you have to nurture them. And you mentioned that earlier. What do you mean by nurturing? Is is that more like the you getting to understand the person more, they're getting to understand you more, not just you know, hi, my name's Bob and you know, from there, but is is it understanding the nature of the business? 'Cause
You know, if you're a mechanic and and you work on tractors, it's quite different than a mechanic that works on you know cars, right? Or, heavy diesel versus, a standard automotive.
Derek (07:38)
think you've got really put people into two separate identities because nurturing as the marketplace understands it now is shove shove people into an email campaign and and you know hit their hit hope hit the hit the social media platforms with as much content as AI can produce and then hope hope that the algorithm actually puts some of that in front of the right person at the right time.
That's that's nurturing in an automated fashion in relation to direct to customer. So if we think of ideal customer profiles and how you nurture cold leads, there's a lot of automate automation. And now there's even an overwhelming avalanche of content pouring into social platforms. So we can get into the supply-demand of content creation later, an algorithm roulette. But
If you then have a second persona being your ideal referral partner, your ideal referral partners already have accumulated a client network of your ideal customers. So the bit that people miss when you talk about nurturing ideal referral partners, it's about thinking around a value exchange that you can give to them that's important to them and their business.
That's automatically going to get them engaging with you consistently. So when you talk about nurturing partners at the start of a relationship, it's like, well, Bernie, I'm having a value conversation with you about how my business does something other than just my products and services and does it in a way that is meaningful to the core things that you are interested in from your business perspective. As soon as I'm adding value to your business and your core drivers,
Well, now I've got your attention. Now we can nurture a relationship by having a structured conversation and a structured engagement process that ultimately has value for your business drivers and for me, or you know, as a referral partner, means that you are exposing or introducing your client base to me on a more consistent basis. So I'm getting referred leads.
You're getting a value exchange of some means that's important to you. That's a very deep nurturing process that's goals driven or results driven, as opposed to, you know, most people walk into a networking event and they're rushing up and they're handshaking and they're pitching their product and service looking for a client. Well, that's really hard work. If you go to a networking event in a more relaxed mode,
looking for an introduction to a referral partner because you've got this massive amount of value that you can add to that referral partner, that makes it easier to get introduced because you're the person that you're asking to make an introduction knows that you're not actually they're not referring somebody into a sales pitch. And this is this is the big difference. If you can get that mindset and understand that the logic and emotion behind that when you're networking,
it makes it much, much easier for people at networking events to go, yeah, I should introduce you to the accountant, the financial planner, the real estate agent or whatever, because you've got this value that you're going to deliver them, not go into a sales pitch with a referral partner. Right. It's a it's a big mind shift, mindset shift, changes the dynamics of the conversation.
Bernie (10:55)
So business has been running for a while and they they have their the CRM and much like you said, you know, there there's here's a relationship that just sat there idle, waiting, waiting for some some attention and love, and all of a sudden, ta da. And how does a company you know reevaluate what they already have? That, you know, here here are your gaps. How like how how do you go around survey that out?
Derek (11:19)
Yeah, it's about having it's about having a framework to go and ask the right questions and actually look at what you're doing. I mean, at at the most basic level, it it's pretty simple. You've got a CRM, most sales teams are not using it. Right. So in their networking, a lot of leads, interactions, etc. are not actually even making their way into the CRM. And then most pe most businesses are not using their CRM effectively. For small to medium sized business, if they have one at all.
Right. The number of businesses I come across that their contacts are sitting in a Google Sheet or email Outlook. They they don't even have contacts in Outlook. It's just go search for the email. so that's part of the problem, not having a very clear single source of truth around how you are dealing with your network from a a networking and referral perspective, which is different to your CRM activity, right? Because
You've got your CRM, I can't look into that. I've got my CRM, you can't look into that. How do deep partnerships collaborate then? You need some sort of an ecosystem or a portal where you can both both come in and the industry still hasn't got that bit right. Yo, teams or you know, whatever the various chat groups and you know, Slack and et cetera, et cetera, still haven't got it.
right from a partnering perspective. So so coming back to answer your question, it's like, where are your contacts? How are you actually grouping those contacts into who is a pot who is a relationship that has an existing relationship with lots of your ideal customers? And then also who are your best customers? And are you actually sitting down with those customers
And having a conversation with who's in their existing network, who are their vendors, who are their suppliers, who are their advisors, who are the reps that are calling on them. Because everybody that's surrounding your best customers, you can pretty much rest assured that they, those vendor suppliers, advisors have a network of clients that look exactly like your best customer. So
How do you then take the time to have a simple conversation with your existing customer that gets you an introduction to their suppliers and vendors? It's it's about slowing down and looking at the assets in the relationship or the value in the relationships that you already have, and then setting up some simple triggers and processes and languaging to have a conversation that opens doors for you.
Bernie (13:43)
Sounds a birds of a feather scenario. You know.
Derek (13:47)
Yeah.
Bernie (13:48)
Yeah. The when you're setting the when you're setting this stuff up, you have you have these referral partners. How do you set up how do you establish high, you know, if it's one thing to have a one to one conversation, right? But if you're a business and you go you notice another business going high, kind of a joint venture, it's almost like
Co-branding, right? Almost an element of co-branding. I do this, you do that, you have a customer base, I might be able to help your customer base. Do you set up a joint venture? Do you set up a an affiliation link? Do you set up some sort of formal agreement? Do you set up an informal agreement? Does it matter? Does it, you know, if you define it, will it help it?
Derek (14:29)
The the answer to all of that is yes. At w which thing at which point in time and to what degree of complexity, right? you know, early in establishing a referral partner relationship,
The speed at which a partner's prepared to go, what they're prepared to do at the start versus down the track might be might be very, very different. So, how do you actually make that process of collaborating with you and engaging with you an incremental and smooth process? So, one of the things that I came out of financial services, spent 20 years there dealing with high net worth individuals. We had no marketing budget there.
So we had to network and we were networking with other professionals. And that was how we got connected into high net worth relationships and therefore had that borrowed trust from other advisors that sped up that engagement process. And we were able to, you know, place investments and do a whole lot of risk management, that sort of thing. So that's where I first got my major experience around networking and collaboration with strategic partners.
Then I went into technology working with startups, scale up businesses, enterprise technology. And again, didn't matter whether there was a marketing budget attached or supporting that business or none, never got any sales qualified leads from whatever the business was doing. I was always having to go and actually build up my own pipeline and find my own deals. What I found in that process was other business.
Businesses not being deliberate and strategic around how other and other salespeople not being deliberate and strategic around how they do that. Right. And so what I ended up doing was going, okay, this is working for me. Nobody else in the SMB SME land is doing this. How do I actually teach somebody else to do it? So then I created the referral marketing formula, which is a nine-step process. And think of it like,
One those domino setups where you hit the first domino and just cascades and knocks down the rest. So having a structured framework to think about how you do referral partnerships and then how do you actually engage referral or in let's call it partnerships because there's different types of partnerships. There's referral partnerships where someone's sending you referrals or you're sending them referrals. There's
Growth strategy partnerships where you're delivering value, not necessarily delivering referrals, but you're delivering some other value exchange to a partner who as a result is introducing clients and leads to you. Then you've got impl implementation partners, resellers, and affiliates. So depending on the nature of what bucket or relationship fits into, as to the type of structure that you have.
either from an agreement perspective, but also from an implementation perspective, like so how do you onboard a particular type of partner? How do you activate that partner in in getting them to actually work closely with you so that it is generating leads? And then how do you enable that partner to do that more consistently and potentially at scale?
As soon as you can answer those questions, then you have a partner model that is both duplicatable, delivers referred leads, and is scalable. Then your growth, your ability to grow your b business is only restricted by your delivery capacity. So I've sort of gone a little bit deeper than I probably shouldn't answer your specific question, but the answer is have clarity around.
Your partner frameworks, your partner program, and it does it less complicated to start with, the better. Like get version one done and then iterate from there. So work out what's the right partnership framework for you. Get a basic partnership narrative set up and then go and have some conversations and refine it along the way. But don't make the big, the first step a big step and have a clear framework of what you.
How you add value to the partner, and then what's the next little thing that you want that partner to do? And then what's the things that you're going to do over the next 30 days? And there might be like three different game plans that you've got. Game plan A, game plan B, game plan C, depending on the maturity of the partner and how fast they want to go. Right. So think of it in t-shirt sizes, small engagement, medium sized engagement, or large engagement.
Deep engagement really quickly, right? And then it's just like, here's the game plan. Let's go and execute it. and just run it as a pilot program. So it takes pressure off everybody. It's not this big commitment. It's like, yeah, let's dip our toe in the water, make sure we like each other, make sure we're working well together. Let's do this one thing over the next 30 days. And this is what this one thing looks like. And this is what I'm going to do for you and Bernie as as part of this.
partnership, this is the value you're going to get out of it, but to get the unlock that value, this is what you need to do. Are you good? We good to go? Yep. Right. Let's go. And just having those frame, those processes mapped out.
Bernie (19:26)
So is that the referral marketing formula then you just described?
Derek (19:29)
Yeah, yep. So that's the formula and the frameworks. So there's there's no modules in the formula. It's ideal customer profiles. just model your best customers, get your three best customers and are not in the same industry and just model them deeply. Really understand them, get a one pager around that. And then your ideal referral partners module two in that formula. So it's like,
start to look at who who's in who's in your client's world. Are you really have you ever really sort of sat down focused on that? because that's where your next best referral partner will come from. And then module three is value proposition, like value proposition to your customer, but more importantly, your value proposition to a referral partner. Because if you just if you're just giving commission, that's not the best value exchange.
for a partnership. I'm not saying do it. I'm not saying don't do it. I'm just saying don't make it a core pillar of your value proposition for a referral partner. And then, you know, what are the other things that you deliver that are important to them that are not direct referrals? Because as a business, if you can generate so many leads that you can feed a partner network in referrals, then you don't need a partner network. You've got
You've got an engagement model that you can go direct to customers that you potentially don't need referral partners, right? So again, don't make the exchange of referrals a core pillar. What you want to do is what's the value that you can give to a partner that's important to them? And therefore they refer business to you as a result. that's that's an infinitely scalable partner model when you can get to that position. So it's it's sitting down and
Doing the toughest thing in the world, actually taking time to think. Right. now AI helps us think faster, but AI can't do our thinking for us. Right. so getting that value proposition in module three is critically important. Once you've got that under, that's the foundations, right? That's really the design phase. Once you're clear on that, the next
Bit is about how do you build your partner program? Well, that AI can fast track all of this stuff. And we've created dedicated AI prompts to allow people to execute on all of this really quickly. But it's build your program, then build your message to market. Module five is all about your messaging, getting your narrative right for both customers and partners. And then module six is about what we talked about about partner.
Activation and enablement. How do you onboard a partner? Have you got a simple system that's easy for the partner to execute and follow? What's your process for getting them started or activated? And then ongoing, how do you just increase that engagement and value collaboration so that you're getting more activity with that partner, therefore more referrals. And then the stage seven or module seven is all about alignment.
And we deliberately use the word alignment in place of discovery because it changes the mindset, it changes the nature of the conversation and it also gives you a two-pronged mindset when you go into a a customer or partner conversation. It's about it's as much as about filtering the wrong people out as as it is about getting your next deal or your next partnership, right? There's no alignment there, bringing on a partner or a client.
just creates friction and problems and kills your margin, right?
Then you get into the strategy process of going, okay, we're going to partner together. What does the strategy look like? What's the business case for partnering? Great, Bernie, you've signed off on that, right? Now the implementation phase, module nine. How do I get you on board? What's the next activation process look like? What are we going to do in the next 30 days to prove value around this partnership? Because as soon as we prove value around the partnership, now we've got deep engagement.
And what what's the next step? So that's the nine modules of the referral marketing formula.
Bernie (23:17)
Wow, that sounds in depth, which then leads us to refer you two, which I think is the the genesis of all this coming into one spot.
Derek (23:26)
Yeah, it it's it's the downstream solution. So once we created the referral marketing formula, we created all the AI, that then created an operational issue because people it it's expensive to customize CRMs to act as a partner ecosystem. And then your partner ecosystem's different to every other person's partner ecosystem. And so there was an operational
Challenge that businesses needed to solve once they got their partner program up and running. So what we did was we built refer U2 as the turnkey referral partner ecosystem that people could use across all of their networks and all of their networking. So yeah, the referral marketing formula simply operationalized in a platform that complements and integrates with your CRM. So your CRM still
Days your same source of truth, but refer you to becomes the platform for collaboration with referral partners, and it becomes that visibility layer around engagement, opportunities, what's going on, communication that's specifically designed for SMB, SME partner collaboration. So we see a b because I've had a quite a lot an extensive enterprise.
technology background. There's lots of partner technology, partner software at an enterprise level, but it typically comes with all of these complex programs and processes that and requirement for big data that gets overlaid over these enterprise solutions. And it typically comes with expensive headcount to manage them. You know, you need partner managers and partner
Account managers and blah blah blah. So there's it it's very costly. Only enterprise can afford to be doing that. But the principles and strategies are relatively straightforward. So the shift for us for for me was how do I take those concepts and how do I actually simplify them into a massive lever for SMB SME where they don't need big data, but they do have relationships, but they haven't
aggregated those relationships effectively to run partner programs. So we've simplified all of that enterprise level thinking and capability and brought it into an SMB platform at SMB SME pricing.
And yeah, so that's the downstream solution to the formula.
Bernie (25:44)
So if a company is just starting out, you know, someone either just left corporate, you know, they have a skill set, they might have some contacts, you know, based on their LinkedIn or other other social media feeds, or someone just you know, they finished they finished their schooling and now they're going, ta-da, I'm here. I am now in the in the white collar sector, you know, I'm a finance expert or yeah, you know, whatever the case might be.
How do they how do they start leveraging? How do they see the growth? Because they they might not come with a complete list of, someone that's been in business for like a decade, right? how do they evolve it and how do they leverage the refer U2 system to make that work for them?
Derek (26:23)
Yeah, pretty much just following the formula process that we mapped out, right? Every every business, and if I if we talk about this in the context of founder led sales and or or sales teams, these these are where the front facing front facing people who are actively networking and doing active business development. Whether it's an intrapreneur.
internal sales team or you know owner founder led the principles strategies and tactics are largely the same it's like if you're going to go to a networking event looking to do business networking to generate leads sales leads then you simply have to have clear messaging around value not not a 60 60 second
Elevate a pitch at a networking event that turns into a four minute product description, which nobody can remember because you're trying to target every person under the sun in that three minute diatribe. be very clear on your messaging, very clear on your value proposition. At any one given point in any one networking event, only look for an introduction to one specific profile. You might deal with three or four different partners, three or four different
ideal customer profiles, read the room, think about who's in the room, think about how what message is going to be clearest to that room and who in that room is likely to be able to lead you to a particular type of person. And then just articulate a message of value around that. And that's you know, all of a lot of this is sales 101. All right. But the problem is
Today, everybody's looking for complexity and scale, but they're not sitting down and actually deeply analyzing the fundamentals. And if you don't get the fundamentals and foundations of anything right, then everything that happens beyond that is either ineffective or you're scaling problems. So yeah, just follow the frameworks. I'm on my LinkedIn, I've got a newsletter. I actually break down all of the nine modules into the
frameworks as part of an article series that I've done recently. And it's just about sitting down and going, okay, what's the one thing that I'm going to do this thing? What's the one thing that I can do to improve this thing that I'm going to do? Like my next call with a existing customer. Rather than just, how the kids? How's the fishing? How's the golf game? How's business? Yeah, business sucks. I'm annoyed at it. Okay, well, what's yo,
What is the thing that you can go and add value in that conversation or move that conversation to a next step in a process because you've mapped out, you've got this roadmap of engagement that you know where this client is or where this partner is on the roadmap and what their next steps is or what the destination is and how you need to get them there. It's actually sitting down and just building out those simple frameworks to keep you on track, to keep the client on track or keep the partner on track.
So again, really long winded answer. Slow down, be more thoughtful with your next action. And if your next action's not working, work out why it's not working and fix it.
Bernie (29:22)
So to use the the platform.
What's involved? Like, you know, is first off, is it globally available? Is it just located in Australia? Is it what are the limitations? What what are the guardrails, so to speak, if there are any?
Derek (29:35)
Yeah, it's a it's a global platform and we create we create two things. We create your private network within the platform. So it's not another directory, it's not another social media platform. You know, it's it's about you managing your private network and your relationships. There is a global networking aspect to it because we're creating a partner ecosystem, but that's opt-in. Your your
People you introduce onto our platform don't automatically get exposed to other people's networks. It's an opt-in. We won't sort of go there. But we've built a complementary version around we're not just another SaaS, right? People go, okay, another SAS off it. Don't need another SaaS. With with a SAS platform, you typically get this toolbox, but then you've got to go and configure the toolbox to make it work for your business.
What we've done is standardized and systemized the whole referral partner relationship model and turnkeyed the workflows. So you can go to referutwood com. I'm guessing we can put a link into the description here where you can just go click on the link and get a complementary version of the platform. And that complementary version is always going to be free. And just start this turnkey process of collaboration with referral partners. And
Instead of sending your next referral via email, WhatsApp, SMS, LinkedIn message, whatever, just log into your refer U2 account, click the orange button, and send your referral introduction via refer U2, and it automatically tracks all of your outbound and inbound referrals and gives you a systemized workflow that all of your partners can follow. And now what you're doing is you're
Your activity on our platform starting to train your customers and your referral partners to be better referrers of business. And it's helping them do become better business networkers. And ultimately, all that means is more referred leads. So we're doing that training and education of how to do referral networking, business networking, referral partnerships more effectively and
more importantly, more consistently. So everyone has clarity around what are the right things and what's the right thing to do next.
Bernie (31:46)
Things that come in and several things came up as you described it, and I think that it it's a really it's a really cool setup. So is importing of existing information. It's gonna be question one. Question two is does the AI help wrap around, you know, these are optimal connections? And then thirdly, what does the if I introduce Bob to Charles, you know
What do they see? Well like w does it matter if Bob's likes likes text messages and but Charles likes emails? Does does it marry that type of, you know because some some people have a preferred means of communication, right? Sometimes it's DMs on LinkedIn, sometimes it's email, sometimes it's text message or WhatsApp. How do you how do you handle that configuration?
Derek (32:31)
Right now we handle it by just keeping people consistent on email as far as the actual referral data is delivered.
The the in the the longer, more complex answer is communicate with people how they need to be communicated with, but have an underlying system that is your single source of truth around collaboration with your referral partners. So with refer you to it's click the orange button, do the introduction, an email gets sent with the contact details, your positioning and messaging. So there's three questions in there. I'll just deal with the first one. but then
If if that referral partner is bad on email, send them a text. If they don't use their mobile, they're a WhatsApp person, send them a WhatsApp saying, Hey, I just sent you this referral. You can find it on refer you too. It's in your email inbox. Now you've got this very simple standardized base system because
If if everybody wants you to communicate with them differently, it makes it nearly impossible for you to track. This is part of the problem. and I had this conversation with a sales trainer the other day. He goes, I don't work like that. I've got all of my contacts are in my email address and I just search for their name. I said, So you've got contacts in Outlook? No, they're just in my search bar in my emails. Right. I've got a CRM.
Yeah, but not all my contacts are in that C R Right. So you've got no single source of truth around your contacts. No. Yeah, so this
The the thing is people do what's convenient for them in the moment. And they don't want to actually do that one extra step, but they don't realize the unintended consequences of conveniently doing operating a poor system. Right. So so we make it easy for you to track everything that's outbound. If people are sending you referrals via refer you to, they're automatically tracked, automatically added to your contacts.
automatically set into a a partner pipeline process when you and I think this is the answer to question two when you're in that opportunity or referral partnership when you're acting with that record you can change the status of that record based on the partner pipelines which automatically updates your referral partner as to where you're up to with the stages.
There's internal communications messaging on the platform. So all of your partners can have one place that your active partners come to to communicate around partnerships. And now again, you're training your network to be better systemized around partnering. question three. What was question three? the partner matching AI. Very perceptive question, Bernie. That is a roadmap item for us. So our
We've got our complementary version, gives you a whole bunch of workflows, tools, functionality out of the box. No questions asked. Our premium features starts to automate the deep integration of the referral marketing formula into your operations. And we are in the process of we're in the advanced stages of developing a partner matching
capability within our AI. So we in our premium version we'll be releasing three different AI agents, a marketing assistant, a sales assistant, and a partner management assistant. So again, getting all of the layers of support around all of these sort of processes. And then our partner matching tool will basically look at your private network and go, Bernie, you should be
matching Derek up with Marley, for example. Here's the reasons why. Do you want to make this introduction? Yes or no? You go, yes, put a put your personal introduction message in, set go, and it triggers all these record keeping and workflows. Or you go, no, look, there's something I know about Derek's circumstances or Marley's circumstances at the moment that
It's probably not a good time. No, I'm not going to make that introduction. But as your network increases, it gets really hard mentally to cache everybody's ideal customer, everybody's ideal referral partner. What's the value propositions? Who's likely to be matched up? That's where our AI does all of that heavy lifting for you. so this is particularly valuable for business networks, business network community leaders and that sort of thing to add
value to their community. And likewise, active networkers who are doing a lot of business networking becomes a really powerful way for you to add value to your extended network.
Bernie (36:52)
Another two part question for y'all. if I connect two parties, do they both have to be in be part of the system or are they just hi, here's the connection? Unless of course I am now affiliating with them or having them partner with me, do they have to be inside the the platform? And then
Derek (37:11)
Yeah, sorry, I didn't the the the second part of the question.
Bernie (37:14)
the second part of the question the second part of the question is once you start having the these transactions transpire.
Is there a dashboard or is there an output where you go this month fifty-two introductions made? ten percent were super successful, closed deals, five, you know, another five points, another five percent are in trend transaction. two, two percent are like, gosh, no, what were you thinking, Bernie? Don't do that ever again, you know.
D do you have that kind of the stats coming back and then how does it come out so that you have a sense of like, yeah.
Derek (37:47)
Yeah, two good questions. So back to the first one. There's no need for any of your network to be active on refer U2 for you to get value out of it. So people, your partner network re using refer U2 to send you introductions makes you just eliminates a lot of data entry for you because the leads are coming directly to you inside of refer U2. And therefore there's a whole bunch of triggering events and workflows that happen.
So it's already there. But I've got some fantastic referral partners that send me amazing leads. But they have no interest whatsoever moving away from sending emails. That's all they're going to do. I'm not going to tell them don't send me fantastic leads because you're not using that platform. They send me the email, I get the lead. I simply add the new partner opportunity or the new client opportunity.
Into my platform. So I've got a single source of truth to track and manage all of this. I can keep all the record keeping up to date. If they ever choose to then log in, they'll automatically have all of that data already there for them. So yeah, you can get inbound leads from all over the place and simply track and manage them in your partner portal. But it becomes a, you know, all those leads you're sending me, you know you can see those on refer you too. You simply need to
Create your free account and log in. It's all there. Eventually the right partners come onto the platform. But I've got one single source of truth around all of my business networking, all of my referrals, all of my collaborations, regardless of whether the other person's using refer you to or not. The second part of the question, refresh my memory again.
Bernie (39:21)
That's about the output. In other words, how successful were you?
Derek (39:24)
Yeah, well the dashboards. Yeah, so there's there's dashboards in the complementary version. There's dashboards, there's the ability for you to search all of your records. There's pipeline staging that you can track and manage where everything's at. So yeah, you can see your your weekly, monthly, quarterly custom date records of referrals received, referrals sent.
The percentage conversion rates is a work in progress. So that's not there right now. But as far as having core foundational activity around what do you need to do this week to hit your monthly numbers? What do you need to do? You know, that then rolls up to your quarter and your annual, having KPIs around this, and then having minimum core activity that's highly leveraged that moves the needle, you've got visibility around.
around those activities. Are they happening? And then the pipeline process gives you an indication of the results, your conversion results. Yeah. And to your point, not just what was won, but what was qualified out. And if you're getting a lot of referrals from somebody that you are just going, these are not the right referrals, then that's one, a coaching opportunity, or two, a
We need have a tough conversation, Booney. Yeah. Yeah. So all of this sets up this this gets really, really interesting for fractional consultants that consult around growth strategies and business coaches, sales trainers, because it gives you a lot of metrics around your networking and around your partnership development and collaboration that gives you all the triggering points and data to have.
Coaching conversations or sales strategic sales conversations around what's working, what's not working. We're doing all this networking, but is it working? we know that networking works if you do networking properly. Most people get frustrated with networking because they're either in the wrong networks or they're doing it the wrong way. They're turning up and presenting the wrong way. Right. So again, only two things to fix.
Is is it's not rocket science, right? It's just about focus.
Bernie (41:27)
One last question on the platform. Does it integrate with others other services? Because one of the things I find, much like you say, you know, some people I just wanted to work within my email inbox, right? And have contacts in there, or someone has other platforms. Does this integrate with other platforms? In other words, I'm not entering Bob's name here and then Bob's name over there, and just you know, kind of you know, working my way around the robin.
Derek (41:52)
Yeah. Well, we're real relatively early in our go to market phase. So the answer to your question is yes, we are doing dedicated integrations into a number of key CRMs like GHL and HubSpot and Outlook contacts and those sorts of things. But we're also, as part of our premium features, releasing our APIs because there's so much technology out there and it's not just your CRM, it's
you your ERP, your accounting package, your your whatever, right? So releasing our APIs so that people can deeply integrate refer you to into their CRM, whatever flavor that is, and other technologies that they may want to integrate with. So that way we become refer you to is it runs alongside and is complementary to and a value add to your CRM. And if you're a small business
And you need a contact management solution and a partner management solution, then we can be a standalone platform for you. But if you need a a set CRM outbound marketing solution, we're not that. There's plenty of people out there doing outbound marketing at scale. Use refer you to as a feeder to provide data contacts, communication, et cetera, into those platforms and then do all of your into
automation with the technology that you've already got.
Bernie (43:14)
So folks, you know, if you're listening to this podcast, Derek has a complimentary free plan available on refer you two and you can get yours right now and it's at refer you two dot com. And yeah, reach out to Derek. Derek, how can folks reach connect with you if if they're listening to this podcast?
Derek (43:34)
LinkedIn's probably the best spot. If you just go and do a search for referral marketing ideas, you'll get to my personal page and company page. And yeah, then refer you to our company page on LinkedIn as well. Otherwise, both of our YouTube channels, but LinkedIn LinkedIn's where I'm most active.
Bernie (43:53)
Perfect. So folks, Derek solves a problem that most business owners don't even know they have. And that's the lack of leads, or even leveraging the leads you do have, because some things are hidden in hidden gems are sitting there and it's not being ex extracted for your benefit. And you know, he has that tech background, and thank you very much for listening to our show. And to reach us, it's knack 4 business dot com. That's knack, like the word knock, except A.
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